On her website, Bibigi Haile boldly declares to all who visit: “Own your story. Take your place. Step into your power.” These words are moving, inspiring. And they’re deeply important to Bibigi…and, no doubt, her clients, too. She’s helping women design their career and life based on the desires we too-often avoid sharing, even in whispers. In a world that’s focused on climbing ladders and achievements, it’s refreshing to take a step back and consider what you want and what fulfills you.

If you’ve ever doubted your ability to do the things you most want to do (hello, imposter syndrome), this episode is a must listen. Bibigi Haile, of Speakeasy.work, is a career and brand management coach with a mission to help women find their voice and step into their power. It all starts with figuring out what you truly want—and sometimes the answers surprise Bibigi’s clients.

Her work is about designing for change, empowering her clients to take ownership and act with intention on their path to discover and take that right next step.

You can learn more and connect with Bibigi on her website, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Full episode transcript:

Karen Wilson: Hello, my friends. Thank you for joining me on the Small But Mighty Biz Stories podcast. Today, I'm excited to have Bibigi Haile, a career and brand management coach based in Montreal, Quebec. Bibigi, welcome. Please tell us about yourself and your business.

Bibigi Haile: Thank you, Karen. Career management and branding, it's super important. It's so funny, I used to resist being called a career coach. I was like, "No, I'm not a career coach. I'm anything but I do branding." Then it's my ex-husband who said to me-- I said to him, "Oh, I don't want to be a career coach. That's not what I do." He said, "But that's exactly what you do. You help people manage their careers."

I was like, "But that's what's missing, the management piece. I'm a career management coach." The reason that is important for me is that I believe in helping women just own things for themselves. I have been working with a coach, and I was thinking about "What's that word to describe my career, to describe what I do?" The word is voices. What I want is to help women find and own their voice.

I don't want to help find them a job, which is why I was so resistant to career coaching. I want to help them find what's true for them, so they can show up in a way that feels aligned. Then if it's finding a job, they'll find the job that's right for them. If it's opening a business, they'll do that. The core component is their voice, the core component is what feels right. This brings us to career management and branding coach.

I used to be a change management consultant. I ran my own business. The angle, and it's interesting because I think there is very, very much of a link between my change management career and what I'm doing now. The angle, when I was doing change management was always around the initial design, understanding what it is that you want to create, what it is that you want to accomplish, rather than the tactical aspect of it, which is in change management, it's always the communication and the planning and the training, et cetera.

For me, that came down the road. Exactly like with women's careers, getting a job is the result, but what's important is what's before, which is the designing of it. Designing of your brand, designing of your voice, getting clear about who you are and how you want to show up in the world. That's a nutshell.

Karen Wilson: I love that. In several places on your website and LinkedIn, you talk about designing change, and that, to me, communicates this process that there's a strong intent behind it. Talk about how going about it with a design in mind leads to better results and how does it impact your clients?

Bibigi Haile: I think around a number of ways, the easiest one that comes to mind is this notion of empowerment and ownership. A lot of the times people will approach me because they want-- women, it's not people. Women will approach me because-- they'll say, "I want this VP job" or "I want this leader job." The reason why they want that role is because it seems like the next logical conclusion in their career path.

They've had this role, they're super good at it, and then the next place for them to be is a senior director or a VP, et cetera. Then when you dig and you start to ask questions about what they love, what makes them be in flow, what they're passionate about, what they're super good at, which is-- we can talk about that but that's such a hard question for women to answer.

When you dig a little bit, you realize, for instance, that they hate management. They hate managing people. That logical conclusion around becoming a VP or becoming a director is a path that's not theirs. It's a path that's externally mediated versus internally designed. What I'm looking for and what I hope to help with is asking the questions that will get people to say, "Well, this is what I want, and you know what? It's gardening. It's not a VP job. What makes me happy in the morning is gardening."

It's so hard because gardening feels less valuable than being a VP. Being a VP, if you do it, it's going to suck your soul if that's not what you should be doing with your days. It’s that ownership of that space that I hope to work in with women.

Karen Wilson: I love that. I used to work in talent management in a couple of different places, HR-related stuff. One of the things that came up a lot was the career ladder that's evolving to the career lattice, which is amazing because you can have these lateral moves and still feel like you're growing in your career. You don't have to constantly go up, but that mindset is not a shift that that's in full force yet, there's still very much this hustle mindset in career growth and advancement going on.

How hard is it for people to shift their thinking on that when they want to-- the instinct is to go for that next level instead of what's really fulfilling for you?

Bibigi Haile: It's super hard, Karen. It's super hard. Actually, the word is not hard, it creates anxiety. It creates anxiety and deep unhappiness because it's as if you could touch something but you're afraid to go there because it has implications, it has a number of implications. One it has, I'm going to call these reputational implications. How do you tell your parents that you went from senior director to gardener? I'm using this example of gardener just-- it's a bit facetious, but the idea is completely out of the left field from what you're doing now.

How do you tell your parents? How do you tell your partner? How do you think about yourself when you think about it as a demotion or as going back? There's that reputational risk. There's the money. There's the money, because if you shift towards a new career space, there is a chance that there will be a learning progression. In that learning progression, you might be making less revenue than you're making right now.

That's a source of stress and a source of-- Then the other thing that's happening on the flip side is that you know that if you don't deal with this, it will continue knocking at your door and making you unhappy. I was listening to a podcast, actually, Oprah's podcast, SuperSoul Conversations. She was talking about how life speaks to you in a whisper. I had to park the car.

I do that with podcasts that I listen to, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, I have to park the car. Otherwise, I'm just not focused." With this one, I had to park the car, and she was saying life speaks to you in a whisper. What you'll get is you'll get a, "I'm not having a good time, could we try something else?" and so you don't listen. Then you get a pebble, and the pebble looks like you had an argument at work, and now you're like, "I really need to leave" but you don't listen. Then you get a brick upside the head, and then the whole wall comes crashing down.

It comes crashing down in the form of anxiety, physical ailments, we feel it in our bodies, the aches, and pains, the not wanting to get up out of bed and you're like, "Why am I this tired? I'm having the green smoothie in the morning, I'm doing the yoga, I'm working out, I'm doing all the things, and I cannot drag myself out of bed." Lack of alignment does that, you're just deeply unhappy and you just continue in that road.

You have those two things that are going on, you need to do something about it, and the fear linked to what are people going to say, how can I go back? Another thing that comes up, what about all my studies? What about all my studies? How am I going to leverage all these years and years of university that I did that I don't care about? It is a challenge.

Karen Wilson: As you were speaking, I was thinking, "Oh, man, some of the things that could be that pebble there, especially for women in mid-level and senior corporate worlds, it's there's gaslighting, there's lies, there's toxicity, there's just a misalignment of values or misalignment in what you're doing, such as the VP who'd rather be a gardener." What are some of the ways that you see that this impacts the careers and also the health because it's so closely related? We've all been in those jobs where the stress was very deeply impactful on a personal level.

Bibigi Haile: It is very deeply impactful. You're going to have a quiet time in this podcast, because I'm looking for the word to describe what it is but it is such deep unhappiness that sometimes I look at the work that I do and I think I need to partner with someone who works within the therapy space, just to make sure that I'm careful with women's emotions and deep unhappiness at that space.

I know that men are going through the same thing so it's important that I'm not saying this is only for women but working with women is my space. Depression, anxiety, and then what happens is, there will be a life event that will trigger a need for change. For me, it was having my son. What got me into the space around working with women, and coaching was becoming a mom. I was a consultant so there's an expectation of results as a consultant. When I went back to my project, after seven months with my son, I was tired.

I had a child who had FOMO from birth, so he did not want to sleep. He was like, "I'm going to miss something. I'm not sleeping, sorry." I was exhausted. I would go to these spaces and I was like, "What is my name? How do I facilitate something? How do I write a document?" It was hard. I had a child with health issues when he was small so the anxiety was coming on top of that also.

When I looked around me, I was like, "I cannot be the only woman living this, it's not possible." I would ask, and I realized that there were so many of us. I started creating communities, one community in particular, around women going back to work and realized, "Oh, my God." That triggering event of motherhood has so many women asking themselves about the next steps.

What am I doing on the other side of motherhood? I cannot go back to the corporate world, I cannot go back to that work, I cannot do that toxic. My life needs to have meaning. All these things come out, but then there's also time, you need to go back to work, you need to get a revenue. All of these things are happening at the same time and they create deep sense of just, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what to do. And loneliness. Am I the only one feeling this?

Karen Wilson: We don't talk about it enough. That's it. I went back to work and I remember, I had my son, he's going on 13 now. When I got back to work, after nine months, my boss would ask me questions and, instead of having the answer right away, I'd have to say, "I don't know, I don't remember." I can't tell you how frustrating it was that I suddenly had lost this ability to retain all this knowledge that I had previously. I don't know that I ever completely got over that but it was so weird because I was like, "I used to be so on the ball and now I'm not."

Bibigi Haile: It's interesting. I'm going to tell you this, there's nothing scientific about it. I don't know if it's true or not but I remember reading something that made me feel so good at the time. It said, "The reason why we lose our memory is because we hyper-focus on keeping these little things alive and all the other information is useless." [laughs] We forget because we're hyper-focusing on this.

I remember thinking at the time, "That's true. I don't forget anything about my son, but I forget everything about everything else." I don't know how scientific that is but I held on to that idea with a desperate latch. I was like, "That's what it is." I'm not losing my mind. I'm just focusing on my child.

Karen Wilson: It seems very logical to me because I don't know what happened but that makes total sense. It makes total sense.

Bibigi Haile: The other thing that happened and I'm in it right now because I'm doing a lot of work on imposter syndrome. There's a woman, she's called, where's my book? Clare Josa. I think she pronounces it. She talks about how imposter syndrome actually triggers our fight or flight syndrome. What that does is it takes away blood from the non-essential functions of your body so that you can run away from that tiger, right?

Think about it. What it does is when you are in a meeting room and you're asked a question that triggers that fear, it takes blood and functions away from the cognitive spaces. That's the moments when you cannot answer that question you've been asked because you have been triggered in your fear. Then you think, "Oh, my God, I'm such an idiot." That adds to the feeling of fear and anxiety, and so you have even less access to your brain. All of this is like a really potent cocktail of I'm just going to go in my office and hide right now.

Karen Wilson: Wow, that's true. It's a vicious cycle that we get into. I first became aware of you on a call a few months ago and everyone was raving about this session that you had done about imposter syndrome. I missed it, unfortunately. Although I've got a little bit of exposure. On your website, you've got this tagline that says, "Own your story, take your place, step into your power," which is such a powerful statement. When I read it, I get this strong visual, you can picture yourself standing up and telling your story. The work you do is so important because I don't know any women who aren't dealing with imposter syndrome on some level. What are some of the things that you see happening with your clients once they work with you? What are some of their stories and the impact that it has to combat this issue of mindset and fears?

Bibigi Haile: There's one story that comes up. I love her. She's so awesome. She reached out to me because she wanted to go into her first leadership role. When we were talking about starting to work together, it took maybe two weeks to come to a conclusion and in those two weeks, she was offered the job. We'll call her Susan, let's say, Susan's her name.

She’s offered the job. I said, "Well, Susan, why would we work together, you're able to do this yourself?" She said to me, "I refused it." I said, "What do you mean you refused it?" She said, "I freaked out and I told my boss I couldn't do it." We agreed that part of the work that we were doing together is about getting her to a space where she owns it and she's comfortable.

She applied for the job. She did apply for the job, internally. A lot of the work that we did at the beginning was in getting her to that interview. This is a woman who had a website before we started working together and I remember going on her website and not understanding what it was about. It was very dark, I didn't understand what it is that she was doing. When she went for the interview, she sent me the PowerPoint presentation she had planned to give on that day for her interview. It was so beautiful. It was so colorful and bold and she was using swear words.

At the end of her presentation, there was a swear word. I was like, "How's your organizational culture with this?" She's like, "No problem." I was looking, I was contrasting the two and I was just so wowed by what she had done and the courage that she had had to take herself from a space where she wasn't putting herself out there to space where she was and the important thing here, Karen, is that the fear doesn't go away for none of us.

The number of times I'm sitting in front of my phone with a post on LinkedIn, I'm like, "Do it, just do it." The fear doesn't go away, but what happens is you can talk yourself off that ledge, you can see yourself, you can be compassionate. You can be, okay, know what you’re living but I'm planning on doing this anyway, let's talk about it after I'm done. That's the conversation you're having with yourself.

She applied for the job, she got the job. Literally, I look at her, we still have some coaching sessions. We're towards the end of our coaching engagements. I look at her and she's just radiating. I know that she feels the same things she did before the anxiety, the fear and she's very vocal about it, but the courage is just spectacular. That's what makes all of this worth it.

Karen Wilson: Yes, absolutely. You've shared a couple of pictures, and I might have to use some of them in the blog posts for this that are so bold and a little sassy. I want to dig into that a little bit because I think that those were challenging photoshoots for you, based on some of the things that you've said. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Bibigi Haile: They were. It's such an interesting line of questioning. Pictures are very hard for me. I have one eye that's smaller than the other. When I speak to people in real life, which we don't do anymore, but when I speak to people in real life, because the face is active, you can't necessarily see it. Pictures make it so that you can see it very strongly. I'm 44 years old today, so there is a difference that's stronger than when I was younger, so I'm very, very self-conscious about my eye.

I hate pictures, all that to say that I hate pictures. I took these pictures with a woman called Anaicart. She's the one who did the setup. She's like, "Let's try this, let's try that." That picture that she took, which became for me my brand picture, what it represents for me is a woman that I have access to. She is not me all of the time, she is me some of the times. When I'm looking at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, "Damn girl." It doesn't happen every day and it doesn't happen all the time, but I do have access to it.

There are times like this morning, I was tired and I was just like, "Huh." I had a coaching call and I looked like nothing. Before our call, I went and I said, "I'm going to do something about my face." I'm able to touch the feeling comfortable with what I see and I'm able to tap into confidence. It's so important for me because I don't believe that self-confidence is a permanent state.

I think that it's super destructive for people, in general, women in particular, the narrative that there are self-confident people, it's not true. There are people who do confident things, either very often, or once in a while. That's what that picture represents for me, it's a confident moment that I can tap into, but I'm allowed to not feel confident. I'm allowed to let my imposter syndrome run wild. All of that is a spectrum of who we are and it's okay.

Karen Wilson: That's an empowering idea, just to look at it as a situational thing. Sometimes you're going to feel confident and others, you're going to feel like you're a fake.

Bibigi Haile: Yes, 100%. The thing is you know that's going to happen. I think what's empowering in this is the knowledge. You know that is going to happen. A lot of my work focuses on self-awareness, and self-awareness around a number of things.

One of them being your triggers because if you go into a meeting room, and you have a boss that interrupts and when he interrupts, it creates something in you, and then it brings you to a space where you don't fully show up, or you stop talking, or you feel like an idiot, you will know that in your body before you know it in your mind. Your shoulders will tense up or your cheeks will get red. In my case, no, but you will feel it before you say or do anything.

The self-awareness is around feeling that trigger and having enough time to walk yourself away from the reaction. My coach and I talk about the gap between the trigger and the reaction. It is in that gap that you change yourself or you support yourself. I think that that's where the empowerment comes from. The empowerment doesn't come from becoming another person. The empowerment comes from supporting the person that you are with different actions, different mechanisms, and letting yourself be because if you don't let yourself be, when you come back to the table, you'll come back unhappy because you don't accept that person, you just show up as somebody else.

Karen Wilson: That's why people need to work with you because you help them to know what to do between the trigger and in that gap and knowing how to support themselves because you don't necessarily know instinctively how to do that, especially with some of the conditioning that we've had throughout our whole lives.

Bibigi Haile: The conditioning is intense, it really is. I don't know and I've wondered a lot, Karen, why this was so important for me. I am what you might call a third-culture kid. My parents traveled, and so I've lived in a lot of different spaces. I have a mother who believed every harebrained idea that I would come up with. Every time I would have a new idea she's like, "Yes, let's do it." I shared this on a conversation I had recently about the way that my mother would always believe.

I think it created something in me where my focus is less external. I trust my harebrained ideas, I'm interested in them. It did come from conditioning. There are a lot of things that make me fragile, but this particular area, she gave me something that I'll always be grateful for, which is I'm able to be interested in my ideas and believe them, and so I can follow them until I'm like, "No, this doesn't work," and then move on to something else. Conditioning is super important.

We do tell people that they should be doing something else, that they do not have the brain for this, that it's not their type. I never used the word, you are, with my son as a descriptor. I check myself to not say, "You're such an intelligent child. You are such a this." Even when it's positive stuff because I don't want to anchor identity type stuff that comes from me. I want him to figure his stuff out and to tell me who he is, rather than to take what I'm saying as a given.

Karen Wilson: I think that that's a tactic that many parents who are practicing this more conscious parenting are taking. I don't know if I've completely successfully eliminated that—it's hard.

Bibigi Haile: It's very hard.

Karen Wilson: I completely understand where you're coming from because watching them discover themselves and then tell you who they are is such a fascinating process.

Bibigi Haile: It's amazing.

Karen Wilson: It really, really is. Now, a recent harebrained idea, I don't know how recent it is, I just know about it because it's come to the public recently, is this initiative that you've started. Tell us about this amazing, new offering that you have.

Bibigi Haile: The 1000WOMEN1000VOICES?

Karen Wilson: That's the one.

Bibigi Haile: It was hilarious. This is what was funny about it, I decided to get 1,000 women on LinkedIn in one month. People around me were like, "Okay. Maybe do you want to rethink the duration?" I was like, "No, we can do it."

I'm so grateful, Karen, that I wasn't able to get 1,000 women in one month, my first cohort had 33 women and my strength is not operational stuff.

My strength is not managing details. Just the modules, and the timing, and the booking, and the questions that I was getting, I was like, "If I had 1,000 women asking me these questions, I would have died."

I had 33 because the universe was like, "We understand your 1,000 women request, but that's not for you right now, so no." I got 33 and the second cohort is starting next week. Thank you for asking me about this because I tell you it's so important. People might think that it's about getting women on LinkedIn.

That's how I'm talking about it. But after one cohort, it has confirmed to me that it has nothing to do with LinkedIn because, in order to write your profile, the type of questions you have to ask yourself, about who you are, about how you want to show up, about the time that you need to do this, it's an intense, intense process.

It's so intense that I have a spectrum. I have women who are like, "This is transactional for me, I can do it and there's not a lot." There are women for whom it is a deeply emotional and triggering process and who need to take more time. I've made it into, once you are a participant, you have lifetime access because you cannot-- I'll talk to you about how the program is structured. Four weeks is not enough. Four weeks is allowing us to get into the groove, but then after that, if they want to come back and do modules, Q&As, whatever, they have access.

Here's the structure. It's four weeks of group coaching. The reason for that is that the community experience and seeing that other women are living the same thing that you are living, is transformational. I give a training. I start with a training around what is personal branding and what is LinkedIn, so more of the technical stuff. It's high level. Every week, we have a different module. We have a module on building your profile, a module on getting new contacts, a module on content, and a module on engagements. All the way through that, we're on a Facebook community page, which is hilarious because we're doing LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is not good about groups.

Karen Wilson: That's true.

Bibigi Haile: It's not good. It's not a fun place to be in groups, but Facebook is. We're on Facebook. I do a live Q&A every week to answer the questions. It's extremely active. It's hilarious. There's so much going on in that group. I have made an edict that we must talk in GIFs. It's also very silly because a lot of women are talking in GIFs.

Karen Wilson: Oh, that's fantastic.

Bibigi Haile: It's a nice, safe place to be, women put their profile, they're commented by other women, we've all added each other on LinkedIn. It's just vibrant. I'm watching them. I stalk them on LinkedIn, and I'm like, "Go, yes, you're doing it. This is amazing." The second cohort is starting-- What's today? We're talking on Tuesday? It's starting this Thursday. I have a francophone cohort. Not a cohort, actually, it's one woman out of France, and I'm like, "I need to get other French women so that I can have a French group for her," but she absolutely wants to do it.

Karen Wilson: That's great.

Bibigi Haile: Yes, and it's women from all over. I have women in the US. I have one in the UK. I had women from Nairobi who were asking about it, which is great because I grew up in Nairobi. That's the initiative.

Karen Wilson: Oh, that's awesome. I just love this idea. Probably why it resonates with me so much is because I do the same thing for businesses, because you can't market yourself without doing all of that foundational work—not effectively. I understand the importance of what you're doing, of all that deep thinking, and really understanding yourself and what you want to do is so critical to being successful in this space. It absolutely transcends LinkedIn. LinkedIn is just one channel that you can use that knowledge to further your career and own your voice.

Bibigi Haile: Yes, 100%. It's funny that you say that because I do tell the women, LinkedIn-- I love LinkedIn because it allows me to write, and I like to write, but the truth is, what we're learning, you can do on a website, on a blog, on Instagram, on Twitter. You choose your platform or a podcast, but what's important is the structure, what's important is thinking about who you are and getting rid of the noise, the shoulds, the coulds, what people are going to think. It's such a trigger what people are going to think, and then coming out with your own voice, whatever that looks like.

Karen Wilson: It seems to me because you started in change management, and you've shifted into owning yourself and what you really want to do with the work you're doing in empowering women. I don't want to call you a career and brand management coach.

Even though it's a title people can relate to, it doesn't seem to quite fit. I get why you resisted it. I understand.

Bibigi Haile: You have just given you the idea, I am going to ask people on LinkedIn what I should call myself. I'll be like, "Look, I can't do this anymore. What am I? You tell me."

Karen Wilson: That's a good idea, crowdsource it. What I'm wondering is, you're taking women through this process. How did you figure out that what you were doing didn't align?

Bibigi Haile: I think there were a number of things over the years, there really were, but the catalyst for me was March 13th, 2020 when they put us in lockdown. That's when I thought about what I wanted to do.

Actually, it's not even when I thought about it. I looked for my energy in spaces that were women's community spaces, so SheEO, on my community, that's called Reggies & Beauvoir. I facilitated a lot of calls in SheEO, and it was feeding me. I just couldn't go back to putting the energy into looking for corporate business and consulting.

I have a client right now. I still have a client, a corporate client, but this is someone I've known for a really long time. We know each other, and I know this project. It's not a hard project. I'm working with this person that I really like, and I'm helping him out in this project, and that's it. I just didn't want to work in corporate anymore. I wanted to work with women.

Now, I'm looking to go back into corporate but to do work with women. It's not about that. I used to do models, organizational models and structures and change plans, and it was so removed. Change is about people, but the change manager doesn't have access to people as much as we would want to. We're talking to our executive sponsor, and we're building these documents, but we're not with people. When I work with women, it's just transformational. It's something that matters for them, for their life. They're not the same. And then they can be—I hate to use this word, Karen, it's probably not a good word—but they can be free to be who they want and just show up in the way that they choose in their own terms. It's just important, I think.

Karen Wilson: I think that freedom because, with the change management project, you're working with an organization. You might take components and use them again in another project, in another organization, but it's this very specific to this organization, its needs. With an individual who needs to overcome these challenges in how they think and react to situations, they can take that anywhere they go.

Bibigi Haile: 100%.

Karen Wilson: When you look at how that can impact their life and the world around them, boy, that's exciting, what an inspiring bit of work to do as opposed to-- Change management is a great field, and there's a lot of great work being done there. I can see why you got motivated to work with individual women, for sure.

Bibigi Haile: Change management is a wonderful field. It's super important. For me, it was a zone of excellence kind of thing. I was good at my work, I really was. I just didn't live and breathe it. It was very much of an intellectual exercise. This work, I live and breathe. This work, interestingly enough, gives me zero impostor syndrome. I'm actually observing myself because I find it fascinating. There is such an alignment that I'm not triggered and I'm not in a state of, "Oh, my God, someone's going to find out that I have no idea what I'm doing."

Karen Wilson: That's an interesting point because I know that you are a fan of some similar books that I am a fan of. You mentioned the zone of genius or excellence and I wonder how often impostor syndrome ever shows up when people are working in their zone of genius?

Bibigi Haile: That's why I'm observing, Karen. I don't have enough data to see about this, but I'm looking at myself, and I'm surprised by the difference. This just feels like, "Yes, I know what I'm doing." You know what's interesting? I know what I'm doing, and I also know the spaces around there, where I'm not necessarily the right person, that maybe this woman should be talking to somebody else. Maybe I should be partnering with somebody else to do this.

I read something recently-- I can't remember. Oh, yes, it's on a business group that I was on that says, "When you're in your lane, there is no traffic." That's really what this feels like because people will find their coach. It took me so long to find my coach. People will find their person. If I'm the right person for you, then we'll work together. If I'm not, maybe you'll spend some time with me to do one thing, and then you'll move on.

Some women did my LinkedIn program, but there's some stuff, personal deep stuff that they want to work with. I might not be the right person for them, but there are a lot of other women in the group that they can reach out to, and say, "Hey, I know you do this type of work. Can I work with you?" It's a space that feels free. Again, I don't know what the other word is, but that's what it feels like.

Karen Wilson: I think there's a lot of empowerment in freedom. Just that ability to understand yourself better and know what you want out of life. Understand your inherent purpose is freeing because-- I talk with business owners all the time, who they either worry about the competition or they're worrying about getting clients in, and very few are inherently good at saying, "Well, if I'm not the right person for someone to work with, they can go to someone else, it's all good," because that feels like they're leaving money on the table, or they're losing something, when in fact, it could be leaving that space open for the right person to come along.

Bibigi Haile: 100%.

Karen Wilson: It's a hard thing to get over, and it's what's one of the things that when I'm talking to clients, we're trying to narrow down the target audience and who do you really want to work with? You've done a lot of that work yourself and figuring out, you didn't want to work with corporate in the same way that you used to. You want to work with women and help them understand what they really want to do, what advancement in their career looks like. Maybe it's a sideways move and not an upward move.

I think that there's a lot of power in freedom and that knowledge that you have of yourself and your intentions and your desires behind that freedom is so important. You don't feel free if you don't know.

Bibigi Haile: Exactly. Also, it doesn't resonate with anybody. People know inherently. It's so interesting that you brought up this ideal client thing. I have a friend of mine, we have this conversation a lot. She's an authentic branding coach. When you talk about the person that's your ideal client or that you want to work with, you just know. It's not a marketing plan exercise that's been moved. It's you just to know. For me, it's that she's me literally. I can be a guinea pig, and I can take what I'm doing in my life, and say, "Hey, this has worked for me. These books have worked for me. This has been my process. I think it might be useful for you."

I read Tim Ferriss a long time ago when he wrote Tribe of Mentors. He also talks about how he's a human guinea pig, and I always was fascinated by that notion. When I started doing this work, I realized that literally, that's what I was doing. I was a guinea pig. I was trying out things. The things that worked, I'd be like, "Hey, you might want to try this." I know that woman because she's me.

Karen Wilson: I feel like that's a very common thing with business owners, especially in the early years, but for most of us, it never goes away because you're always looking to shift or make things better, whatever makes sense in your business. We're all guinea pigs. It's an adventure as life.

Bibigi Haile: It is.

Karen Wilson: Bibigi, it's been such a pleasure having you on. Can you tell everyone how they can find you and learn more about your work and 1000Women1000Voices offering?

Bibigi Haile: Yes, absolutely. I hang out on LinkedIn a bit more than I should.

[laughter]

Bibigi Haile: You can find me at Bibigi, B-I-B-I-G-I, Haile, H-A-I-L-E on LinkedIn. I have profiles on all the social media platforms, but I don't do anything there. My website is speakeasy.work. I'm actually launching-- I love 1000WOMEN1000VOICES in terms of a format so much that I'm slowly moving away from individual coaching to creating just group coachings for four weeks. In January, I'm launching one on impostor syndrome and one in self-awareness.

Karen Wilson: Oh, that's fantastic.

Bibigi Haile: Those are the two that we're going to be working on for four weeks in January, and people can reach out. I love, love, love when people reach out, so don't hesitate. I love talking to you. This was so much fun.

Karen Wilson: Oh, yes. I love this, too. I've been wanting to have you on. I will make sure links to everything gets into the show notes. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today.

Bibigi Haile: Thank you, Karen. Talk to you soon.