Boss Your Business - The Podcast

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:01]:
Do you ever find yourself wondering if you've become too quiet, too small or just too much like everybody else needs you in corporate culture or entrepreneurship? Today, we’re diving into the struggle many women face balancing authenticity with professional success. The first challenge is diminishing one's own uniqueness to fit a mold. Then, there's maintaining personal authenticity while advancing in a restrictive environment. And, finally, identifying whether workplace discomfort is a temporary season or a chronic pattern. Here to shed light on these challenges is Doris Jackson-Shazier, a seasoned leader and advocate for authentic living in and out of the boardroom. Doris has navigated corporate trials and emerged with a clearer understanding of balancing high accountability with morale. She's here to share her journey from corporate director to holistic leadership coach.In this episode, we'll explore her transformational story, examine practical strategies for creating spaces that nurture both accountability and morale, and discuss actionable steps you can take to find your voice. Expect to leave inspired and equipped to reclaim all of you and the real you.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:26]:
Oh, my God, ladies, I got Doris here today, and we've already been chatting in the green room about kids and life and technology and all the things. So stay tuned as we will be having a blast today. I already can tell you that. Now Doris my audience already knows. My favorite question to throw you right into the deep end of all the things is, how did you get here?

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:55]:
How did little Doris became amazing. Freaking awesome. Running, ruling life and business Doris. And did she have an idea you'll ever be and have a life like you have right now? Or did it start out completely different? Like. Like I'm just going to be an employee? I don't know.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:02:20]:
So I would tell you, little Doris had big dreams even back then. The way I envisioned myself was some type of advocate. Like, I wanted to be an attorney when I was younger. Like, I knew I would be the person in the room that was willing or courageous enough to speak up for others. And so I always saw it in the framework of an attorney. Right. Because that's what you see on tv. And so, as I've gotten older and wiser and more experienced in having my work and experience in leadership, it's interesting that I envisioned myself a certain way, and I was very close to it.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:03:02]:
So, no, I'm not in front of the courtrooms, but I have the opportunity to be in front of rooms and on stages and help leaders. And so I still am that advocate for the people. I am sometimes the loudest voice in the room. I still have the opportunity to be. Be courageous. But I would tell you the journey in which I got here was probably nowhere near the way I imagined it. I think I imagined it a little bit more Hollywood fairy tale ish. And it's been more like Hollywood, like real housewives ish.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:40]:
Like, really, I was reading for the Real Housewives drama. I'm like, I have a feeling that she's going here.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:03:45]:
Yeah yeah, it's been more of a drama vibe getting here.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:48]:
I have a question for you and anybody listening. You know, I have a little bit information about my guests before they come on, but we never know where the conversation gets us. And it is funny how my podcast episodes always match what's going on in my life. So listening to you, it's like the advocate that is still the advocate. And I've been realizing something similar about me, where I was always the one in school standing up for the people, getting bullied or fighting the teacher. That was just a pain in the ass.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:04:23]:
Yep.

Yvonne Heimann [00:04:24]:
Now, my question to you is, was there ever a time frame in between little Doris and Dorisnow? Where you lost that fight where you potentially gave in to other people telling you, you're too loud, you are too much, or what the fuck ever. I'm curious, did you have that timeframe, too?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:04:52]:
I think I had that moment a couple of times especially. I worked in corporate America for the last 20 years, and as a young african american woman, there were people who legitimately were advocates, were sponsors, were people allies for me that would tell me the things that could possibly hold me back with good intention. So they challenged almost my authenticity in order to get into rooms. So I found myself not wearing my hair a certain way, not speaking a certain way, but I shrunk in a lot of ways in order to find success. I practiced all these behaviors to assimilate to be a certain way so that I could be successful. And to be honest with you, they worked. Those ways work. But it chipped away at me a little and a little and a little.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:05:40]:
And then I came to a place where I realized that that's not the price that I want to pay. I don't want to be at tables that want a fraction of me, or they want a representative, but they don't want who I am authentically. And so I stopped playing a lot of games. And as I stopped playing those games, certain rooms that I was in became a little bit more uncomfortable, or I realized that I don't even really want to be here. And so I exited corporate America as a director in a very large company making six figure salary things were pretty good on paper, but I did not feel like I was living my best life. They did not feel authentic to me. I was subjected to toxic working conditions, and I decided to choose me, my authenticity over those things. But, yeah, for a long time, I played a game to get where I needed to go.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:06:33]:
And in that, I had to shrink myself in certain ways.

Yvonne Heimann [00:06:36]:
Why do you think we do that? Because I realized that with me, you went through something similar. I'm sure a lot of us women do. Do you think it's just. It's just the old ways of things are us trying to fit in rather than change? Is it? Do you have any guess why we do that? Or is it just wanting to belong? I don't know.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:07:07]:
Well, I think it's a couple of things. I do think it's a sense of belonging, but I think that some of it is almost institutionalized. Like, it's the way that the world is around us and we find a way to survive. Like, we find a way to thrive and survive in the environment that we're given the great thing about the environment is, I mean, there's still battles that we have to fight, but it's evolving. And so it's becoming a little bit more acceptable to challenge that status quo or there are a lot more runways. Before, you only had the college track or this track or that track. And now, you know, with entrepreneurship, now you can kind of create your own lane and find your own tribe a little bit easier. So I think that we did what we had to do because of the circumstances that we were in.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:07:55]:
But slowly but surely, we are evolving the way that things are done as more opportunities are opening up.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:00]:
Yeah, I'm. I'm seeing similar where it's like a lot of women are showing up more in their power. They're more comfortable speaking out. They're more allowing themselves to advocate for the people and the situations and the causes we do want to advocate for and think. I think we are finally getting to a point where it balances out what I think often happens with human. And it doesn't matter what. What situation it is and what topic it is. We seem to initially go into extremes, extreme one way, then we go extreme the other way to fight how it was.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:48]:
And then we finally come into this balance. And I think for women in any which shape or form, if it's how we show up, if we. How we do business, whatever it is, I think we are finally coming into somewhat of a balance where it's not all male dominated, where it's not all full feminism to some point. A little bit extreme in the past, maybe some of the good guys got beat up really good and just coming back into that level and. And it's really fun to see. Now, you were talking about building our own lanes, building our own communities, really building what we didn't have in the past and paving that way. What does that look like for you now, now that you are out of corporate? You left that six figure job behind. What does that path now look like for you?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:09:49]:
So the path's quite interesting, but I would tell you it's probably the happiest that I've been in a long time. I'm in full fledged creative mode and having the autonomy to make a lot of the decisions that I want to make. You know, just that autonomy is, I think, the optimal feeling, but what it allows me to do, really, is to help others. So it's like I'm on a mission to help with a couple of things. One of the things you talked about is that balance. And I really focus on teaching women, mainly women but leaders in general, how do you create spaces that have high accountability and high morale, whether you're at work or at home, where you set the right expectations, where people understand what the boundaries are, what the expectations are, what the goals are. But you have great relationships with them. And through my experience, I found that people struggle with it.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:10:38]:
They either can get really good relationships or they know how to set really good boundaries and expectations and can't balance having both. So what it looks like for me right now is I'm able to do that in my life, but I'm also able to teach others. How do you create this high accountability and high morale at work and at home? I help women to reduce the dissonance they feel with having to be one person at work and then get to be another person at home. I struggled with that for a long time in my life, dissonance. And so I teach people how to use the same strategies in both places to find success, but also to reduce that dissonance we feel. So I used to give out, you know, individual development plans for my employees. Well, I do that for my children. They have individual development plans because it's important that I plan and go set for them, too. Now, that's a behavior that I don't have to turn on and off because I do it in both spaces.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:11:30]:
So I teach people how to do that, and so it's always fun.

Yvonne Heimann [00:11:35]:
I love that. And I would love to dig a little bit deeper. I have so many, so many things in my head right now. I'm like, I love this. I think one of the things specifically women often struggle with, when I hear accountability and setting goals and setting boundaries, I'm like, setting boundaries for us. I'm like, let's be honest, we haven't been brought up necessarily to set boundaries. So that's a lesson on its own. But I also have seen, and I also have seen not but, and I also have seen sometimes we end up in rooms where we get in trouble for setting boundaries, where suddenly we are called names.

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:28]:
We are a bitch. We are whatever it is for simply. Just setting boundaries,

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:12:33]:
Just for being assertive. Mm hmm.

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:36]:
And I think. I think there might be coming back around. When you talked about make a decision, reflect, were you maybe bitchy? Maybe I have a bitchy day happens. I can own that I am a bitch at days. Or is it maybe a room that you don't want to be in? How can my audience, especially my female audience, really navigate this in between of, okay, do I have a bitchy moment, or is it a room that I don't want to be in? Or is it maybe a limiting belief of who I'm talking with?

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:13]:
How can they do that?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:13:17]:
I mean, there's a couple of things I would first start with. Is it a. Is it a moment or is it a pattern? So is this something that you're experiencing as a one off, or is this something that is consistently revealing itself? So what are the common denominators? And I think that's the first thing you have to identify is, okay, is this a moment or is this a pattern? Have I been these circumstances happened before? Because then this may be indicative of who you are or what this space is, and it may be time to call a spade a spade? Yeah, a one off comment. Okay, that person might have been off, but if you're consistently made to feel a certain way, then it may be a toxic environment, you know? So that's the first thing I would evaluate is if it's a moment or versus if it's a pattern. And then once I can. Once you can really establish which lane sits in, then you know that you have to make some decisions. A moment maybe needs a one off address a pattern. Does that mean you need to have an exit strategy? Does that mean you need to start planning? I think another thing I would advise people to do is to really think about is whatever your current situation and your experience, does it align with your overall purpose or your overall goal or where you want to be? Because then that's when you know whether it's time to make a decision.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:14:37]:
Maybe where I am right now, it's not ideal, but this is a season, and I'm learning something or gaining something in this season that I know will help my overall purpose. So I spent 20 years in corporate, but, man, what I learned, I've led a team as large as 10,000 across five states locations. Nothing was lost having that experience because I'm able to take that and teach it somewhere else. And so, yeah, I can endure, or I've been there for this amount of time, but it added to my toolkit. Versus sitting in a space that is demoralizing you, that is not contributing to your overall purpose or doesn't make you better in some type of way. It's time to make a decision.

Yvonne Heimann [00:15:27]:
God, I freaking love that. To recoup for everybody, make the decision. Is it just a moment or is it a pattern? Yeah, potentially it could also just be a season you were in right now if it feeds into your final goal. And honestly, if it doesn't support your final goal. What are you doing there? It might just be some kind of an ego moment where it's like you're getting a secondary gain out of it. Cool. We learned the lesson. Move on and just take the lessons from what you had in that moment and apply it somewhere else.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:05]:
There is many ways you can take that. Did I kind of sum that up nicely?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:16:08]:
I love that. And here's the thing. We never lose. We only learn. Like, I've never talked, took an l. Like I haven't. Maybe to someone else looking in, they may have say, I lost. I didn't lose.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:16:20]:
I learned. So it's never a loss for me.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:25]:
And that has been, that has been a continuous conversation as of late. A little bit in my circles, where it happened more on the gym and working out and physical side of things with friends of mine, but it's the same lesson. You are not starting over from zero again. You are not starting over where you've been. You've learned in workout, you still have the knowledge, you still have the muscle mass that you were going to build up again. You are never starting out again where you were before this. So even if you have a season that you might not like, even if you have a season that smacks you over the head, good. It's only a season.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:05]:
The only constant in life is that there is no constant as long as you take your stuff with you. Yeah, guys, really, there is no loss. You're not. We are never losing. Because honestly, anybody on my podcast and listening to my podcast, we all are doing the work. So we are never losing. Now tell me, Doris today, how are you bossing your business? How are you doing all the things you're doing?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:17:40]:
Well, I mean, first of all, I'm doing a lot of different things, which I'm excited about. That's the one part I like about bossing my business is that I get to choose what I do every day. And one of the things that I'm really doing is I'm focused on leadership inside out. So I'm continuously developing myself as I am developing others. I am a coach with a coach, I believe that we can't pour from empty cups. Like, I can't give people what I don't have. And so what I love about how I boss my business is that I, number one, pour into my own cup first.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:18:17]:
I, number two, get to put my family calendar before my work calendar. And so I'm able to be there for my children's activities and be able to prioritize those things that happen in my family first and then schedule all of my trips and my planning and my coaching around their calendar. So I think that's the coolest way that I boss my business, is that I get to put my family calendar first. And I think a lot of people don't have the opportunity to do that.

Yvonne Heimann [00:18:40]:
Amen to that. But we are all working on getting there. If you are not there yet, which also requires a lot of, as you already mentioned, coaching, being coached, mindset, work. And I know life has. Life has you on a little bit of a leash right now. Life happens as much as we plan, as much as we set things up, life just sometimes happens to us. So how do you boss your mindset? What do you do when you get in those moments of life just happens? How do you help yourself? What have you learned? What have you done to make those moments easier and come out the other way, the other side?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:19:35]:
One of the things that I've learned, no, one of the things that I've learned is to reframe silence. I think sometimes people are afraid of silence. Like quietness, like stillness, like it allows you to think too much is. And when I say people, I was people at one point. Like, I think I actively stay busy all the time because if I got too quiet, I would be left with my thoughts. And so one of the things that I've learned to do, and I would challenge others to do is how do you master silence and quietness? How do you stay present? How do you reaffirm yourself? How do you train your inner voice? Because I had to do some retraining of my inner voice. Used to talk to me crazy. You hear me, like, would say all type of things to myself.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:20:20]:
And what I've learned in this season is how to train my inner voice, how to reframe my thoughts, how, you know, reminding myself that I don't lose. I learn what's the lesson in my experiences. But I think that I've gotten really good at mastering stillness and silence. And so when everyone is out of the home and I'm here and it's quiet, it doesn't feel eerie. It's like I'm in an attitude of. In a mindset of gratitude.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:50]:
Girl, I feel you so much with that silence. Because silence can be so freaking loud.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:20:53]:
Yes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:58]:
And it's like suddenly you hear all of the 10,000 voices in your head and you're bouncing. Oh, yeah, I've been there. I'm like, I'm still on the. On that journey. I've definitely become way more comfortable with silence to a point where I'm not leaving the house. So there is the pendulum again. Right? Okay. Now we actually need to schedule some time out of the house once a week, but.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:25]:
Oh, my God. Yeah, I hear you on that. On that silence where we are just busy. To be busy, to potentially not feel, to potentially not hear.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:21:35]:
But I think getting some mastery of it and getting the value out of it, like, okay, I'm allowing my body to decompress right now. I'm allowing myself to rest, and there's value in that. I think we put so much value on being productive that we don't put enough focus on rest and what it can do for us. And so, you know, that's one of the ways that I kind of boss myself up. I've mastered silence. I make sure that I am resting myself. And again, I'm training my retraining, my inner voice, like, the things that I say to myself. I feel like there's enough people in this world that will call out everything that's wrong with you.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:22:15]:
You don't have to be one of them.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:17]:
Oh, my God. Yes. I'm like, why do we say those things to us? We would never say them to anybody else.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:22:23]:
No, but we would, like, bash our own. I'm like, you know what? There's enough people that can say what I'm bad at. I'm not gonna be one of them. So, you know, I'm a strength finder, and so I'm consistently encouraging myself so that I can. I'm in a better position to encourage others.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:39]:
Good. Yeah. One of the things I started doing, because I've been catching that voice a lot lately, too, is spending five minutes looking at myself in the mirror. Actually, I have a full length mirror, and I just sit on the floor and literally look at. Look myself in the eye. And there comes a moment where it's like, the bitchy voice of, you are just insane. Why are you looking at yourself? Why are you telling yourself your love just suddenly shuts up at some point, and there is just appreciation left. That's one of the practices that has helped me, because I'm, like, reframing that. That stupid bitch in my head sometimes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:18]:
I'm like, seriously, if I would say that out loud to somebody else, they would punch me in the face. Why am I doing this?

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:23:25]:
Yes, you don't want to hear those things in your own voice. And I think having a daughter. My daughter is 20, and so she's almost like the mirror, and so talking to her. And when I see her say things, and I'm just like, she got there for me like that. That's what I do. She's doing. And so sometimes they reflect those things in us and they help us to see ourselves a little bit better, too.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:50]:
And you put a lot of those motherhood lessons learned into a book. Tell me about it.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:23:55]:
Oh, so that's raising justice. The title is twofold. So my first child, her name is justice. So literally, it's raising justice. But also raising justice is really my approach, or I guess, my approach to parenting in a way that you weren't parented. And so in the book, I capture all these lessons that I learned through parenting her. But really what you get to see is the 19 year old confused first generation college student who raises a 19 year old college graduate. My journey along the way, and it was the story that almost didn't happen because I was just like, there's no way I can go through with this pregnancy, but I went through with it.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:24:44]:
And you get to hear the journeys and the lessons and how, you know, while I was raising her, God was really raising me and how I was learning to be a woman and climbing the corporate ladder at the same time. So it's an awesome book. I'm biased, but it's an awesome book. But it really, really gets to the feels of what is it like to parent in a way that you weren't parented. And I think a lot of us have. We don't want to be the parents that we had. And so how do we, you know, catch ourselves or suspend judgment or not react in the way that our parents reacted so that we can have different relationships with our kids. And so I'm really excited about the book and really our journey.

Yvonne Heimann [00:25:23]:
I love that. I love. I love that journey of leaving this world a better place, breaking the cycle, not just doing something, because it's always been done that way. So I love that. And as always, you're gonna find those links, all of the book and all the things right in the description. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was eye opening, a blast and amazing. As always, thank you so much.

Doris Jackson-Shazier [00:25:54]:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.