Rachel Druckenmiller: Ask For More, Beat The Odds, & Embody Your Worth

KRATI – (04:04) Thank you so much for being here. Rachel, I’m so excited to have you on the show and I’m familiar with your content, so I know that you have stories and insights that my audience will really, really appreciate because this show,  it’s all about helping women show up as their oldest, most confident self and living their best life. And I know that you are someone super qualified to talk about that. So thank you so much for being here. Of course, yeah.

RACHEL – (04:30) That’s what we’re all about. People are going to walk away. If you’re listening right now,  stay tuned, because when you walk away from this,  you’re going to be awakened and activated to take action on some stuff and get a bit bolder. So we are ready for you and we’re going to bring it.

KRATI – (04:50) Awesome. I’m so glad we’re starting on such a high point, so thank you for that. Yeah. I really wanted to ask you something. I’ve been to your website. I have heard your interviews and you are very  impressive. But there’s something that really stood out to me and it was your story on your website. There was a time when you were a very different person. You were a lot more reserved, you were a lot more muted, and you derived your value from your academic or your professional performance.  But something must have changed, right? Because you’re a very different woman today. So I would love to know a little bit about that journey, about  what it was that made you the woman you are today. So the journey from being that reserved, quiet woman to the Rachel that you are today.

RACHEL – (05:42) Well, I would say one thing is true. It’s like something that’s important for each of us to be aware of is the thing that was advice for us at some point in life, the thing that was kind of  something that we maybe didn’t want to be true of us that is true. Or a certain tendency that we have sometimes we just want to get rid of certain tendencies.

But I think what’s helpful and I’m going to get back to answering your question, but I just want to couch it under this, is that I’ve always been achievement oriented and I’m still achievement oriented. Like, I still very much care about accomplishing big things. And I think the thing that’s shifted the most is that I don’t only care about that. So it’s about looking at there’s nothing wrong with wanting to  accomplish things in your life and get recognition and appreciation. There’s nothing wrong with any of that,  and I don’t think we should apologise for it.

And at the same time, I think the trap happens when we pour all of ourselves into that focus and we’re just focused on how can I be impressive at work, how can I be impressive at home, how can I be impressive online?  And it’s exhausting, right? It’s exhausting. And I think for me,  we don’t often go through significant transitions in our lives without going through an experience that maybe we didn’t want or didn’t ask for. And for me, one of my most significant shifts was when I burned out and got mono five years ago.

And I had been kind of a workhorse my whole life. I was getting good grades in school was what defined me in school, and when I was growing up and as an adult, getting awards and recognition  and all of that helps me feel a sense of value as an adult. But then when I burned out, I had had a dream I was drowning. So anyone who’s listening your dreams can tell you things that your conscious mind tries to shut out. you’ve probably experienced that, right?

KRATI – Oh, yeah, I think a lot of people are nodding their head right now.

RACHEL – I think it’s like the body doesn’t lie. There’s a book by a guy named Bethel Vanderkolk. The body keeps the score. The Body Knows.

Right? Absolutely.  My body knew. My body said, look, you’re not quite getting the message that you’re exhausted, so I’m going to send it to you in your sleep, and you are going to have a dream that you are drowning, which is I was in my kitchen. I was in my kitchen, and I kept filling up with water, and then I was panicked.

And then a door appeared, and I opened the door, and all the water drained out, and I was left standing on my kitchen floor, on this wet floor, looking around like, what the heck just happened?  And I woke up from that dream, and I wrote about it in my journal, and then I did what a lot of us do. I didn’t change anything.  Right?

Like, noted. Okay, thank you. Got the dream. Next. You know, and then about a month later, the thing that really started to mess me up, I was only 32 at the time.

I started to have trouble with my memory. So I would be in conversations with people, and I would try to find a word I wanted to say, and I was literally felt like my brain just temporarily shut off, and I’d be like or I’d be talking about something.  I don’t even know what I was talking about. Can you remind me what I was talking about?  Which this was not good.

So I went to see a doctor, an integrative medicine doctor. I’m a really big advocate of integrative medicine, functional medicine. Anybody can search that where they live,  right? And I told him this, and of course, like a lot of us do that are warriors. I went online, and I was like, oh, my gosh.

I probably have early onset dementia. Not to joke about that, but that’s, of course, where I went.  I talked to my doctor, and he goes  he looked at me with kindness and compassion, and he said, Maybe you’re doing too much.

No, we’re all superhuman, right? Doesn’t he know that? All of us listening, we’re like, no, I have a different capacity than everyone  said that yesterday,  right? Other people have to stop. But I can keep going forever and ever and ever and I can do all the things and I expect myself to do all the things.

And I tell myself that everybody else expects me to do all the things perfectly without pause, without needing to take a break or step back or say no.  So I ignored him. And then  about a month and a half after that, I got really sick and I lost my voice for a period of time.  And I had swollen lymph nodes and I was fatigued and I was exhausted. And I did all the things I was a health coach too.

I did all the things. I drank Kale shakes and took  supplements, and I didn’t seem to get better. And it was almost three months later that I went back to the doctor. And I remember he looked at me and someone listening needs to hear this right now. He looked at me.

I was supposed to be at my Valentine’s Day dinner with my husband, by the way. And instead, my husband is sitting next to me in the doctor’s office at 6:00 at night.  And my doctor said, would you say this was brought on by work or that you brought this on yourself now, like, what do we want to say in that situation? It’s like, my job, my boss, so and so, my husband, my kids, I want to blame everybody else. Oh, yeah, you said yes to all of it  own your role.

And it was so  I remember my face was warm. I remember just like tears rolling down my cheeks as I was sitting there looking at him, feeling the weight of the reality of the response to that question that I didn’t even need to say. And that was the beginning for me. Sometimes I find when we bought them out, we open up in some ways that when we hit a low point,  we suddenly become aware and awakened to things that we were just ignoring or pushing through. Yeah.

And that’s what shifted that’s really what shifted things for me, because I started to when I was sick, I was diagnosed with Epstein Barr virus, which is an acute form of mono. Wow. And  my normal energy level I did not have for at least seven or eight months, which  my energy is why people hire me.  We want someone to come energised speaker and I didn’t have the thing, and I lost my voice. My voice would go in and out, so  I would lose it for several days at a time.

It would weaken and I was scared. I was really scared. But the greatest gift of that time  was the importance and the power of pausing and opening up. Being vulnerable with people.

Letting them know that I was struggling. Letting them know. Like going to therapy. Being honest with another person and not telling her a bunch of nonsense and doing a lot of journaling and listening to devotionals and listening to music and listening to sermons and reading books and  having conversations with people that were  conversations were hard to have. It just opened up to so many things around me when I was at my lowest point, and that was what really started  to shift things for me in terms of me feeling like I’m now living more aligned.

And that’s been over the past five and a half years, that journey has been happening. 

KRATI – (12:33) That is quite the journey. And you’re absolutely right. There’s so much to relate with there. There’s so much that sounds so familiar.

But I have this one question. Whenever I’m talking to my clients and we are discussing fear, self doubt, and they want to show up in a more confident way, I always tell them to die their emotions to their mission.  I always say that you’ve got to be emotionally invested to really show up fully for whatever goal you are setting for yourself, whatever it is that you want out of life. Because when your emotions are in that mission, everything you do, your drive will be heightened. It will be amplified for you, and not going forward will no longer be an option for you.

You will wake up every morning determined to get shit done.  But the problem with that is the more emotionally invested you are, the less perspective you have and the less you’re able to step back when you need to, like when your body demands it. So I really haven’t found an answer to this, because I do feel like that, yes, for you to  really accomplish something big in your life, you have to be completely focused and invested and driven. But also, obviously, you have to take better care of yourself. You have to have a better balance there.

So for all of those people out there who want to do great things with their lives, but they also want to enjoy good health and well being, what would you tell them? What is the trade off here? I would really love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

RACHEL – (14:07) Yeah, I have the perfect answer. I have some thoughts.

I have some thoughts. Maybe  I’ll offer some questions that might be helpful for folks listening to, help them get a bit of clarity. Okay,  right. Because I think questions can really help us to just  think in a new way about a thing. Absolutely.

One of the questions I think we can ask ourselves on a daily basis if we wanted to, with every decision we make. I mean, that would be exhausting, but every major decision, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? That matters to me and to those that I love. Right.  So if I say yes.

I’ve had people frequently ask me, like, hey, can you pop on my live show at 09:00 at night on Wednesday? Sometimes I’ve done that most of the time. Now I don’t, because you know what? I see what happens to my sleep  when I’m really revved up right before I go to bed, and it messes up my sleep for the night. And I’m like, I love you.

I support you,  but I’m not going to be on the show at 09:00 at night.  And it’s hard for me because I don’t want to disappoint. Sometimes we don’t want to disappoint. We don’t want to let people down.  And we think that by saying no  to something that we’re going to let somebody down.

But we’re often much more concerned, I think overly concerned, speaking from experience  with letting other people down and not nearly enough. Not concerned nearly enough with letting ourselves and the people that matter most to us down. We don’t think about that as much. And so I think that’s one shift we can make. It’s like if I say yes to this, if I say yes to watching one more episode, like there’s a show on Netflix called Indian Matchmaking, my husband and I like to watch  the new season just came out or whatever, a limited series or something, or Ted Lasso or whatever,  it’s like that episode will be there tomorrow.

It is 10:00pm . If you say yes to another episode, you are saying no to about an hour and a half more sleep, and you need rest. Go to bed.  Yeah. Or even being willing.

Sometimes we think deadlines are absolute. So a client says, I need this from you by such and such. Maybe don’t even say what date they need it by. Maybe you’re talking to a client about scheduling something or getting something over to them or getting a proposal. My kids might be a proposal for a speaking engagement.

Right, well, that’s you by Friday. And they’re like, oh, that’d be great. And then Friday comes, and I’m like, there’s no way I’m going to get this done by Friday. And then I can message them and say, hey, any chance  when is your next meet? When do you need this by?

Sometimes we put self imposed deadlines. We put deadlines on ourselves that are not actually somebody else’s deadline. And so often they might say, oh, our meetings in two weeks. Can you just get it to me by next Friday? And I’m like, if I’d only asked,  I would have saved myself stressed.

Ask the question. Like, ask, can this be delayed?

Could I delegate this? If there’s something that you’re working on, do you need to be the one doing it?  I have some team members that do  different things for me, whether it’s scheduling or admin or reporting or some marketing stuff.  And I was previously doing all by myself, and I was like, you cannot do your best work  as the face of this business  if you are doing all that other stuff.  So you need to ask for and you need to hire help, Rachel.

So maybe that’s what it is. And the last question I’ll offer and then I’ll  take a pause. The last question I’ll offer  is to think to yourself. A mentor of mine, Simon Bailey, asked this question four or five years ago in an event I heard him speak at. And ever since then, I’ve asked myself and others the same question.

And that is, who gets the best of you and who gets the rest of you? Yeah, that’s helpful. It helps us reprioritise if we’re honest about the answer. 

KRATI – (18:09) Absolutely. That was amazing. Everything you’ve shared is so helpful. Thank you for that.  But let me just walk the talk here and just add a little force to what we are sharing here. Yeah. So  this is my  second last broadcast interview that’s happening after midnight.

It’s midnight here in India. It’s 12:30 p.m.. And this is the second last one that’s happening. There’s another one happening next week, which is in fact happening right after our live workshop, which is crazy. It’s going to happen at 01:00 A.m..

But these are the last ones and I have no other interview scheduled because I’m really committed to now working out a routine that is compatible with the recordings that I do with people from all around the world. Which means that sometimes our time zones are so different and so far apart that  I have to stay up late at night. But I’m so committed to  figuring out a routine that works with the podcast and that also  allows me to sleep through the night, enjoy better health.  So I have no other interview scheduled, which is very scary for a podcast. I mean, what am I going to share?

But I will figure it out. What I’m not willing to do anymore is endanger my health because I’ve also learned recently that people who work through the night, like working through the night shift, it’s like a carcinogen,  it’s like smoking. It’s that bad for your help. And I’m just doing it even though I’m a business owner, which means that at least to a certain extent, I can set my own Rs. Despite that I’m just  playing fast and loose with my body.

And that’s so crazy. So, yeah, those are, I think, huge things for me. And yet for some reason, I kept not prioritising them, which is something I know a lot of women tend to do. They don’t prioritise the things that really matter to them and they prioritise their business, they prioritise their clients, they prioritise everyone else, but except for the things that really do matter to them. And I really would love to discuss with you why that’s so difficult for women to do.

I know that it has a lot to do  with our culture, with our upbringing, and just the role that women have had from the beginning of time. But we have been having a lot of conversations around  self love, self care. And despite that,  it continues to be so hard for women to prioritise themselves.  Why are you not your own priority? Why is that so hard?

RACHEL – (20:32) I think one, I think we’re commended for it. I think women are seen as being very relational, and women are, to your point, culturally and historically and from  across time standpoint, seen as the caregivers  and seen as those that look after others. And so I think the messaging that comes with that, because that’s how we’ve been sort of socialised. I think that women the role of women is to  create and care for life. That’s our primary role.

And so I think we haven’t challenged that enough. We haven’t challenged or questioned that. We’ve just carried. It’s a story. It’s a story that  if I’m a good woman,  then I’m available,  I’m a good friend, I’m a good daughter.

I’m taking care of my body. I’m meditating.  I’m doing excellent work for my clients. I’m controlling  my emotions. I’m talking to a therapist.

Oh, my gosh, how exhausting that we put all this on ourselves.  And so I think a lot of it is that we’ve tied our identity  to our ability to serve and support other people and independent of serving and supporting other people, I think a lot of women don’t know who they are  yeah, that is so true.  Or that they have inherent value. 

KRATI – (22:00) Yeah, I agree 100%. And this is a huge point with me as well, because I really do believe that when you don’t know who you are, when you don’t have a solid personal identity, you’re going to be so vulnerable to the external world, to everyone’s opinion.

Every little thing is going to find a home in your mental space.  Every mean comment is going to have you scrambling to figure out, is this true? How can I be different now? Because if this random person who doesn’t care a damn about me and this random person who probably doesn’t even know me thinks that I’m a little bit, well, then I must be a little bit, and I got to be nicer

RACHEL – Yeah, its like taking what somebody says as, like, the absolute truth. And everyone can have their opinions just because someone has an opinion about you, doesn’t mean it’s true.

KRATI – Opinions require the least amount of intelligence.  Little children who have barely seen the world have opinions about everything. So, yeah, come on, people.  Yeah. 

RACHEL – (23:13) Curiosity requires a great deal of intelligence. And I think curiosity first and foremost toward ourselves. And I’ll give you a question that might be helpful for you and anyone listening that is struggling with that identity  question. So often we think about there’s a book called Atomic Habits by a guy named James Clear, a really great book on habit formation.  And one of the things we talked about is how often when we come to things like goal setting. Like, for women, it might be like, I want to I want to lose weight, or I want to  I don’t know, I want to be a good friend or I want to be whatever.

The thing is, we have some external goal outside of ourselves.  I want to be an involved parent instead of getting back to  what kind of person do I want to be and what would that person do right now? So, for instance,  what kind of person do I want to be? I want to be a person who respects myself as much as I respect other people.  All right, what would someone who respects themselves do?

They would advocate for themselves. They would set healthy boundaries. They would speak up if a boundaries violated. I’ll give you an example. I had a very dear friend spend the weekend with me last weekend. It was my first time ever as an adult, truly, that I had a friend stay for the entire weekend with me, my husband. But that I’ve had a friend’s day, and we stayed up kind of late on Friday night. She got in late Friday night. We stayed up late.  I wore a device in my wrist called a Whoop band whoop.

That gives me all this data about myself and helped me. I got it after I burned out because I could tell I wasn’t very good at regulating myself. So I needed something to help me regulate myself.  So knowing that is important. Like, are you somebody who needs accountability?

This gives me accountability.  And so I woke up Saturday morning feeling like really just crummy. I felt tired, and I was like, I feel tired this whole week. I’m with one of my dear friends. So Saturday night was coming along.

We’re going to go out to dinner and I said, I love you, and I’m going to need to go to bed early tonight so I can be fully present with you tomorrow, but we’re going to have to wind down our stuff by ten at the absolute latest.  At the latest, yeah. And she totally understood, but we’re often so afraid that if we ask for what we need or we communicate what we want, that it is going to be like the end of the world for another person.  So true. So true.

And so we don’t speak up and we don’t advocate. That’s for me, why a company is called Unmuted. Right? And this is one of the ways I so strongly believe in unmuting ourselves, is speaking up and advocating for what we need and what we want without apologising for it.  Having needs is okay.

KRATI – (25:47) Yeah, that’s so true. Having a clear value system. Who do you want to be? What do you want to stand for? What do you want to represent? What do you want to fight for? All of those things, I think that they really, really matter. Having clarity around those things is so important and then also figuring out a way to make those work for you. Like just those values have to show up in your action. So I would love some clarity around this one thing that very often comes up with women, you have a value system.

You know what your priorities are. But if you’re a woman in a corporate setting and you’re aspiring for more important positions because  nothing is off limits to us anymore.  So yeah, we want the higher position, we want the more important project.  But in a corporate setting where hustle is glorified and obviously  I really do believe that hard work is very important and you have to really earn what you’re going for. But if you have a system where in your weekends are reserved for your kids and that’s your priority on weekends, but you are also able to balance that with work and show up fully for your work.

But if you set that boundary and you communicate that in a work setting and you let people know that, yeah, I’m going to get this stuff done, but I’m not going to be working over the weekends, they will believe that, okay, she’s got too much going on. She clearly cannot do this because really in a corporate environment,  whoever is willing to hustle does get the more important projects. So how do you make that work for you?

RACHEL – (27:15) So that’s a great question. I worked in corporate for 13 years. I worked in corporate America for 13 years before going out of my own three years ago. And so I understand being in that space, especially being a young woman trying to make my way. And there were times where I for sure had to  be very  assertive with myself and what I wanted and what I thought and asking for promotions. And I’m happy to share during this conversation at some point what I did actually, instead of asking for a promotion, there’s something else different. So if you want to flag that, I can come back to it and give people a tip on how to ask more money without doing it the traditional way.

So we have a perception about what’s going to happen  if we communicate a firm boundary. Okay,  it’s a story we tell ourselves, oh my gosh, if I tell them I can’t do this, if you’re always walking out the door an hour before everybody else is walking out the door,  people are going to wonder about that. Right.  Part of it is understanding the expectations of the organisation where you work and  if it’s glorified, if they’re communicating to you, hey, we really want you to have work-life balance, which a lot of companies are these days especially. Yeah, right.

But then you’re seeing emails get ping back and forth at 915 at night or on 6:30 on a Saturday morning.  Here’s the thing that you have a choice to do. Don’t log in. Like I communicated to people when I worked in corporate, I would go on vacation, on vacation sometimes for as much as like ten days in the summer.  I remember I would walk by the front desk and Wendy was the receptionist.

I said, Wendy, ‘I’m going to be out for ten days on vacation.’ She said, oh, do you want to leave a number? Like in case a client has a question? I said, yeah,  no, they’ll figure it out or I’m not closing the hole in the ozone layer.  They know I’m gone.

And there are other people that work here, and if they really  need something while I’m gone,  someone can find it. Or they might just have to wait till I come back, right?  And so many of us are so afraid of setting a boundary like that because we think, oh my gosh,  if I disconnect for three days,  people are going to think that I’m not committed. That is a story you are telling yourself, because I guarantee that there are people at that company  that are respecting their own boundaries and not doing that. And if they’re not, if everyone at the company is responding to emails at 10:00 at night and 06:00 in the morning on a Saturday, you have to ask yourself, is this place where I want to work?

Does this place align with my value system of honouring  non work time? And if it doesn’t, if you’re the only person, then you may not fit in at that job. And you have to ask yourself, do I want to be here? But if you see some people that are like, oh, that person never responds to those emails.  That person always responds to those emails.

You don’t necessarily know why, but you can make the choice about how you’re going to show up so you can communicate. Hey, just so everybody knows,  I really value my weekend time. And so I’ll respond to emails up to 06:00 on Friday and I’ll log back in at 08:00 on Monday. But anything over the weekend, I’m not going to get.  But I trust that if something needs to be addressed, that it will be taken care of.

And I’ll be back online on Monday morning. We teach people how to treat us.

KRATI – (30:30) So true. That is so true. And thank you for sharing that because women need to hear that more than anyone else.

And I’ll tell you something, I have been in positions where I would be getting blood drawn from one arm and taking a phone call and answering questions about a meeting with the other hand, with my boss telling me, you’re on the phone so you can’t possibly be that sick. And I’m like, what? I am sitting in a hospital. I went to a hospital because I have fever that won’t go away. But apparently I’m not sick, okay?

And at the same job, I had a boss who was so obnoxious, he would use hand gestures like he would snap his fingers. To call me and he would scream at me. Like, he would call me up at 03:00 a.m. In the morning  and scream at me for work that he’s supposed to do. It was such a horrible work environment, and at that time I was already in depression and was getting progressively worse, of course.

But why I’m sharing this story because ultimately I ended up quitting, obviously, because that place was just horrible. It wasn’t just him. It was everyone in the office. It was just bloody toxic culture. But what I regret is not pushing back sooner and not pushing back harder and leaving without letting these people know that what you’re doing is wrong on every level.

You’re not even treating human beings like human beings. You talk in a way that even  anybody would be embarrassed of the way you talk to each other, the way you treat each other.  I didn’t say any of those things, and I really regret that. So to those who are listening, I would just like to say that do not put up with toxic treatment. Don’t put up with disrespect.

And it is disrespectful when someone expects you to show up all the time and just have no personal life.  And it’s disrespectful not just to you, but to people in your life who also matters just as much as your job does.  And when you fail to defend that boundary, you’re going to regret it someday because that is such a huge opportunity for you to flex that muscle. And if you don’t, you’re going to regret it. I regret it.

RACHEL – (32:54) So, like, what you’re sharing is there’s a book I read a few months ago called The Power of Regret by a guy named Dan Pink, who’s a New York Times bestselling author. And one of the things he talks about, he says there are four kinds of regrets.  And first of all, I commend you for leaving that job. Some people never leave those jobs.

They stay in it forever. And then it destroys their health. It breaks apart their marriages, it affects their families.  No job is worth your mental health. No job is worth sacrificing your mental and physical health. Period. Done.

KRATI – (33:20) For sure.  It did push me over the edge. In fact, my depression got significantly worse while I was there.

And then everything  like, there was a whole period where I had to really fight for myself. I had to fight for my sanity. I got dependent on pain, fails and whatnot. And I hold that job responsible in a very big way for it. I hold myself responsible mostly  because I did that to myself.

I let it happen to me. But still, that was that job was definitely a big part of it. And that is, I think, where the regret comes from.  They’re still probably doing that, and they’re probably doing it to someone who isn’t as capable of standing up for herself. And  I’m a strong woman.

I can stand up for myself. I have done it in the past, I have done it since.  I don’t know what happened. I should have set up for myself. I don’t know why I didn’t.

Maybe it was the depression or I honestly don’t know.

RACHEL – (34:20) Yeah, you were defeated though. Sometimes when we’re totally defeated and depressed, I mean, there’s a lack of energy that comes along with that, and there’s a lack of motivation. Like, depression is often paired with a lack of motivation. So it’s sort of like your brain was in a spot where it was sort of frozen.

So  that’s where self compassion and grace play a role. 

KRATI – Thank you for saying that. That you’re welcome.

RACHEL – Yes, you did the best you could with what you had. You got out of that space, you did what you could to communicate. Maybe you didn’t do it as to the extent that you wanted to or as many times you wanted you to really get the point across, but they weren’t interested in hearing the truth anyway. Yeah,  but what you’re speaking to is one of the so Dan Pink and his research identified four types of regrets that people generally have in their lives and regrets of moral regrets and relating to doing the wrong thing or the right or wrong thing, or foundational regrets. Like, I wish I’d started putting money in my retirement plan sooner. I wish I’d taken care of my body better.  Regrets of connection, I wish I’d stayed in touch with or been  restored or poured into that relationship or whatever.

But one of the most common forms of regret or what you’re speaking to, which are regrets of boldness. Regrets of boldness. I wish I’d spoken up. I wish I’d had the courage to speak up. That is one of the top regrets that people have is I wish I’d spoken up at work.

I wish I’d spoken up in that relationship. I wish I’d spoken up in that interaction when I saw an injustice happen or where somebody was mistreated that those are some of the top  forms of regret that we have is I wish I’d had  the courage to be bold, essentially. Yeah. So that’s what you’re speaking to. And so if we know that when we have those moments where we want to shrink and then we want to let fear dictate how we show up, we can instead tell ourselves,  you know what, regrets of boldness are one of the most common regrets people have.

I will not be someone who has a regret of boldness.  And that doesn’t mean being brazen, it doesn’t mean being aggressive, it doesn’t mean being in people’s faces. It doesn’t mean telling somebody off. No, it’s about communicating with honesty and to the extent you can, with as much kindness as possible and generosity of spirit. I think that is an important thing to add.

Right? Kindness and generosity of spirit. You can be honest and talk about a hard thing and do it in a way that is kind and not insulting or critical of another person. It’s a fine line. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s possible.

So I think, just reminding ourselves is that we’re predisposed to have these regrets of boldness, and by making a different decision,  we can live in a place where we have a bit more alignment and say, you know what? I’m going to advocate for myself, and I’m going to advocate for what matters.

KRATI – (37:10) Yeah, thank you so much for saying that, because not everybody can afford to walk away from their job or jeopardise it in any way, because for some of us, losing our job,  it could potentially destroy their life. Their job is that important. Maybe they’re in debt.

Maybe they have children to support. It could be a lot of things. So thank you very much for saying that. But having said that, I think you still have to be very mindful of what you put up with, because what you allow, as they say, is what will continue. And despite the significance of your job, it could take a toll on you if you don’t set any boundaries.

And now I wanted to ask you, you brought up asking for promotion, asking for more money, and the right way to do it. So I would love to talk about that. How can we do that without being  with full confidence? How can we have that conversation but without being brazen or without coming across as entitled or anything like that?

RACHEL – (38:08) So what I’m about to share  is something that is not empirically based on a study, necessarily.

I’m sure parts of it could be tied back to research, but it’s what I did. I actually did what I’m about to share with you, and it worked. And by the time I left corporate, I would imagine I was making 25% to 30% more money than I would have been making if I didn’t know how to do this. Okay? So one of the things I did there was a study done by a group called Catalyst several years ago, and they found that one of the things that can help women propel their careers most effectively is something that most women are absolutely terrified to do, which is making their accomplishments known.

Making your accomplishments known is one of the most effective ways to experience  financial and professional growth. Most women are told, what are we told when we’re little? Like, don’t toot your own horn.

Let your work speak for itself. Let your work speak for itself.  Just give attention back to the team. And we want to shine a light on other people. I think that is an important point of unmuting.

Right? Appreciate, recognise, give credit where credit is due,  and if you did something really significant, let somebody know about it. This is one of the things I used to do. And then I’ll share like the script forgive people for how to ask for something other than a raise to get more money, right? If a client sent me an email  that’s something really great I had done to be helpful to them, they’re like, oh, I used to plan events, I used to plan health fairs.

This is like ten years ago, planned health fairs, right? And I have clients reach out to me. Like, that was the best event we’ve ever had. So many people showed up. We were getting emails from people about how much they enjoyed it.

They just sent me the email. So then I would take that email and I would forward it to my boss and I would say, hey,  what I’m about to say is really important, how I positioned it,  because it’s his ego. He runs the company, so he wants happy clients. So I said, hey, I know how important it is for you to have happy clients. And I just got this message from a very happy client, and I wanted to share it with you.

It made my day. I hope it makes yours  really cool. It’s a ninja move, right? It’s a self move, because I’m making sure that you see that I got this recognition that you would never have otherwise seen. Yeah, but I’m doing it in  a way  that also feeds  what’s important to you, which is that you want our clients to be satisfied with the work that we provide.

So, it’s a win win. It’s a win win. That gets documented. I also had a folder in my inbox called Kudos, so kudos. And every time I got an email like that, I dragged it into that folder.

And so when it was time for my review, I take those out, I would print some of those emails out and take it in with me  to share.  I just wanted you to have this, like, record of this. These are some of the things I’ve been proudest of this year  about the impact I’ve had and the clients that I’ve gotten to work with and how satisfied they’ve been.  You’ve got to have proof of something  like, if you want to ask for more. And then I would communicate.

Here are some things I think we could be doing better or differently that I would like to contribute to, that I think I could contribute to in some way.  So for me, for speaking at the time, it was like, hey, let’s get me in front of more events where we’re with HR leaders, because if I get on stage,  we can get follow up,  we can have the opportunity to get their contact information and follow up with them. And then that gets you in front of them in a way you couldn’t have gotten in front of them as wanting to be their benefits. So it was insurance benefits that could get you in front of them in a way you couldn’t have gotten in front of them before. So let’s get me on more stages to do the thing that I love, so to speak.

And then also I’m associated with you, so by association, you get the benefit of me working for you,  and so you can then leverage those connections to get in front of people and potentially get more clients, which happened several times, right?  So I would go in with my track record and with my plan for the future.  I’d also done some research about what people doing similar work for working for similar sized companies were making.  And I had gotten a master’s degree, and I was a health coach. And I at one point was named the number one health promotion professional in the United States.

I got national recognition for my industry, and I’m like, I don’t know what the dollar amount is. In my head, I’m like, that is worth something. Like, you now have a national leader working for you. So I didn’t hide that. I would position that and say, hey, I’ve really enjoyed start with appreciation.

I love that I get to do so much of the work that just lights me up here so often. I really do love working here. I see so many opportunities for so many more cool things we can do to grow together.  I want to have a conversation, and  if you’re taking notes, get your pen out. If you want to make more money working for somebody else, I’d like to talk to you about how we can adjust my compensation  to reflect my increased and increasing value and contributions.

I would like to be making X by y date. Is that possible here? And then you shut your mouth, and then you sit and you wait. And that’s what I did. And  they never said no, right?

Because they didn’t want to lose me, because I was like a unicorn. I was a unicorn. I made up my job. I did all the stuff. I was a face of the company,  and I knew that.

And I knew that I had a skill set that nobody else there had. And I knew that. And I said the arrogantly as a matter of fact, I knew I had certain skills. I had a special set of skills  that other people didn’t have that was valuable to them.  I thought, how can I leverage this for mutual benefit?

How can I get up to one of the things that I want to do and how can I help them use that to get more of what they want, which is clients, new clients, and retaining old clients, your current clients? Sometimes the timing did not happen exactly as I asked. Sometimes the exact amount of money didn’t happen, sure, but each time it incrementally got like, ratcheted up  because I asked. And then if they didn’t give me a response, if it had been like three months and I hadn’t heard anything or two months. I didn’t let it wait that long.

If it had been two months. And I respond, hey, I want to circle back about the conversation we had.  Let me know when you think this might be possible by or what needs to happen for me to get to this number by X date. Like, what needs to happen?

So I’ll pause there and see if anything of that resonates or stands out.

KRATI – (44:00) Yeah,  this is like everyone should be making notes of this on sticky notes and putting them up, because don’t let this be just another podcast conversation that you listen to and then forget, because these are like baller moves. I don’t know what baller means. I use it a lot.

RACHEL – You nailed it.

KRATI – These are like, boss moves.  These are amazing and I wish I had known them when I was doing my five because I was such a sweet corporate person who would be like, oh, my God, let me not send this email. What if this creates chaos? And yes, no, it was the team, it wasn’t me. And always taking the blame.

If the team had done something wrong, a specific person had done something wrong, I would always be like, yes, this is all our fault. Let me just step up and take responsibility for this.  In the end, I did get told when I finally quit my nine to five, I was told that I’m one of the most professional person.  But now that just sounds like, I’m so glad you didn’t make too much noise,  which sounds horrible to me. So, yeah, everyone needs to know these things down and start doing them because this is amazing.

And I know what must have popped up in some of our listeners had when they heard you say things like, you were a national champion. You had all of these recognitions to your credit. And they’re thinking, I am not that special.  I don’t have any special skills. So none of these tips apply to me.

I know for a fact that this is what crossed their mind,  and I just want to say that that’s not true. You have to work hard. Of course. You can’t be someone who barely shows up and then expects to make considerably more today than you were making yesterday. That’s not what Rachel is saying.

So you have to work hard. But to say that you don’t have anything special,  that’s bullshit. You have plenty to offer. You just got to figure it out.

RACHEL – (46:00) Well, can I speak to that person? Can I speak to that person? Because you brought that person up. I’m going to speak to that person who’s like, I’m not special.

KRATI – Yes, please.

RACHEL – I’m going to give you something you can do to get at your specialness. One,

this is a practice out of the University of Michigan, it’s called the reflected best self. Here’s how it works, right? Analysts, people that know you well, that you’ve worked closely with people that you’ve been mentored by, people that are friends, could be bosses, people that know you well in some capacity, that have seen you in some area of your life at your best. You send them an email and they say, hey, I’m working on some personal and professional growth.

You’re someone who knows me well, whose opinion I trust and who I respect and admire.  Most people love having their ego stroked, so they’ll like that.  And you say, could you tell me about a time where you’ve seen me at my best? What strengths did you see show up in me? You could even say, sometimes I deal with self doubt, and it’s really hard for me to think of what it is that I really do well.

And so it’s hard for me and uncomfortable for me to even ask you this,  but I know that you’re going to give me some type of insight. I trust that something you share will be meaningful and valuable for me. So I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

They’re going to be flattered. They’re going to be like, oh, my God. They’re going to be like, oh, my gosh, this person needs to know this thing about themselves that they’re clearly blind to, and they’re going to reply. Yeah.  So then you capture that six to eight people.

You send that same email to copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, minimal, work free.  And then  you notice the responses that come back and you capture and document them in a Google Doc or some other file. And you look through and you notice, what are the themes that I’m seeing come up consistently across these different people? I guarantee if you’re talking to six to eight people, you’re going to see at least one theme repeated.  They’re not just saying that stuff to you to be nice to you, right?

Like, believe them. Believe them. I like to say borrow other people’s belief in you. I just posted a thing on LinkedIn about that today.  Borrow other people’s belief in you.

And so if you do doubt yourself  to reach out to people  that you see as sources of admiration that you admire and you see a source of insider wisdom,  ask them when they’ve seen you at your best and what they saw emerge in the midst of that. Right?  And you can use that to start to build your confidence or even asking your boss, hey, what do I do that brings the most value to you and to this team or to the company?  What do I do that brings the most value? I don’t know.

And it would really help me to know. Most bosses  have never given feedback like that to their people, ever. They’re not thinking about that. They should be. You can initiate that conversation, what am I doing that’s bringing value?

Because there may be things that you’re doing that you take for granted. You think it’s easy, you’re like, oh, I just naturally do that. Maybe you’re organised or maybe you’re disciplined, or maybe you’re really loyal or dependable, and you’re like, oh, that’s just who I am. And they’re like, yeah, well, that’s not like, how everybody is  that matters,  or even asking, hey, what could I do to be an even greater contribution here?  What are one or two or three things that I could do that would make a significant difference to you and to this team, to our department, to this organisation?

Because I want to grow here. I want to grow in every way. I want to grow developmentally. I want to grow professionally, relationally, financially.  And I know the only way I’m going to do that is  if I continue to look forward and say, well, what can I do to continue to contribute at a high level?

Not expecting it. I never expected, because of tenure, that I should make more money. Well, I’ve been here ten years. Who cares if you’ve been status quo for ten years? I’m not going to pay you any more money. Like, yeah, I agree. Most jobs are merit based jobs. Like, contribute something, provide value, be of service. Like, you don’t just get more money because you’ve sat in your butt in a chair for a few years longer than somebody else. I think tenure stuff is like, unless you’re in academia, I suppose, but otherwise it’s  kind of nonsense. Like, whoever contributes the most and makes the biggest impact, that’s the person that should make more money. I don’t care if they’re 25 or 65.

KRATI – (50:13) Yeah, I agree with you. You said this when you were explaining all of these points, that you created your own job, and I have done that. You have created parts of my own job, and you can do that.

I know a lot of people who have done that. You have to figure out what it is that your department or your company as a whole needs and just go after it. And if it’s something that hasn’t been done before, well, then that’s even cooler, because you have nothing to exceed there, because you are the one setting expectations now. So that’s really cool. And this actually brings up this one incident that happened at my last company.

There was this really cool girl in our department, and she just decided to raise money.  We had a day set aside  for children from an orphanage to come to our office to spend a day with us and just have fun. So when these kids left, she decided to raise money. I don’t remember the specifics. I don’t remember why she did it, but she decided to raise money for that orphanage.

But she was told by the head of department, by the president or something, that you can’t give money. We don’t give money. We do things with them. We donate our time and our effort, but we don’t give money. Now, she decided that that doesn’t work for her.

So she just went on a mission to collect money. And by the end of that day, she had raised so much money and she had put so many people behind that little project of ours that  the boss had no other option but to send that money to the charity and make sure that it goes to the right place, the right person, and they get what they need. That’s awesome. And this was such a long, long time ago, so many years back, and I still remember it. And I bet this was something that was remembered by everyone in the office that day.

And it was remembered definitely during a review. Basically, she just got up and went after the same full steam ahead.

RACHEL – Took initiative. She took initiative. People that stand out take initiative.

KRATI – Yeah.  She didn’t verify that with anyone, like, Can I do this? No, she just went ahead and did it. And honestly, there’s nothing more attractive, more beautiful, more amazing than a truly determined woman. Yes.

RACHEL – (52:25) A woman on a mission.  That person was like,  I’m going to make this happen and come on board or get out of the way. 

KRATI – (52:35) Yeah.  I have so many questions. There so many more questions to ask you. Sure.

Yeah.  So my next question is, if somebody has suffered a setback in their work in their office,  like in a public setting, usually when something like that happens, it creates a lot of embarrassment around it. Everyone in the team knows what has happened.  So how do you recover from that?

How do they come back in a way where they let it be known that, yes, I know what I did, I know how I let my team down, and I will make sure not to do this again and still hold their head up?

Basically. 

RACHEL – (53:18) I think all of us experience that. I had a moment, so after I burned out, I was reading a bunch of different books and journaling and reflecting a lot, and I realised that I had really pushed people away that I worked with, with my own pride.

I wanted everyone to be impressed by me. And two years early, that’s when I got that recognition  of  being the top health promotion professional. And so I had carried this weight on my shoulders that I needed to always be the best and have the best dancers and be the smartest. I said I’m number one. So  I put all this pressure on myself and it caused me when I was in a situation where I feel like I knew I was going to disappoint somebody or let somebody down or I wasn’t going to be able to meet an expectation I wanted to be able to meet, I would just, like, basically ghost people.

Like, I would just sort of hide or I would back off or I would not be responsive or I would have a delayed response and then they would get upset with me, and then I would be resentful toward them. You have no idea what I’m dealing with.  And one of the things I did  was I  let myself be vulnerable. One of the quickest ways that we can build trust is through vulnerability.  Renee brown obviously talks about this a lot, but I got into work one day.

It was the fall of 2017 or late summer, and I  just sort of put the question out there in my head,  who do you want to apologise to first?  Right?  And of course, the person’s name that came to my mind was, like, the last person I wanted to talk to,  which is how that works. Right. I’m like, oh, not hurt.

And I went to her, like, kind of tail between my legs. You know what I mean? Like and  I said, hey, I want to apologise. I first asked her if she had 15 minutes to talk. Yeah.

Went into office, sat across from her,  was really nervous,  and I said, I want to apologize to you for the way that I’ve been showing up for the past few months. I have been  not very approachable. I’ve been short. I’ve been irritable.  I’ve  not been responsive or dependable,  and I’ve been dealing with burnout.

I’ve been really sick. I don’t know if I called it burnout at the time or just saying I’d been really sick and didn’t realise how much I was exhausting myself and how it was affecting my interactions with other people.  And  I want to apologise to you because I’m sure that affected your ability to trust me and to trust me with your clients, and I know how important your relationships are with your clients.

I’m so focused on making sure people think I’m so great all the time  that I let my concern about that  be more important than the relationship that I had with people like you.  This is not an easy conversation to have. I will say that,  no, thanks. But I knew it was necessary.  I knew it was necessary for me to move forward.

And so I remember she said to me, she said, Rachel,  I didn’t go to college. And I’m just waiting for somebody to look over my shoulder, realise, like, I don’t even belong in the spot, or counting on days for time, but for somebody called me out as not basically being worthy of the role that I’m in. And she was at a pretty high level company, right? And she said, I think we’re all kind of afraid of that in some way, being found out. And so my vulnerability  with this person, I was kind of intimidated by that.

My vulnerability activated her vulnerability, and by the end of it, we’re both, like, crying and hugging.  It was this powerful moment of what happens if we are willing to be the first, if we’re willing to be the one to initiate and say, look, I screwed up,  and I see. This is how it affected you, and I’m sorry, and I will do better. Here’s what me doing better looks like. Is there any other thing that you would add about how I could best support you, how I can best work together?

I’m sure there’s a lot of things. Is there one thing that stands out to you? Is one thing I could be doing differently starting, like, today that would help us work better together? It changes things, right? That whole conversation?

Absolutely. It changes things to be able to say that to another person.

I had that conversation with multiple people, and some people were like, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Other people were like, I didn’t really experience you that way, but thanks.

It allowed me to open up and have these conversations with people, conversations that needed to be had.  And  it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable. But I have found that when we screw up,  one of the most  helpful things that we can do is own it. Yeah, absolutely. We can undo the past  and then communicate that we’re committed to doing better in the future and asking the people that we work with, perhaps that were most affected by whatever mistake happened,  what’s one thing I could do differently so that we can continue to move forward effectively working together?

KRATI – (58:17) Yeah. I think there is also a lot of power to humility. Right. Because most people are still so completely ruled by their ego that when someone is willing to humble themselves,  it’s so powerful. It’s surprising, but it’s also very powerful and inspiring.

And then gradually, other people join in. But I love everything that you’ve shared. All of this is so helpful. Before my last question, I don’t know if I even need to ask this anymore, but I’m going to go ahead and ask anyways. Please share a moment from your life where you felt really drained, really out of confidence, but found a way to rally forward. What was it that helped you? 

RACHEL – (58:55) So, obviously, the burnout story is one, but I’ll point to something that happened more recently. Right. So I launched my business speaking and training on site full time in the fall of September. In the fall of 2019?

September 2019. Okay.  And then seven months later is a global pandemic hit. Yeah. And when I say my only source of income was in person speaking engagements, that is not exaggeration.

That was it. Well  and when over 80% of your business disappears in a month and you’re the primary breadwinner in your family I’m married to a teacher.  There is a real moment of panic that sets in  of like,  what do I do?  I have journal entries from that time. I had friends that sent me cards.

My friend Kirsten was like, I promise you’re going to be okay. You’ll figure it out. Because I was genuinely frightened. Yeah. And I had no idea, of course, how long it was going to continue, who the heck knew we’d still be talking about it?

Yeah.  But it was a time where I was scared,  and I had a choice.  I had a choice to rise to the challenge and pivot very quickly and figure it out, or I had a choice to just throw in the towel and give up on it and just be consumed by how paralyzed I could have felt by this thing that felt like suddenly came that I literally had no control over. Yes.  I remember a client reached out to me, a client that I had worked with three years earlier.

I only worked with them one time. I did one workshop  three years prior, and they reached out to me on LinkedIn a couple of days into the pandemic, and they said,  our people are struggling with their mental emotional health. Do you do virtual training?  And that was my door. And I said, like any good entrepreneur, I was like, I sure do.

And then I was like, Let me figure out how to do virtual training.  And I worked with them and crafted a three part series, and we brought all their team together, and we did it through Zoom. And I created a product out of that. And then I had clients that I’d worked with years before. This is the power of showing up consistently for people, especially online, because I’m very active on LinkedIn, and people have been following my work and saw me as a source of inspiration and hope and uplift.

And so people like  human resources associations that I had spoken at years earlier started to reach out to me, and they said, hey, we need to totally upend our plan for our programs for this spring. We need someone to just basically make people feel better. Can you come in and speak at our April event? And so it started to happen. I started to get asked you, and then I would speak for a picture, and I spoke for free.

I did webinars for free. I was just, like, free. Free. I just need to show people because my messaging was around building hope and resilience in the midst of uncertainty  and how to effectively engage people in the midst of whatever was going on. I started to have people come to those events, and then they would ask me, hey, can we hire you to come speak to this thing for our company?

And I say, you sure can. Yes.  And so I started to build up momentum. And then  in May 3, 2020 so this is only six to eight weeks after the lockdown started. Maybe six, seven weeks.

Yeah. I’m not running with my husband, and I get hit by a pickup truck and I fracture my back.  My God.

I was like, Be careful what you talk about. Maybe, like, if you said your topic was abundance and not resilience, maybe you would just win the lottery or something, but like  so this legitimately happens. I get hit by a pick up truck. I fracture my back.  I  am in a lot of pain.

I had a training scheduled on my calendar for an HR group about literally no joke, building hope and resilience in the midst of uncertainty. Two days after the accident.  And the best position for me to be in was standing. Because of where the injury, where the fracture was, it was very uncomfortable to sit. So I was like, what am I going to do if I’m standing all day?

I might as well just take a bunch of Tylenol and do my work, because at least it’s a distraction from the pain.  So I got on and I started speaking about this, and I’m wearing a back brace, which looks like a backpack.  And this story starts standing out to people as they’re like, well, shoot, the pandemic sucks, but that really sucks.

And then by the time we get to June and July, I ever felt like you got hit by a truck where you just feel like things just keep coming, and people can relate to that. They’re like, emotionally. That’s what this year feels like, the Dumpster Fire 2021. And the story started to stand out. The thing that I wish never happened, that I still like, I’m not glad if I could have the body back that I had in its functionality before the accident, I would like to have that body back.

I really would. There’s still some lingering injuries that I’m dealing with, and PTSD, among other things.  Having said that, I look at that situation and say,  wow, I could have let  all of that completely defeat me. Yeah, so true. But I believed that I was here for a reason and that people needed what I had to offer.

And that despite  it not looking the way I might have expected it to look, that I could still choose to do something with that  and to have an impact  despite whatever limitations were put on me.  And the gift of that time was that no one was traveling. So I was missing out on work because I could just do it all from behind my desk, because I wouldn’t have been able to travel for months because of the accident. I would not have been able to fly. I would not have been able to do all of that.

And so it was almost like a gift. That accident happened when it did because it positioned me. And then now I’ve done over 300 virtual learning experiences in the past two and a half years, and my business grew 50%. Year one to year two,  it’s  on track to grow. I’m ahead of pace from where I was last year.

This year, it’s amazing. And I’ve worked so flipping hard. Yeah, I bet.  But it’s like a choice. We don’t choose what happens to us or around us, but we do.

There’s a book called permission to feel by Marc brackett, but we do control how we respond to it. We always get to choose our response. Absolutely. 

KRATI – (01:04:55) I love everything you’ve shared, and I’m so glad that we’re closing the episode on this because I think we all needed to hear this, especially right now with all of this discussion going on.  Work life balance on how people want to show up so far as their work is concerned.

I love that you are sharing that you work so hard and in so much pain, like the kind of pain that only someone is actually going through it can imagine. And you showed up. You showed up and you were consistent and you took risks and you really  did everything that needed to be done. And yeah, you got what you deserve. Your company had such a great year, despite the fact that this was not a great year for most businesses. So I love that. And I’m glad everyone I hope everyone’s making note of it, note of everything you’ve shared has been such an incredible episode.