Career Stories: Felicia Asiedu on the Power of 'Yes' in Overcoming Fear

Felicia Asiedu:

One of the biggest things I've done over the past, I'd say five years where I've felt the fear and done it anyway, is public speaking. And that's going to surprise a lot of people because I speak everywhere. I'm on every stage. I'm doing it at one of our major presentations at our show. And you'd think, well Felicia, she's so confident she does it. And I will tell you now, it took a lot of me just saying yes.

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events, create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences well, that takes a village. And we're that village, my name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Felicia Asiedu:

Hi everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name's Felicia and I am not your host for this week's episode. A shocker, I know. Don't worry. We haven't grown by 15 different hosts. There's still just three of us. But what we thought would be really interesting is to invite someone to the podcast that maybe we know or might have worked within the industry or outside of our industry that can interview us for a change. So that's why I thought I'd give over hosting responsibility this week to someone that I've worked with before who we haven't spoken for many, many years, but suddenly got back in touch and I thought your job sounds amazing and I think you should be the host for our podcast. So Michelle, welcome to the podcast.

Michelle Jones:

Hi everyone. Thank you so much Felicia, and I am delighted to be taking over and be the host for a change. So I'm going to be delving in and asking all the things you want to know about Felicia as well telling you a little bit about myself.

Felicia Asiedu:

Awesome. So why don't we start there? I mean, one of the things that when you said to me, "I am a career coach," I hope that's the right term. I don't want to... You could be a career empathizer, I'm not entirely sure. But to me I was so interested. So why don't you give our audience just an idea of what you do now and how you do it.

Michelle Jones:

Yeah, sure. So I am a career confidence and performance coach and anything else you want to add on to that. But basically what that means is I help people who feel stuck in their career understand why they're stuck and help them to fix it so that they can get the career that they want. So it's not just doing things like CV or updating their LinkedIn, it's really delving in to what are the blockers, what are the limiting beliefs, holding them back, helping them reprogram their mind so that they can have the confidence to go for whatever it is that they want to do in their career.

Felicia Asiedu:

Love that so much. Because I feel like when you say that, it's like you're not giving them more than they had. They already have all the tools inside them, but it's taking something and unlocking it so that they can be their best selves.

Michelle Jones:

Absolutely. And everybody has the answers. People come to me and ask me, "Michelle, what do I do? What do I do in this situation or this scenario?" And I always turn it back to them and say, "Well, what do you think you should do?" So really it's about helping people unlock their potential that's hidden beneath the limiting beliefs that's holding them back.

Felicia Asiedu:

Love it. That's exactly the kind of question I ask my children when they ask me what they think they should do and I'm like, "What do you think?" I love it. I love it so much. Awesome. So I'm going to stop being a host. I'm going to try my best to stop asking you questions. Michelle, take it away.

Michelle Jones:

Great. Well as your host, I'd like to welcome everyone and say thank you Felicia for letting me interview you. And why don't we have an intro. So some of the listeners may not know much about your background, Felicia. So let's intro you and hear a bit more about your career highlight.

Felicia Asiedu:

I always say my life is a zigzag intro and career, whatever. Some people have a really straight path. I studied commercial music production at university, somehow thought I was going to get into the music industry, but I had a business minor as part of that music production course because their like, "You can't just be a music producer, you have to have a business mind," so fine. So I picked up all the marketing modules all throughout university and that kind of always sat with me.

And then when I left uni I was like, "Oh, music career. Don't think so. I need a job that pays money." So I went through this company called Pareto Law, as you know, because they hired a lot of people into Rackspace, which is where I went. And I don't know, I just chose this salesy role and it was in IT, which was vaguely interesting. Managed hosting, what's that?

Did that. And whilst I was there, I kept trying to bother the marketing person like, "Oh, could I possibly do some of your events?" And he was like, "No, leave me alone." So that was that dream dead, let's just be a salesperson. Went into another sales role again, just to make money. Followed, lovely lady called Caroline, one of my best friends 'till today, took me to another salesy role, made a load of money.

And then this marketing role came up in head office and Caroline said, "Go for it." I was like, "I have zero qualifications for marketing. I don't have anything that tells me I should do that." And she's like, "Yeah, but you're salesperson, just go sell yourself." So I was like, "Fine, I'll pitch myself for my brand to this company." And I did. And the kind of rest is history is the rest is history. That zigzag into the role that had always been there niggling, I think I want to do it, will someone give me a chance? I had to kind of take a chance on myself and just pitch and go forth. And the rest genuinely history. I've risen in my marketing career since and it's been fantastic because I love it so much.

Michelle Jones:

And the thing is, although we talked about this before, you may not have those formal qualifications on paper, but you had that drive and you knew deep inside that's where you want it to go. And I think sometimes when we listen to our gut and we go with what we want to do, it drives us forward and that's how we end up fulfilling our potential, what we've been designed today. And here you are now, look at how far you've come.

For anyone listening, Felicia and I started up as pop-up windows answering technical questions. That was our journey into a sales career. And now we're both doing things totally different. So it doesn't matter how you start, it's just important you start and then listen to what your gut really wants you to do.

Felicia Asiedu:

I completely agree and a lot of people listening to our podcasts from the events industry and hospitality, I mean, if there are any two careers that you could fall into, those are them. Hospitality, not everybody has that straight career path and same with events professionals. A lot of people say they fell into it, they loved it when they got there. So I think it's perfectly fine, like you say.

Michelle Jones:

I think it's important to mention the people the help us along the way. And you mentioned the lovely Caroline, both of us have worked with previously and you more so. Which leads me on to my next question really. I don't know if you've had a specific career coach, but I'd love to hear about the impact that either a career coach or someone as influential as your friend Caroline has made on your journey to date.

Felicia Asiedu:

Yeah, do you know, I've never actually had a career coach. I mean, I should now having spoken to you quite a bit, I think I would do benefit from having one. But no, I think I have just had good solid people around me. I used to call it ambitious people. But I don't think it's just about having ambition, because I've met some people, ambition that are just, it's just wrong. Actually, these are people that they've taken a vested interest in making sure they share stories with you from their careers that they uplift you and they give you that, like Caroline I said, gave me that confidence. Just you've done this, you can transition. If you can sell, you can sell yourself.

And I think without Caroline sat there telling me, "Can you go and apply for that job? Can you actually get it done please?" She was just right in my ear, I was like, "Oh fine, I'll do it." I definitely have had some good strong characters that are progressing in their careers and they're like, "If I can do it, you can do it. I'm not a unicorn, I don't have some magical powers." And I'm like, "Oh, that's true if you can." And I always say that to people now, I'm human, I'm just trying my best and I just try stuff and if it doesn't work, I'll move on really quickly, trust me. But yeah, it's been great. It's been good.

Michelle Jones:

Oh, that's great. And I'm a real advocate of the phrase, feel the fear and do it anyway. And I think both of us in our career histories have certainly felt that and journeyed through that. So I suppose my question to you is have you got some examples of when you've felt the fear and done it anyway, beyond that initial selling yourself into a marketing role? Because what you were doing then to what you are doing now is such a huge leap. So I'm sure the listeners would love to hear a little bit more about how you've got to where you are now.

Felicia Asiedu:

So I think one of the biggest things I've done over the past, I'd say five years, where I've felt the fear and done it anyway, is public speaking. And that's going to surprise a lot of people because I speak everywhere. I'm on every stage, I'm doing one of our major presentations at our show. And you'd kind of think, well Felicia, she's so confident she does it. And I will tell you now, it took a lot of me just saying "Yes." I remember I had a year of yes. I had a particular year where I was like, "This is my year of yes and I'm going to do every single thing that I want to do in this year." And I said yes to some wild things, I tell you Michelle.

Michelle Jones:

What can you share? What is appropriate to share from your year of yes?

Felicia Asiedu:

Set up a business. I mean people they know, I set up this company called the Diverse Speaker Bureau. And we set it up on a hope and a wing and a prayer and a passion and shouldn't set up a business on a wing and a prayer and a passion to tell you, you should probably have done some good research. It was a good thing. We did a fantastic thing. We got really recognized in the industry for setting it up. We were trying to do an amazing thing. I think it has had its ups and downs, people know, if you know, we're kind of shy away from it a bit now. But I think it was a good thing to do. And because I was being a speaker, but I kept being asked to speak on things following this George Floyd thing and it was like, "You are a black woman, how do you feel about racism?" And I was like, "All right, I'll do that panel."

Why am I doing that panel? Am I some kind of equity and diversity expert? No, I wasn't at the time. But I just kept saying yes to stuff. I was like, "Well you need a black woman on the panel because you need to represent diversity, so I'll be that black woman on the panel." It just probably wasn't the right thing to do. It was something I had to go through to understand, you need better speakers than me. You need diverse speakers that can speak to the right subjects and topics and add the right flavors. Being a black woman on the panel is not enough. Come on people. So yeah, I learned a lot and I got to educate people because I said yes to a lot of stuff, but hey ho, it's all for the good.

Michelle Jones:

Yeah, and I suppose saying yes and taking those risks help us learn and grow and develop and that's important. And I know one of the things we have talked about previously as well is, once you get to the height of your career and you've almost peaked, how do you still be relevant? How do you stop yourself from being bored? Or people wanting to still take your advice or listen to your opinion? So I don't know if you've any thoughts about that, given that particular story when you went through that whole year of yes and the lessons that you learned. How do you then make sure that you still become relevant now that you're at all of your peaks in your career?

Felicia Asiedu:

That is a really good question. As you were asking me, so many thoughts were coming into my mind because I got promoted to being a director, I think maybe a year ago, maybe a little bit more. And at that point I was immediately hit with this new feeling of imposter syndrome, which I'd never had before. I'm a very confident human, but suddenly... And I'd been doing the role for so long, I just didn't have the title. But suddenly this title came and I don't know what it was, but I was going to places on stage and they would say, "Can you say your job title?" And I was like, "Oh, I'm the marketing director. I guess I'm the director. I guess I am." Isn't that weird? I couldn't just say the title. I'm doing the job, I've got all the work, I've got all the staff. But just to say, "I'm a marketing director," was such a weird new feeling for me. And I know a lot of people feel that imposter syndrome.

So I will say, thank God I've cleared that bit, but then the next feeling that came was like, oh, so what comes next? I'm an ambitious person, like I say. And so now I've got that title, I'm comfortable with the title, I'm doing the job, but I've been doing the job for two, three years. What's next? I still don't know the answer to that question, Michelle, honestly. And I think I'm challenged by that often. I turn 40 this year. So is it a midlife crisis? I don't know. I know this is not a counseling session, but I'm in it.

I think that's the thing I can say I'm not, let me give you some advice, I know exactly what to do with that. I'm right in the middle of that feeling of I've got over the imposter syndrome only to be replaced by, I'm not entirely sure what my next steps are. But I think what I'm doing with that, if I can give some proactive things, what am I doing with that feeling? I am exploring and I'm making sure, one of the things I'm really keen on doing right now, is making sure my team are uplifted, are given opportunity for promotion, are doing what they want to do.

So I think I'm pouring a lot of whatever I've got into other people whilst I figure out myself. And that's actually helping, it gives me a really good feeling.

Michelle Jones:

I think the common denominator with imposter syndrome and then feeling I don't know what to do next or where do I go next is fear. That's the biggest thing that links those. And going back to what we were saying about feeling the fear and doing it anyway, I think it's great advice to explore and challenge yourself in different ways, alongside what you're doing. So that you can really start to see where is the rest of your purpose? Where is the rest of your career going to take you?

And sometimes we find, it's not actually in our career, it's something outside of that. Which means that we can be the best we can be when it comes to the workplace because we're fulfilled in other ways outside of the workplace.

Felicia Asiedu:

I love that so much. That takes me back to, again, probably about 18 months ago, I joined a heels dance class. It was like this sexy class. And suddenly I was feeling myself in new ways and I did feel... And at that time, and I also joined a choir, because I love singing. And I was doing everything and actually I felt more human, I felt more like myself. And I think I've let that go. You know when you miss some classes and then you're like, well, that's it now, I'll just be a mom again at home in the evenings. But actually that's good advice. I think maybe I'll explore that.

Michelle Jones:

Yeah, it's like I had a client recently who's a dentist and their role had become very mundane because they had gone more into the teaching side. We explored some of their passions when they first became qualified, so they went into an arts and crafts type class and they just found that it really made a big impact because they were feeling fulfilled and satisfied outside of work, so that when they went into the workplace it was totally different. Their approach and their mindset was totally different and not distracted. So I think that's great. I would love to go to a sexy heels class or maybe try and get my groove on and do that tape.

Felicia Asiedu:

It's when they say get on the floor, now, you're just like, oh gosh, my knees.

Michelle Jones:

What one piece of advice would you give someone then, given sort of our experience, we've talked about our collective experience and obviously mainly yours, because I'm interviewing you today. Is there anything that you would give, advice you would give to someone starting out in their early career that would really help them progress to what they want to do?

Felicia Asiedu:

Looking back, because obviously we're older now, I couldn't have given this advice at the time, but looking back, I would say just know you've got time. You actually have a lot of time when you're starting out in your career to play around with your roles and companies and industries and countries. And you have the luxury of time, is what it is. And I think sometimes when we're younger, it depends what kind of person you are, some people are on that kind of university track, university to job, job to career. And if that's you, great, go for it. But if you're not sure, that's also really, really fine because just go and work somewhere decent, see what bits you like and then apply what you've learned to some other role and then build on that.

But I think interrogate it as well, whilst you're doing those roles, don't just drag yourself to work and I'm just slogging it out, interrogate the bits that you're loving. Maybe have a termly catch-up with yourself and kind of be like, "What do I like about this job? What don't I like about this job?" And if you're a moaner at work, move on. Just clearly it's not for you, go and do something else. It's fine. Time and interrogation I think would be the two things I would say.

But I'm actually going to add to that as well. Everybody's human, your boss's, boss's, boss, your CEO, is just another man, woman or other that is just trying their best. And they don't have two heads. So when you are fearful and shaky, like, "Oh my God, my CEO's coming," they're just a person. And you should have a little bit more confidence in yourself to know that if you've got an idea, maybe it's a good idea, present it, do what you want. You can.

Michelle Jones:

Yeah, and what's the worst that's going to happen? If it doesn't work out, then that wasn't the root for you and it's time to try something out, isn't it? Gosh, I remember when we worked together, we were starting out in our careers. If our CEO or one of the big bosses from America would come over, we'd be like frozen in fear. But then they get up, they eat breakfast, they do the same with every other human being on this planet. So like you said, you shouldn't be fearful. And in fact, I think people in those senior positions really respect those who are starting out, who are inquisitive and ask questions and want to get advice. Because that's the only way that you learn, is by being inquisitive.

Felicia Asiedu:

100%. And people actually value that. I hope people know, you know that horrible question in interviews, like, "Do you have any questions for us?" If you haven't heard this before, please take this on board. But when they say, "Do you have any questions for us?" They're not meant to be the, "Oh, where do you see yourself as a business in five years?", questions. They're meant to be like, "If I'm going to come and work here, what's your company culture? What's your policy on sustainability?" Stuff that you actually care about.

If they say, "Do you have any questions for us?" It's meant to be like, I want this to be a good fit for us, so let me ask the questions that are quite important to me. Now, that doesn't mean should be asking about flexi-time on day one, but you might say, "As a parent, what is your parental policy?" Because whatever it is that's important to you, that tells the employee, definitely tells me when I'm hiring people, this person seems to want to work here and they're inquiring about stuff that would impact them as a person. So yeah, go with some confidence.

Michelle Jones:

And that's great advice because the number of times I've interviewed people in my previous roles that I've done and they've gone with the cookie cutter questions that the recruiter has given them. And you don't get to know their personality and it's not genuine. When they ask things that really mean something to them, that's what makes them stand out and that's the person I remember when I'm going through everyone I've interviewed to give the person the role. That's really great advice, especially for those starting out.

Felicia Asiedu:

Yeah, definitely.

Michelle Jones:

Well, Felicia, that's been fantastic. I really thoroughly enjoyed being host this time. But now it's time to pass over the reins back to yourself. I've done all my questions, so thanks very much.

Felicia Asiedu:

Oh, thank you, Michelle. That was so refreshing. I actually do feel a lot of these podcasts are like my own personal therapy, so I really appreciate it. But before I let you go, can you just tell people where they can find you or what resources they can use?

Michelle Jones:

I'm all linked in, but I have a website, www.freshapproachcoaching.com. Bit of a mouthful. If you want to have a chat with me, a free and partial general chat about your career and you feel stuck, I'm happy to give you a free session so you can sign up via on my website or find me on LinkedIn and send me a DM. Happy to answer and help as many people as they can.

Felicia Asiedu:

Phenomenal. Thank you so much for being very clear. We will put the link into the podcast description so people feel free to access that. As you can tell by Michelle's accent, she's very American. Not. But you did tell me you have clients from all over the world, is that correct?

Michelle Jones:

That's right. So I am from Northern Ireland and I relocated back to Northern Ireland just before the pandemic, after spending almost two decades in London. So I didn't get an English accent and I didn't get an American accent despite all the American companies I have worked for. But my clients are actually global, so I currently have clients in Sweden, mainland UK, Ireland, and some of the Americans as well. So because I'm a mom, my time is really flexible so people can speak to me in the morning or the evening. So that's why those time zones really suit well. So, yeah.

Felicia Asiedu:

Brilliant. Well, thank you. I didn't want people to feel like, because you've got two people that are European on the podcast, you're only available in Europe because definitely these days everything's global. Just hop on a Zoom and Apps on your phone. But this has been fantastic. Thank you so much, Michelle, for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Michelle Jones:

Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to seeing the next podcast where you're the host again.

Felicia Asiedu:

Awesome. Bye. Thanks everyone.

Alyssa Peltier:

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you, discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu:

Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews:

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.