Niiamah Ashong coaches a coach and consultant in a Tribe 1:1 session on the Outlier's Edge Podcast about how to create a really successful business and completely honor her highest values. He opens with his distinction between outliers, who own what makes them different, and trailblazers, who leverage that difference to make a difference for others. What emerged is a set of small, early indicators that tell her when to slow down and return to her foundation, alongside her practice of putting her highest values on the calendar first.
Episode at a glance
- Host: Niiamah Ashong, coach to outlier leaders
- Show: Outlier’s Edge Podcast, released November 10, 2021
- Format: session, 49 minutes
- Topics: Outliers and trailblazers, The ability to recreate yourself, Everything can be figured out, A business that honors her highest values, Early indicators of heading off path, Front-loading the calendar
What this session is about
She is a coach and consultant who works mostly with women entrepreneurs, women in business and women executives, and coaching and consulting is her fourth career. Before coaching she started and ran a nonprofit focused on clean water as a foundation for development, which has drilled more than 100 wells and reached well over 100,000 people; earlier she was a talent scout and then a creative executive in network television, and before that an elementary school teacher. Her business runs across one-to-one coaching, groups where she teaches emotional processing, and hands-on consulting inside clients' businesses, and one of her clients wants to create an app with her around the emotional processing work. Niiamah Ashong introduces her as someone who has been instrumental to him, and names her mastery as the ability to recreate herself; she names what sits underneath it, tenacity and a willingness to figure anything out.
What emerged
The question she brought was how to create a really successful business while completely honoring her highest values, without the all-out pace that drove her earlier careers. Because she described this as uncharted territory, Niiamah Ashong questioned whether a direct route could even be plotted and focused instead on early indicators: her daily yoga practice, her own emotional processing work and making her bed in the morning, signals that can show her within a day or two when she's heading off path. She described front-loading her self-care habits and time with her son onto the calendar before anything else, Niiamah Ashong also raised getting more support so that not everything sits on her, and left her with a question: what are the indicators that the family side of her values is off.
Questions this episode answers
How can a leader create a successful business while honoring their highest values?
The guest front-loads: her self-care habits and the time she has with her son go on the calendar first, before work and before everything else. She also said that living in her highest values means being willing to not do certain things, including work she could have said no to.
How do you notice early that you're heading off path?
Niiamah Ashong asked for small, almost innocuous signals and shared his own, dishes piling up in the kitchen. The guest named hers: missing her daily yoga practice, skipping her own emotional processing work, or not making her bed in the morning. Niiamah Ashong pointed out that a small signal like the bed can show up within a day or two, rather than the 30 to 45 days it took her to notice her habits slipping.
What is the difference between an outlier and a trailblazer?
Niiamah Ashong describes an outlier as anyone who takes the time to own the things that make them different and creates incredible success despite the odds. A trailblazer is an outlier who decides not just to own that difference, but to leverage it to make a difference for others, lead others and create change in the world.
What makes it possible to reinvent yourself across very different careers?
The guest credits tenacity and a willingness to figure things out, saying she has learned every job on the job. Niiamah Ashong named it as a mastery of its own: the ability to recreate yourself.
What role does support play in honoring a leader's highest values?
Niiamah Ashong asked whether she has to be the one taking care of everything, and wondered what it would be like to have someone handle the things that matter to her but aren't her highest priorities. She acknowledged that getting more support, personally and in business, is an area where she could grow.
In their words
The mastery is in the ability to recreate yourself.
Niiamah Ashong
How do you build a really successful business and completely honor your highest values?
A participant
In order to live in my highest values I have to be willing to not do certain things.
A participant
Key moments
00:02 – Outliers versus trailblazers
04:13 – A fourth career in coaching
08:21 – The mastery of recreating yourself
13:34 – Everything can be figured out
19:48 – Success that honors her highest values
26:04 – Her business verticals and an app
37:23 – Indicators of heading off path
40:00 – Making the bed as a signal
43:05 – Front-loading the calendar
45:07 – Getting more support
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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