Bevin Niemann, a mentor who helps empaths, light workers and mystics craft a lifestyle and career that nurtures their sensitivity, joins Niiamah Ashong on the Outlier's Edge Podcast. They explore questioning prevailing wisdom, a healthier relationship with money, and living life as an experiment after seven careers. What emerged is a celebration of the outlier, grounded in self-trust and in what Niiamah Ashong calls the reinventer's bonus.
Episode at a glance
- Guest: Bevin Niemann, Mentor who helps empaths, light workers and mystics craft a lifestyle and career that nurtures their sensitivity
- Host: Niiamah Ashong, coach to outlier leaders
- Show: Outlier’s Edge Podcast, released July 26, 2022
- Format: conversation, 55 minutes
- Topics: Owning your outlier, Questioning prevailing wisdom, Abundance for everyone, The reinventer's bonus, Life as an intuitive laboratory, Radical self-trust
What Bevin brought to the conversation
Bevin Niemann helps empaths, light workers and mystics craft a lifestyle and a career that nurtures their sensitivity rather than works against it, and she sees advocating for people like herself as a chance to connect them with their power and their joy. She has had seven careers, across retail, food service, account management, landscape design, nonprofit organizations, coaching and writing, and she brings what she learned in each one into the next. After about 12 years at a nonprofit, where she was offered the position of vice president, she moved to a completely different state and started over as a landscape designer. She runs a global community priced at seven dollars so sensitive leaders around the world can join, and in the fall of 2021 she published her first book, which she describes as in some ways a memoir.
What emerged
The conversation became a celebration of the outlier. When Niiamah Ashong pressure tested whether a person can be themselves and still be financially abundant, Bevin Niemann named a third option beyond either-or: getting her needs met, being in service, and wanting abundance for everyone, not just for herself. Niiamah named what was embedded in her story, the reinventer's bonus: someone who has started over many times can experiment freely because they know they can reinvent again. Underneath it all is self-trust, which Bevin now sees as the source of the home and stability she once looked for outside herself.
Questions this episode answers
What does it mean to own being an outlier?
Bevin Niemann recalls a coach training exercise where she chose to stand way out from the entire circle of chairs and felt really comfortable at that edge. Niiamah Ashong calls this owning your outlier. Bevin says outliers may feel a little misunderstood, but she likes living out there and approaches life as an adventure and an experiment.
How can a leader question prevailing wisdom without being a rebel without a cause?
Bevin Niemann asks whether the way something has always been done is actually the way she wants to do it, and gives herself permission to ask even if she ends up choosing the traditional way. When she does rebel, it's for a reason, after thinking it through, researching it and sensing how it feels in her body. She is also willing to speak up publicly and ask whether beliefs carried as a collective are still serving people.
Can you be yourself and still be financially abundant?
Bevin Niemann says people aren't here to martyr themselves: she wants her needs met and a nice home, and she wants that for everyone, not just for herself. She doesn't see it as a zero-sum game and looks for a third option where she gets her needs met and is in service to other people at the same time.
What is the reinventer's bonus?
It's a name Niiamah Ashong coined in the conversation for the confidence that comes from reinventing oneself many times: a person can experiment now because they know they can reinvent or try something else later. Bevin Niemann connects it to the high sensation seeker, a personality trait wired to crave new and novel experiences, and to using her life as an intuitive laboratory.
Why does self-trust matter so much for outliers?
Bevin Niemann says she spent a lot of time seeking home, centeredness and stability outside herself, and found it limiting. She now looks to a radical level of trust in self: knowing that even if things don't turn out as she'd like, she'll bounce back, pivot and adapt. Niiamah Ashong adds that if the internal elements like self-trust aren't there, everything will be out of alignment.
In their words
There's a difference in the energy when you're saying I want this for me and I want this for everyone.
Bevin Niemann
I'm going to bounce back up, I'm going to try something new, I'm going to pivot, I'm going to adapt and I'm going to go on with a sense of optimism about this life.
Bevin Niemann
Fundamentally we should be listening to our inner voice first.
Bevin Niemann
Key moments
01:31 – Standing outside the circle
03:33 – Serving empaths after seven careers
09:44 – Speaking up as an outlier
12:48 – Rethinking the paradigm around money
19:57 – Wanting abundance for everyone
23:30 – The edge walker's third option
28:37 – Naming the reinventer's bonus
32:15 – Life as an intuitive laboratory
39:23 – Mastering self-trust
50:33 – Honor the wisdom you've gained
About Niiamah Ashong
Niiamah Ashong is a coach to outlier leaders, host of the Outlier’s Edge Podcast, and founder of the Trailblazer Collective. He coaches leaders who are creating something only they can make: a company, a body of work or a movement. Make a difference with your difference.
Work with Niiamah: 1:1 with Niiamah | World of Difference
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