Blake Schofield 0:05
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Bridge to Fulfillment. I’m really excited to have a guest expert with me today, Nicole Kalil, and she’s really going to be talking about one of my favorite topics. And one that I know is a favorite fan favorite for those of you guys out there. So we’re going to be talking about confidence, and all the things surrounding that to really help you be able to level up in your life. So with that said, welcome the call. I’m so excited to have you here.

Nicole Kalil 0:31
Thank you, Blake, so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here. And I think we share some similarities in our background, and I couldn’t be any more passionate about the idea of women finding fulfilling careers. And knowing it doesn’t have to be as daunting or scary as is, maybe we think it is so and confidence certainly plays part.

Blake Schofield 0:55
Oh, 100% It does. Because if you don’t have confidence, and there are a lot of elements, I’m sure we’ll get into about how to build confidence. Like, truly from a deep place. I think there’s a lot of advice about how to build confidence is very surface level that doesn’t actually last. But if you can understand how to build confidence from a deep understanding and knowing of who you are, it’s a complete and utter game changer in your life for sure. So can you share this share with the audience a little bit about who you are, what your background is? And how did you come to have this passion around confidence in doing this work?

Nicole Kalil 1:28
Yeah. So like many of you listening I am many things to many people. So I am a partner to my husband, Jay. I’m a mom to my nine year old daughter JJ. I’m a business owner, a speaker, a podcast host. Soon to be published author, wine and cheese enthusiast a friend, a sister, a daughter, relative peloton rider and a hotel’s not right. So the list for many of us is endless. Um, what I think is maybe important for you to know is my background is as an executive at a fortune 100 Finance firm. And I spent the bulk of my 20s and 30s climbing that corporate ladder, chasing every promotion, you know, proving myself doing all the things and it wasn’t until my 40 year mark that I made the decision to step away from that very comfortable, very lucrative corporate role to start my own business. And now the work that I do is, I always say I’m obsessed with confidence. And and the work that I do is in speaking and writing and supporting women to connect back to the internal confidence that I believe we all have, but have become separated from through a variety of different reasons and times in our lives. What made this a passion of mine is a moment where I recognize that everyone around me thought I was super confident. And I knew I had none of it. Right? I’m standing in this, you know, massive conference room celebrating my promotion to Chief Development Officer, first woman and my company’s 160 year plus history to ever be in any role like that. And I felt like a fraud. I was excited for about three minutes until all the fear the doubt the worries, the concerns, the Will my new team respect me, why did I get this role. And I was ultimately living a lie. The way that it looked on the outside was not how it felt on the inside. I was lonely. I was spending all weekend waiting for a Monday morning to come. So I could have purpose again, I live to prove myself at an above average spending problem to go with my above average income. I you know, just had completely lost myself and all of the work. So it wasn’t just that I lacked confidence. It was this weird thing that everybody thought I was extremely confident and it was really a hard place to live. And when I recognize that I began to do the research, I began to read observe everything I could get my hands on as it related to confidence in an effort to build my own. And while I was doing it, I began to recognize that I’m not alone in this feeling and there were so many people around me so many women, that we’re being told to be confident that we’re you know, being told what it means to become confident. Like you said these are kind of quick fixes that don’t last and I it became a personal purpose or mission to share forward my learnings with other women.

Blake Schofield 4:52
I love that when you were telling your story I can I can relate to it in so many ways. And I ventured about a lot of women here can as well. What What hit me was the the words right? The masks we wear. Yeah. And I think as women, especially in higher powered corporate jobs, the reality is we put as it is, as I see it in the majority of corporate is we’re putting on armor every day. You know, I don’t know about you, but I was raised by a mom who, you know, by our own right, very successful, worked really hard, and really, from a very young age drilled into me what it looked like to be successful as a woman in corporate America. And a big part of it was always showing up professional, right, not being emotional, all of the things, all of these rules that I think women have been taught about what it takes to be successful, and a lot of things that I think ultimately stop us from being our authentic self stop us from being the the vulnerable leader that actually inspires people, stops us from having the confidence to stand up and speak for what we want. And so it was, to me really, really telling when you said that it just I think it brings it up a lot. You know, in your case, you really sort of work became everything that was your identity. And so outside of that there was nothing else I think I see women do this with their families where their family becomes everything in their identity until maybe their kids go off to college, and then they lose everything else. For me, right? It wasn’t work wasn’t everything, but it was where I placed my confidence. So I was very happy with you know, wanting to be more present wanted to have more time with my family. But for me when I came to a place when I realized I was consistently on this fulfillment roller coaster, right first, when you move into a job fulfilled, honeymoon and then wasn’t, and I had to make a transit transition, I would have said I was a very confident woman, everyone would have said that I was I didn’t feel unconfident. So I had a different angle than you. I didn’t feel unconfident until I went to make a significant change in my life. And then everything crumbled, because everything was built upon all of my competence was built upon my ability to drive huge business results as a merchant in retail. And that’s how I defined myself. That’s how I saw people define me. I went through the whole thing of what are people going to think I have this job where I get to travel overseas, and buy clothes and do all this stuff that looks so fun, and what’s left of me after. And so I just think this is such a beautiful thing, because I think this is a consistent journey, we may all experience it slightly differently, but you get to a place in your life, I was also 40, when I chose to change my career, you get to a place in your life when you say what I’m doing is not working anymore. And something then shatters. And I think competence is a huge piece that happens in the midst of that. So that’s awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Nicole Kalil 7:56
Yeah, you said a few things that I want to kind of double down on first, approximately, almost 70% of women will tell you that they are confident in one aspect of their life, but not in others. And I’m not suggesting that you’re not actually confident in that one aspect of your life. But real confidence is something that permeates all aspects of your life and doesn’t just live in one place. So there’s an opportunity for all of us or for most of us, in that. The other thing that you said is you talked about putting on the armor and the mask. And one of the things that I’ve learned that was really important for me to understand and reconcile is the armor is a very masculine armor. And it almost needs to be because we don’t have a lot of other available options. We learn how to be in business, mostly for men. 92% of business books are being written by men, most of the executives and leaders and mentors in corporations and businesses are men. And so even when we learn from women, your example with your mother, my guess is she mostly learned in a very masculine environment. And so she passed that down to you. And so what’s happening for all of us, regardless of gender, is there’s an over rotation towards the masculine and an under appreciation of the feminine and for those of us who you know, have feminine qualities like empathy, like listening like collaboration, those things are being undervalued, even though there are so needed in so many work environments, and what is happening is individually think it has us questioning ourselves. What’s wrong with me? Why am I so different? Why can’t I be more like bla bla bla and it has showing up in authentically or the very least over rotating on our more masculine qualities and undervaluing our more feminine ones, but we’re also um really limiting the power and our opportunity in most settings, so this is damaging for a lot of reasons it relates to our confidence

Blake Schofield 10:13
100%, I could not agree more, I’ve actually talked about this on several podcasts that I believe we need to bring more humanity back to corporate America. And to me part part of that is when I say to humanity, there’s the emotional side, it’s the people to people side, it’s, it’s recognizing that we’re not numbers, it’s understanding the nuances of the individual and what their, what their strengths are. And I see that all the time. And it’s it to me, it’s part of the work I’m doing individually, one on one with each one of my clients, because to your point, when you can understand and have confidence that permeates every part of your life, then you can show up in alignment, you can show up authentically as who you are. And what that does is it gives power to other people to do the same. And I think there are so few, there are so few examples of women who do that. And I remember through so much my corporate career, and I still even look even from an entrepreneurial standpoint. A lot of examples we’ve been shown of women who are highly, highly successful, are emotionally shut down. There. And and as a result of that, what I see is a lot of anger and bitterness, about what they’ve sacrificed or given up and believe that that’s the only way. And I think this is also why we have such an issue, why we have such a few percentage of women in C suite. Right? A because we’re overvaluing the masculine, but be because women are looking and saying I’m not willing to do that. I’m not willing to sacrifice all of these things. When I consistently say, right, we’re half of the workforce. If in fact, as women, we actually learned how to develop these skills, use our voice stand for what we want create change, we have enough people to do it. And clearly charts start to shift the dynamic of what’s happening inside corporations, what’s happening inside the workforce. And so I love hearing you say that, because it’s a huge part of my mission and passion to be that one of those women that says, hey, I run an extremely successful business, I run my business on four days a week and about 20 hours. Yeah, I have three kids, I have the ability to not work weekends, not work nights to spend Fridays with my kid out. This year alone, it’s kind of crazy. And travel, I will have gone to 10 events by the time that everything’s over and their events I’m getting to choose to go to to grow and personally learn and it’s not a stressor. For me, it’s a benefit, because I have the balance I need for my life. And so I just think there needs to be so many more examples and so many more stories about what’s possible for women, because historically there haven’t been and you’re right, we’ve been taught by men, in environments by men, and we have not understood how to use our voice, or how to create that change in a way that better balances things across the board so that we can start to shift the culture in a way that’s balanced, both male and female.

Nicole Kalil 13:03
Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t agree more we as women have so much power. But unfortunately, so many of us have bought into the lie, we bought into the Con and for a lot of us, it’s for preservation reasons, right, we felt like we needed to, in order to make it in order to achieve. But you’re right, I think one of the things that’s really problematic is so many people are looking at those women going God, I don’t want that life. I don’t want to sacrifice all of those things. And I and maybe even more, so I don’t want to be that way. Right? I don’t want to be that cold or that tough for that. And I try very hard to not have judgment for any women, you know, I’m imagining in a lot of cases, they felt that’s what they needed to do to get where they wanted to get. And a lot of cases that’s probably based in at least some truth. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And we do have a ton of power to change. And all the evidence and research supports that having more diverse leadership teams having more diverse C suite, having a greater opportunity for let’s call it work life balance, even though I don’t love that expression. It creates not only better environments, but more productive and profitable businesses.

Blake Schofield 14:25
100% all of that, to your point all of the data supports it. And I think your mind, listen, I was one of those women, early in my career believed that this was everything I had to do. And I think, to me, it’s not a judgement, but it is and I share it because I think it’s a misunderstanding. And it’s a huge part of why women are making themselves sick, why they’re carrying the level of stress that they are why they’re so unfulfilled and unhappy. Because at the end of the day, you get to a point, I think where you realize that the money isn’t the thing that’s going to make you happy. The title isn’t the thing that’s going to make you happy Be, and you have to start searching for what really matters. And I think the more we live in a land where we are doing things, because we feel like that’s the only way to be successful, but it’s not actually what we value or believe, the more sick, the more suffering, all of the more challenges we sort of end up creating in our lives.

Nicole Kalil 15:18
So I think we have the opportunity to redefine success for ourselves. And that might mean something entirely different to each one of us. For me, I think it was more about the come from in which I was doing everything I was doing everything I was doing to prove myself to other people, because I felt if I proved myself, if I hit a certain level of achievement, if I hit a certain level of income, then I would feel good, then I would feel good about myself, then I would be confident. And what ended up happening is, every time I hit achievements, or every time my income went up or whatever, I’d feel good temporarily, but then it was on to the next thing. And I became addicted and almost like a junkie for that validation for that achievement. For the result, I will say, you know, similar to you, I you know, work around 30 hours a week, I travel a ton, I take a lot of personal time, but I’m actually making significantly more than I was making at the executive level level. And I am very money motivated and not at all ashamed about that. I just had to redefine success on my own terms. And I had to think about, there’s not just one way to do this, you know, the culture I grew up in was first in last out great grind, who works the hardest, who has the most amount of meetings who you know, and it took me a while to relearn to unlearn and then relearn, how to create the success I really wanted without it having to be that way.

Blake Schofield 16:53
Yeah, 100%, I went through the exact same journey. And what you said, I think is super important, which is it’s not the only way, right, and if you are going through that cycle of constantly chasing, I’ll be happy when, and you’re achieving the things but you’re not fulfilled, I always talk about achievement does not create a fulfilling life. Right? They’re not the same thing. But when you are fulfilled, it becomes much easier to achieve. Right? This is what I consistently find, because everything’s aligned, and then you’re achieving it from a place instead of a place of lack. Because I think what you described as achieving from a place of lack, I’m not good enough, I’ll be good enough when I’ll prove myself to people. But when you are aligned and fulfilled, it’s coming from a place of wholeness. And now it’s about achieving the things because you enjoy the journey, because it’s things that are meaningful to you. So I love that.

Nicole Kalil 17:51
Well what you said jives completely with what I call the confidence con. The con is ultimately this message that we’ve been told over and over and over again, of this false formula. If x happens, then I’ll feel confident, right? So fill in x with whatever you want. If I get the compliments, then I’ll feel confident if I get the income, the achievement the perfectly behaved children, the certain number on a scale the certain size that I wear the validation from this person, then I’ll feel confident that formula will never work because your confidence isn’t out there, there isn’t something or someone holding on to it. For you. This isn’t some weird life game of Where’s Waldo. And you’re like trying to find who has your confidence, that formula that actually works is when I’m confident I have a higher probability of X. So when I’m confident I have a higher probability of achievement, when I’m confident I have a higher probability of taking care of myself and my help, when I’m confident I have a higher probability of getting getting validated, or the compliments. And what I want to be clear, because the title of my book is validation is for parking, and it’s a little snarky. And what I’m trying to say is, is all those things can still feel good. It’s great to achieve. It’s wonderful to get complimented. It’s great when somebody comes along and validates your work. But all those things should be icing on the confidence cake, not the cake itself. Confidence, like real true, deep, meaningful, lasting confidence is built internally. And then may, you know, show up in some external ways, but it’s not a chicken or an egg conversation. It’s not confusing, which comes first. You build it internally first. And then, you know, go from there.

Blake Schofield 19:45
Awesome. I love that. So with that said, I’d be interested to hear what would you share with our audience about how to build your confidence and what actually works?

Nicole Kalil 19:55
Yeah. So I’ve identified five confidence builders and I’ll give them to you quick But before I do, I want to be really clear about what confidence is and what it isn’t confidence. If you look at the etymology, the root of the word, it’s when you firmly and boldly trust yourself. The reason I think this is important is because we are getting mixed and false messages. If you know, if you succeed, then you’ll feel confident, if you feel good, then you’re confident, if you look good, then you’re confident, we have misused the word confidence so much we’ve become confused about it. So you can look physically attractive and feel confident, but they’re not mutually excuse. Exclusive. And confidence is when you trust yourself. Looking good as feeling attractive, you know, feeling desirable, feeling successful, whatever you want to. And I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just saying it’s not confidence. So the way we build confidence, because it’s it’s trusting ourselves formally and boldly, is the same way we build trust with anybody. So the simplest way to think about it as what is somebody do that has you trust them? What is it that you do that has people trust you, that’s a really good insight into how you build trust within yourself. But let me give you the five confidence builders and a few examples. Because I think these are universal. First, action builds confidence. We can’t think hope fingers and toes crossed, or pretend our way into confidence, we must act our way. So little risks built up over time, lead to big confidence, taking that big thing you want to do and breaking it down into action steps, one foot in front of the other action builds confidence. The second confidence builder is in this is the most surprising one failure. Failure builds confidence. And I use the word failure because it’s a big word, but you can replace it with making mistakes, getting messy, loss, fear, doubt, all the yucky feelings, these moments build confidence because it is much harder and therefore much more impactful to choose to trust yourself when things aren’t going according to plan, when you just made a mistake when you don’t have all the answers. And choosing to do it in those tough moments, builds it strongly, more strongly and in a more lasting way. Said another way, it’s really easy to trust ourselves when everything’s going according to plan. And we’re, you know, achieving and succeeding left and right. So, failure builds confidence. The third confidence builder is giving yourself grace on the journey. So this is how we talk to ourselves, the things we say to ourselves about ourselves, and then also understanding that it’s a journey, nobody arrives at confidence plants a flag, it’s like, I’m done. Right? It is a journey that we’re all on, nobody feels honored percent confident 100% of the time, which leads me to the fourth confidence builder, which is choosing confidence. I think so many of us think confidence is a feeling that we either have or we don’t like I woke up feeling confident today or I didn’t. Confidence is a choice. We’ve all heard the expression fake it to make it I’m not a big fan of that being an authentic doesn’t make sense to me as it relates to being confident. So the alternative approach is choose it until you become it. Choose confidence over and over choose to trust yourself over and over until the feeling catches up to you. And we are doing this far more often in our lives than we give ourselves credit for. If we just had a bad meeting and have to walk into another meeting, we often dust ourselves off and bring our best self. And in the next meeting, we had a really crappy day and we have to go pick up kids as an example, we tend to somehow figure out how to show up as our best selves. So choosing confidence as opposed to thinking it’s a feeling that arrives or doesn’t.

Nicole Kalil 24:05
And then finally, the fifth confidence builder is that internal build that we do, it’s building it from the inside out. And some examples here are keeping your commitments. And that is both the commitments you make to other people and the ones you make to yourself. Because when we don’t keep the commitments we make we chip away at the trust we have within ourselves. Things like communicating boundaries, standing up for ourselves, using our voice being our own hype person. The list goes on and on. There are so many things that we can do that will build that trust internally. And that is unequivocally the best way to start if you want to build trust with yourself which again is ultimately what confidence is all about.

Blake Schofield 24:57
100% So on the flip aside, Nicole, what do you think? Or what do you think? This is great. So what I hear is right, there’s five steps to start, I love those. It’s interesting, I look at it, everything I look through is through the lens of self knowledge, self awareness. Right. And I think there definitely can be some ties with what you’ve shared a lot of how I see, what I’ve experienced, personally, and how I help my clients really build confidence is self awareness. How can I really understand who I am? How can I really began to appreciate what’s unique about me? And how do I begin to shift the narrative about what I say? So, you know, and I think it’s a nice complement to your perspective and what you look at, because what I see consistently is most of us grew up with the things that are really unique or different about ourselves, and we want to change them. Like, right I was the girl always has been the girl in high school, who somebody would be having a tough time. And it would end up in a two or three hour conversation and this person’s worst time in their life and help them. I was the girl in college, my, my boyfriend at the time is now my husband. You know, he’d be out drinking at the bar, and I would end up at a table for three hours talking to one of his fraternity brothers. And you come over and say, Why are you having a good time with drinking with everyone, and I’m like, I’m having a great time. I was always the girl who right was there and would go deep and really get to know people and help them during challenging situations. But I wanted to be the funny girl. I wanted to be the one who was quippy and would show up and do all this fun stuff. And so for much of my life, I discounted the things about me that were really unique and special and enabled, that were my gifts. And so when you talk about how to build confidence, I think the steps that you’re giving are great pieces to put in there. They’re so important, because if you can’t trust yourself, and you can’t keep commitments to yourself, and you can’t take action, right, you can’t move forward from that. But I would also layer on, I think that there’s also an element to it, self trust that comes from beginning to really understand who you are, and value and appreciate it in the same way you would value and appreciate your best friend, or your mom or your husband. And I think there’s a real element there that when you put all of these things together creates this beautiful environment where you’re not seeking external validation, you’re not looking for other people to tell you what to do, you begin to just live life with ease. Because you know, you can handle whatever is going to come your way and you can make a decision. And if it doesn’t turn out the way that you expect you can do something else different.

Nicole Kalil 27:40
Yeah. Well, I really, like you’re hitting the nail on the head, the definition I use for confidence in my book is confidence is when you know who you are, own, who you’re not, and choose to embrace all of it. And so there is this element of exactly what you said. Confidence Begins With Self Awareness. It also begins with understanding what makes you different, unique, you know, what’s not meant for you. The example you shared is great. I had I mean think we all have a similar thing. I am a die hard introvert. Like total homebody total introvert and I spent and wasted so much time and energy trying to become extroverted, trying to network which I mean, literally makes me nauseous, the idea of it, and trying to show up as the bubbly life of the party, you know, so forth and so on. It took me a really long time to realize my superpower comes from my introversion. There are so many different meaningful things about that, that I was ignoring. Because I was so focused on trying to become something that I’m not something that is not meant for me. And really the challenge for all of us, especially if we are going to begin to trust ourselves is to embrace all of it. The knowing who we are and the owning who we’re not. So I mean, we are totally aligned and in sync there. And I spent three chapters of the book on that very thing.

Blake Schofield 29:16
I love it. So with that said, share with us a little bit about this book. And is it currently available?

Nicole Kalil 29:23
How could somebody find it if they want to learn more? Yeah, so it is currently available validation is for parking. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or, you know, go to my website, Nicole quill.com. It’s available in some bookstores, but mostly in the online space. And it covers the definition we just talked about. It covers the five confidence builders and much you know, deeper with stories and action items and the whole deal. And it also covers five key confidence derailleurs that I think are impacting women at the highest level very specifically. So Have all of the derailleurs and all the builders impact all people, but the subtitle of my book is how women can beat the confidence con. And because of what I said earlier, this learning of how to be a professional woman, a successful woman, a confident woman coming so much from the masculine lens, very much wanted to be, have this book be written by a woman, with women in mind, too, there could hopefully be, you know, a safe space to talk about the differences and the nuances.

Blake Schofield 30:33
I love that. Yeah, your definition was beautiful. And what I always love is I never know when I have guests on exactly how the conversations going to go, what we’re going to talk about, but I see the same pattern emerge over and over again, which is success leaves clues. Right at the end of the day, we find many of the same lessons, we might experience them differently, we might use different words or phrase theologies or approaches, but the universal truths are the universal truth. And I think that that has come up over and over again in our conversation today, which has been beautiful. So I really love that

Nicole Kalil 31:07
I love when that happens. When I’m talking to somebody, it’s just a reminder again, as an introverted person, small talk is really challenging for me, and like, you know, building relationships quickly is, so when somebody starts saying things, and I’m like, Ah, you know, the universe brought us together, there is no other explanation for us to be saying the same thing, maybe in slightly different ways, without ever having communicated or so I just love moments like this. Thank you, Blake for giving me one of these moments.

Blake Schofield 31:37
Absolutely. Thank you for coming. Yeah, to me, that’s the most fun part. I’m an extrovert. I love being the life of the party. And, to me, there’s nothing more fun than meeting somebody and finding that synergy. It’s like, what a beautiful thing that you had a completely different experience and approach and yet, at the same day is at the same respect, we found such a similar story and such a similar narrative. And I think I’m obviously a helper by nature, you clearly are as well. And and I always appreciate the givers, because at the end of the day, we’re all just out here doing our part to help people live better lives. So thank you for allowing me to share a little bit about your story, and introduce you to the people that are in my realm. You’re on the podcast. With that said in the call, I think our time is just about up. So let me ask you, is there anything I didn’t ask you I should have? Or is there anything just on your heart that you’d love to share? As we close out?

Nicole Kalil 32:35
You definitely didn’t miss asking me anything. I think one thing I would just love to remind the listeners that I tell myself often as you are the only you there ever was or ever will be and that cannot be an accident. And I know, sometimes we’re tempted to find our value and our worth outside of ourselves. But everything you could possibly need your purpose. And I don’t mean that we all only have one purpose, we may have multiple but your purpose, your value, your worth, your strengths, your unique abilities, your talents, your superpowers, they’re all there. And I invite you to reconnect to them to pay attention to them to listen to the quiet voice you haven’t listened to in a really long time. You are not an accident. You’re not here at this time in this world by accident. And I’m just happy you’re here. So thank you for listening to us today. And that’s kind of my parting thoughts.

Blake Schofield 33:35
Wonderful. Well, Nicole, if, if any of the listeners would like to learn more about you or stay in connection with you, how could they do that?

Nicole Kalil 33:43
Yeah. So I always say if you want to follow me professionally, go to LinkedIn. If you want to follow me with cursing, go to Instagram. I’m at Nicole M Khalil, and my website is Nicole kalil.com. And you can find anything and everything plus a bunch of freebies, we have a lot of free resources there. Specifically one comes to mind of connecting back to your confidence on really tough days. So that’s called Designing your recovery plan if you want to find that.

Blake Schofield 34:12
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And for those of you guys that joined us today, I hope that there was something today that you got from the conversation that inspired you or opened up your perspective and just gave you another tool, right to be able to create more of the fulfilling career in life that you would like. So until next time, have a great one.