Oh Ship! Show Presents: "Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities"

hi everyone and welcome to another week of oh ship this week i've got nikki brewer joining me nikki and i met when we were at sapien and she was already a really impressive leader back then but she's gone on a really great uh serial entrepreneur journey uh she went on to go found a digital transformation company called biancurus she wrote a book called beyond barriers yes she i think she has a thing for beyond kind of like i have a thing for chameleons uh she went on to enjoy several boards including women 2.0 women in innovation and elpac and then in 2020 right at the start of a pandemic like any sensible entrepreneur uh went and founded another company called beyond barriers just like her book so beyond barriers actually helps global organizations accelerate women and leadership by democratizing access to all the high performance training executive coaching that they need to be successful and nikki and i have been catching up recently and she has a really incredible journey that um has really kind of represented itself in the uh ethos and belief system of our companies and it's all about turning obstacles into opportunities and that's going to be this week's theme on oh ship we're going to jump into that a second you're going to hear all about it from nikki and i'm looking forward to taking any kind of questions or suggestions you've got from the audience so we're watching for that in chat and with that welcome to another week of oh ship [Music] mickey welcome i'm glad you're here so great to be here freddie thanks for having me my pleasure so uh again i gave you a little bit of a setup i didn't want to steal all your thunder in the in the intro um i've yeah as i always say i i know you but i our audience doesn't know you like i know you and i'd be great if you could give them a little bit of a background uh and insight into and while you're here and and your incredible journey thanks absolutely delight to do that i think you already shared framed the journey for me which is my journey has been all about turning obstacles into opportunities um i grew up in india and 20 years ago when i first came to america all i had were my big dreams and a suitcase full of unfashionable clothes you know and when you come here with nothing you literally have nothing to lose so with that um i realized that although i was different and i didn't have the resources i had tremendous opportunity to create the future that i wanted here and uh you know i felt like an outsider in the corporate world but built up my career um even though there was a lot of acclimation and learning those skills and the mindset that i had to do but after a successful corporate journey i decided to embark on my entrepreneurial venture and at first i faced 300 rejections failed 11 times connectively but after the 12th try i built up a global multi-million dollar company going from a non-native english-speaking country to write a best-selling book to becoming a professional public speaker to be featured in fortune and forbes all of those steps along the way taught me one thing over and over again which is it's all about how you look at obstacles and when you turn them into a stepping stone for your growth that's what opens up the next level of success i love that that's so inspiring uh for the record uh you know i can barely string three words together so i i would agree uh the fact that you're a great public speaker and a writer is is really really incredible um you know speaking specifically to beyond uh barriers i mean how did you how did you get to that point um you know what inspired you to set that business up specifically and i'd love to follow on with kind of you know how did that come to be um absolutely so one of the things that became very apparent throughout my journey is that as i scaled up the corporate ladder and then eventually even in my entrepreneurial career i often found that i was the only you know there were so few women at the table where i was whether it was as a c-suite advisor whether it was serving on boards that there weren't enough women at the top and it felt a little bit like winning the olympics because so few showed up and it just really got me obsessed with that and intellectually curious to say why is that why are there so few women at the top and going beyond just the statistics to really understand the issue and what i discovered was that it's really the mid-career where the biggest drop-off happens and if women could have the resources um the right kind of coaching guidance and really tools and strategies that would help them advance in their careers at the early to mid-career stages you would grow the pipeline of leadership to the top and then as i looked at what's available out there there really wasn't anything that was available at scale specifically focused on women in the workplace and there are certainly lots of uh phenomenal coaches and trainers and learning and development programs but there are one-off little places and what i felt that there was a need for was to truly democratize access so every woman in the workplace could find her voice her power and a purpose through this and that's what led to the founding of beyond barriers uh what do you think why do you think the mid-career drop off out of interesting that caught my caught my attention yeah there's been tremendous amount of academic research on the subject in fact one of the best known studies is done by mckinsey and essentially the mid-career stage is where women get you know first of all life changes marriage motherhood and so forth but it's also when you go from individual contributor to a leader and that's the stage in which you need the most amount of support and guidance and three things specifically tend to hold women back at the stage first not having guidance to know how to navigate those career stages um you know there's a choice of going down the p l route which as you know you know if you want to rise up in senior leadership role you've got to have p l experience so there's critical points when you go from a subject matter expert and you have an opportunity to take on a leadership role with p l responsibilities but you choose not to do you don't have the right guidance that then pretty much sets you up in a certain path away from the c-suite um secondly you know access to the right professional uh networks the right mentors and sponsors who can help you figure out you know open doors for you and knowing how to leverage your relationships you know there's this idea that women have a lot of friends and huge social circles but we don't like to ask for help we don't like to ask someone for a favor to you know recommend us for a role or to open doors for us so having effective professional networks and having the right kind of next level peers and mentors and sponsors is absolutely essential so that's the second thing that's missing and the third is visibility you know when in order to get those high impact roles that put you on the fast track to the top you've got to have visibility to be considered if nobody knows you and you don't know how to articulate your unique value proposition or have a personal brand that sets you apart then it doesn't matter how much talent and potential you have you're just not going to be considered for those roles so really if you look at those three things being able to bring that together by helping women learn the strategies to stand out and differentiate themselves to have the confidence to raise their hands for those opportunities to get access to peer networks and mentor networks and to get the coaching and guidance to know how to navigate their career stages that's really the thesis that has informed the beyond bearers model exactly addressing the very things that are holding women back at that mid-career stage it is uh of those is any one of them kind of stand out as more challenging than the other other two out of interest that's a great question so um what women are often told is here's what you need to do what they don't often have access to is how to do it so the how part of it you know it's easy to you know listen to inspiring seminars and motivational speakers or read a book and you know they tell you get over impostor syndrome or you know have a a powerful brand but they don't tell you systematically how to develop those so what we focused a lot of effort on is turning something that's vague into a very specific systematic step-by-step how-to guide for each of these areas so that's 150 different uh challenges we get into that have been known to hold women back so giving them that how has been very powerful this is like that kind of classic your strategy is only as good as your execution kind of thinking so uh yeah exactly that counts that's uh that's interesting and then uh so you started this business in a news tournament was the beginning of the beginning of 2020 had the pandemic already started or or not yet well we officially launched february 2020 um and um just literally a few weeks later the world shuts down so laughing at you by the way you have to laugh about this kind of stuff but i have to say you know i seem to have perfect timing for recessions and setbacks uh but i consider it a blessing there's no better time to start a business than at the worst time it is absolutely proven to be just a gift it's a blessing and and so uh even my previous business i did the same thing was on the heels of a recession and it makes you really focus because you can't afford to uh waste your resources you are lean in every possible way but it also gives you somewhat of freedom of experimenting and experimenting fast and so that's what happened launch in february 2020 i think four to six weeks later everything shut down we had a particular thesis for how we were planning to go to market completely fell apart and we had to pivot very quickly but it also gave us a different way of making a difference at a time when the world was in shock and women were disproportionately more affected by the pandemic and here we were we were in a position to help so we offered scholarships we did tons of free pilots we launched a podcast which was not a game plan and but we offered that as a way to reach inspire and provide actionable strategies to women worldwide and all of those things have made us incredibly successful today uh you know when when the pandemic hit for a camus collective one of the things we were kind of saying to ourselves is like look uh you know you can go into turtle mode or you can prepare to fight and we felt like look there's going to be less opportunity out there just as many you know a great players fighting for it which i'd like to believe we're one of and that we need to be we need to be ready to win that and you could argue that what you guys were doing is prepping people to to win those fights and win those battles at a time where it's ever more important to be ready to win those roles and those promotions and those opportunities so um yeah it's uh it makes it didn't think about it through that lens until you said it but that you guys may have been very uniquely well positioned for that well if you think of the simplest concept of a successful business it's simply figuring out how to serve your customers market in a truly valuable way that nobody else is they do and what challenges offer you whether it's a recession or a pandemic or other setbacks is that the pain becomes very very clear so it rises the surface it almost easier for you to align your solutions or your services or products to that because now it's become clear what kind of needs are um so painful and at such a large scale and i think that's part of what sort of clarifies your customer focus and if you can if any business can do that you're bound to be successful yeah yeah and uh i also have to ask i was looking you know researching the business more uh looks like you've got a hell of a business partner very very very impressive uh who i also finally worked out was also your wife so what's it like uh to start a business uh with your significant other i love my wife more than anyone on earth by the way but i'm terrified of doing a business with her in the traditional event so uh i'd be intrigued to hear how that how that is no pressure yeah well um i have to say um it's um it's been quite a uh journey but it also reminds us of in some ways feeling like we were put together for a bigger reason um interestingly the the original vision of beyond bears came about um on our honeymoon um we we did this exercise where that's romantic yeah it is crazy it was it's a crazy story we were in fiji on an island and we you know we were talking about our future and our dreams and all of that so we did an exercise where we both wrote down our dreams separately on two different sheets of paper and then we decided to read them out or swap them and read it and it was identical we had a very similar vision of wanting to create global impact and really empower marginalized communities because we were examples of exactly who we want to live you know much like me monica had come from an immigrant mexican-american family that had overcome a lot of challenges and had made it on wall street and silicon valley with some of the best companies and had been had had a very successful career but there were so few like her and just similar to my story we felt like there was a shared sense of purpose a shared mission and that became um the vision of what led to beyond barriers of saying how can we do this at scale the idea wasn't about how can we help one or two people how can we do this at scale and that idea that you know what beyond bears needs to be like the peloton of professional development it needs to be something that brings together communities of women around the world but provide a digital base scalable access that makes it possible for anyone with a dream to achieve what they want and and so um when you think about the you know the the kind of this is your coaching at scale again built on a digital platform perfect perfect for the the digital world can you give an example of um you know one or two things that you guys are doing specifically and it sounds like you're to your point yeah you're telling them the direction to run in but you're really making sure that there's the how how is there as well right so one of the things that um coaching at scale requires is a framework based approach because if you think about a large company that might have twenty thousand or thirty thousand women that could benefit from this kind of service well if you had to go uh get coaches individually they're gonna have their own process their own methodology their own techniques and so the results may be inconsistent and often not measurable in the same framework so what we really focused on was how do you come up with a um very well defined framework that addresses the most common pain points and challenges that women face but also the skills and the mind that they need to develop in order to accelerate to the top and based on that framework we identified 25 essential elements that either become barriers or become accelerators so those 25 elements then led to the content development and the strategy development around that and so our coaches are actually trained and certified in that methodology um so when they are leading and facilitating they're leveraging that framework so there's a consistency in the outcome the other thing we also uh recognized was that social learning is extremely powerful when it comes to the transformation for women in the workplace so organizing them in cohorts um that are led by these coaches guided by this framework methodology has the deepest impact and the fastest transformation and as a result not only do they have a deep sense of belonging and the safe space where they can share and be vulnerable but they also have the guidance of a coach they have a peer network that can be lasting forever and they learn the strategies and the how-to's throughout that process let's shift gears for a second because i think when when you hear about the way you're approaching things i think understanding your journey as a leader could be really useful to understanding how this kind of plays out so i have a couple questions in mind but i want to i want to go back let's go back to the beginning a little bit um what was your first leadership role ah um the first one that comes to mind was um actually in high school where uh i became a student body leader and uh got elected to that role and what it taught me was the power of helping people believe in something bigger than themselves so this was a group that had competitive bodies and so uh it was really you know bringing my uh group of students together and giving them a vision of something about the future that was so compelling and a sense of purpose that was bigger than themselves and that belief and that sense of connection to me became so powerful it also taught me early on that most people are looking for certainty and the person who is most honest in the room and has the greatest degree of certainty automatically becomes the one that people choose to follow so it's um it really sort of drove home that um importance of where do you derive your own sense of certainty and conviction from because the greater your own beliefs are that's what inspires and ignites um other people i love that there's something innately powerful about um frankly confidence right this this projection of confidence um that you can put out there whether that is making other people believe that you have the capability to complete a task or a job as you kind of move up through the corporate world or whether that's um as a leader and convincing a bunch of other people um to follow you um i don't know you convince people as much i think it's um yeah good good correction i want to be clear say i don't think i don't think you can't sell someone into being a leader uh if you do it's a very limited uh limited journey uh at the end of the day you know it has to it has to be true true confidence as you said so um so you've had some great uh successes in your career you've also navigated some challenges which again i think is important to being being a great leader can you tell me about in our audience about any kind of maybe a great moment of triumph that you've had in your career and and maybe how that changed you or what you learned from it absolutely well i've had several challenges and setbacks throughout um whether it was coming here as an immigrant and learning how to survive through um very limited resources but i feel like my life has unfolded in almost 10-year chapters you know from the time i came to back in 2008 i lost everything during uh the market crash but also lost my partner to suicide um at that time and um and um during that time you know was a very personally traumatic time for me and it was not only isolating but it stripped me of all the things that i had maybe relied on or you know felt like were the foundation of my life what it took to rebuild from there was tremendously um you know important in how it shaped me for the future because at that time when you have absolutely nothing left especially after you've achieved a lot on one hand it was the height of my career i was doing very well and then everything is gone overnight um you learn to realize certain things that shape you as a person first off hope is so important to want to strive for something and hope comes from believing in something bigger than yourself and believing that there's something worth striving for and when you have that that's what creates that true sense of happiness but happiness is also a choice that you have to make every day it can be dependent on external circumstances so for me that period was so powerful in shaping the next 10 year span and what happened after that and making changes in my career that every stepping stone really reminded me that it's life becomes like a video game almost you know you start off in level one you have a certain set of skills and strategies and a certain level of confidence and then you stumble and fall and you face those obstacles and you can only get past that to level two when you overcome them and the only way to overcome them is to become bigger than your problems and then you get to level two and your problems just get even bigger and so you have to have even better strategies so what i've learned throughout this whether it was a triumph or failure and i've learned more from my failures and that is that it's how you look at the obstacle and how you set your intention of becoming bigger than it and all it takes is becoming bigger than because that's what gets you to the next level as a lifelong gamer i can't help but uh you know appreciate the gamer reference and i think this concept of leveling makes uh makes a lot of sense um and and also frankly uh uh at least in my personal case um i think when work is fun like a game i think you also tend to be more successful it worth noting so um you talked about this kind of uh you know building up to the kind of challenge at the next level and then overcoming it and i would argue that um you know being successful in the corporate world is pretty damn challenging business world in any environment i think when you start adding in being a woman an immigrant a woman of color or gay statistically makes it even more challenging whether it's for you or any or anyone else out there but i also feel like in you know in your i'd like to understand in your in your role as a coach that there are these uh systemic kind of challenges that face people but there are also probably a lot of barriers that people self-impose on themselves mental emotional whatever you call it kind of blocks i'd be interested to hear um obviously you can't give any specific people examples but you know if you see any kind of trends there with the types of with people you're coaching the kind of blocks that they might run into and how you kind of help them overcome those kind of challenges yeah that's a great question and very relevant question uh especially given the cultural context that we're in um look there are institutionalized and systemic bias that exists that will take time to overcome right because it's an educational and awareness process of recognizing things that are built in so a simple example might be promotion processes if there's a certain way of evaluating talent that fundamentally you know someone who's a first generation immigrant is just not going to meet up because that's not how what they've been exposed to or they recognize or even aware of they're going to be held back right so there's things like that that will take time to overcome but what i've repeatedly found is that the biggest barrier is internal it's it's the things that we put on ourselves that hold us back and it really begins all success in my mind begins with taking 100 accountability for your outcomes when you shift from being a victim or feeling entitled to taking absolute ownership of anything good or bad in your life is the first step towards that transformation first step towards achieving your goals because that allows you to focus on what are the skills that i need to get to the next level what is the confidence and mindset do i need uh who are the peers i need to learn from what sorts of things are actually blind spots for me that i'm not aware of so all of those things when you start to take hundred percent accountability it completely shifts the results you're able to achieve and frankly helps you navigate through those systemic bias as well because you don't make it a reason why you're being held back you look at it as well there may be an obstacle but i'm going to go around it over it under it but i'm going to find a way and personally for me yes i'm you know sort of the poster child of diversity checking a lot of boxes but i i didn't look at that identity as a reason to hold me back i actually saw it as an advantage that sets me apart and gives me even more impetus to overcome the barriers and also the privilege and responsibility of being a role model for so many others that it's important to break through um and you can't let any barriers hold you back so that's why i mean just like the company name it's going beyond barriers begins with yourself i love that you applied that to your own uh kind of your own journey because i was gonna have to ask if that if the you know the kind of the ways that you coached other people if that also um you know applies to how you think about your own life because you've clearly knocked through kind of a lot of big challenges out there um so since you brought up uh beyond barriers uh as a company again i have to ask i mentioned this in the opening statement uh you've got multiple things now and beyond i can't poke fun at you as the guy who sticks chameleon than anything i could possibly try and stick chameleon into uh is is what's what's the what is it about beyond that just kind of kind of does it for you um yeah you and i sort of have our brands while in place don't we um well to me beyond represents uh the idea of limitlessness um there's a fundamental belief that uh has guided me throughout my life is the idea that we all have limitless potential that there are limitless opportunities that there are limitless resources and things that could be available to us but you have to be able to see that you have to be curious and humble and hungry to go after it so that idea of believing in that kind of limitlessness those big dreams and the willingness to go after it that's just something um that i live by and uh so no surprise every company everything i do is uh labeled beyond uh something beyond so beyond capital coming next yeah so you know i'm i don't think uh you're gonna go full like you know richard branson like uh beyond cola or anything anytime soon but uh if you uh if you had a uh you know a beyond career that was beyond you know next from what you're doing now uh is there any uh you know any other industries that really excite you or play or jobs you would have loved to have done you know i defined that very early in my life in terms of the areas where um i was most fascinated by i'm not even sure how it was so clear to me that early on but i'll share a little story about something that my dad did when i was very young is um he was this you know intellectual that diddly talk as much he communicated through pictures and stories and uh so he created this uh collage on the inside of my closet door where he put up pictures of all these incredible women leaders and in the center of that he drew a picture of me and wrote my name and he never said a word about it he didn't say that's who i want you to be or i want you to aspire to be a top leader but he's adding pictures to this collage and i became fascinated by these incredible women from around the world um like an early vision board it really was it was an early vision board that my dad created but i started to read about them learn about them become curious about them but the most fascinating part was i felt like i belonged amongst them because my picture was in the center surrounded by them so i felt like you know there's nothing that is not achievable because they've done it but it's also a life of service and impact and so early on i knew that i wanted to do something in business i wanted to do something with education because education changes lives and i wanted to do something in public policy and public service um and two of those i've been active in the third is public policy which uh you know i'm grateful to serve on the board of elpac and uh it's building from there to a career in public service because policy changes lives for generations and that's really important in terms of scalable impact it's funny if you think about that approach you you've got one part of you that is kind of changing society from the top down right and now you've got this other side where you're kind of changing society uh by a bottom-up approach and uh and you're gonna meet you're gonna get me in the middle and if i'm confident if anyone's going to make a big difference out there it's going to be you um i've got one final question for you today and uh not to put you on the spot but um let's say you've got a leader like me i run you know a couple couple businesses out there i work with and and with a lot of other leaders leading businesses um you know i think it's one thing to go out there and coach uh women coming up through the workforce but is there any advice or guidance you could give me that would help me to be a better leader um and and you know continue to encourage uh diversity and growth within the organizations that i operate that's a phenomenal question i really appreciate you asking that because um a world that is inclusive and innovative begins with um building bridges and understanding different perspectives so this is the same advice i give to you know powerful global leaders all the time which is um ask questions get curious about someone else's experience seek to understand um and through that understanding from all sides is where we can find common ground because as human beings we tend to innately fear anything that is different from us or someone who thinks differently prays differently looks differently right but yet at the same time humanity has so much in common that if we simply learn to find that common ground the world will automatically become more inclusive and therefore more diverse so for every leader out there you know get curious don't be afraid to ask the questions and uh um the more closeness we develop the better we are able to embrace each other i love that that is uh i always love to end those ship on a bright uh and aspirational certainly not a thought-provoking ending and i don't think i could get a better one than that so that that's wonderful um nikki is so good to see you uh looking forward to seeing you again hopefully in person sometime soon now this world's getting a little uh more normal um i'm very excited to see uh how beyond barriers continues to evolve um so any uh sites podcasts anything like that you think our audience should know about to help make sure they can stay engaged with you absolutely um check out i'm beyondbearers.com um our podcast has been doing extremely well uh so it's called the beyond bearers podcast available on all players but i welcome everyone to even take our quiz if you go to our site and take the quiz that'll give you your momentum metric because we're looking at figuring out how we can inspire change through data and insight so i'd love to have more people engage and continue to contribute to this global effort and for those of you watching thank you again for tuning in every week uh whether you're watching us live or you're following up on us on youtube linkedin uh twitter facebook i think we're now going on instagrams any of the platforms um you know best thing you can do to support us is subscribe give us a like uh share it whether your feed spread spread the spread the good word and we really appreciate it and nikki thank you again for joining us on our shift and thank you again everyone for watching thanks for having me [Music] oh

Channel: Oh Ship! Show

Views: 6,083

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: TWwcLfJSgVA

Length: 34min 42sec (2082 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021