This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 048 / How To Stay True To Yourself Professionally with Andrea Williams

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Have you ever worked in a place and felt like they just don’t get you? Like your talents, contributions and potential is being overlooked? I know a lot of women who have felt this way most of their professional career. So how do we pave our own way? How do we play to our strengths, and create success in the face of being told that we should be different? I’m joined by Andrea Williams - Speaker, Wealth Management Advisor and Author, whom I greatly admire for her ability to do just that. When Andrea started her career she was different then the norm in just about every way, and she’s turned those differences into difference makers creating massive success for herself and blazing the trail for other women in her field. Our job is not to convince others of our value. If you want to grow your confidence or self worth, stop giving other people the calculator. Show up as the only person you can authentically be...YOU. If they don’t appreciate, notice, value or understand you, well you have a choice to make...blaze a new trail, or find a new place to work that does. This is Woman’s Work. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

Did you know that not only can you build your confidence anytime you want with the self-paced This Is Confidence online course, but that you can also do it with me? Over 12 weeks, I'll guide you and a small group of women through all of the confidence derailers, the confidence builders. I'll share tips, strategies, and stories you won't hear anywhere else. Basically, I'll be like your confidence Sherpa. So no matter which option you choose, you'll get lifetime access to our confidence-building community. Check it out on NicoleClill.com and get yourself registered. self-registered. Have you ever worked in a place and felt like they just don't get you?

Like your talents, contribution, and potential is being overlooked because you don't fit the mold? I am Nicole Kalil, And one of my primary reasons that I created the This Is Woman's Work podcast is because I felt this way most of my professional career. And I wish I could tell you I was strong and courageous and I stayed true to myself. I wish I could say that I recognized that my differences were my competitive edge or that I fought the good fight, broke down barriers and overcame those challenges. But I didn't. I conformed. I bought into the, this is how we do things. I doubled down on my more masculine traits and got punished for it, by the way,

being given the feedback that I was too opinionated, too reactive, not approachable, not collaborative. And I hid and stuffed down my more feminine characteristics because I knew the punishment for that would be worse. I made a lot of mistakes, but the one I regret the most is that I made who I am wrong. So I disconnected from my authentic self and it's taken some time to reconnect back to me. So I wanted to have the conversation about how to stay true to yourself professionally, how to pave your own way, how to play to your strengths and how to create success in the face of being told that you should be different or in spite of not having somebody who looks, acts, or communicates

like you to follow. I've asked Andrea Williams, speaker, wealth management advisor, and author to join me because I've greatly admired her ability to do this. When she started her career, she was different than the norm in just about every way. And she's turned those differences into difference makers, creating massive success and really blazing the trail for other women, other Black women in financial services. Ever heard the expression that you should make a firm foundation of the bricks that others have thrown at you? Well, Andrea has built a goddamn castle out of the bricks that others have thrown at you? Well, Andrea has built a goddamn castle out of those bricks. Andrea, thank you so much for being here today. In addition to being

a badass, she's a great friend of mine. So Andrea, thank you for joining. Thank you. All right. So I know a lot has changed in your firm since when you started for the better, but share with us a little bit about how it felt to be you when you showed up for work early on in your career. I knew that things would always be different for me. You know, just being a woman in finance, in many ways, I felt like I had always been, you know, a brown person in a white person's world. And I felt that by the time I had started my career here, I felt that I had gotten used to that. But I was definitely in for a surprise. I think one of the things that I told you a long time ago was that, you know,

if somebody would have come and told me that, you know, as a little girl, that it would be difficult or I couldn't be whatever I wanted to be, I wouldn't believe them. And starting my career, I was told those things. I was told that I wouldn't be successful. And it's just so contradictory to how I was raised. My parents always told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be and there weren't any barriers and the sky's the limit. And it definitely hit me like a ton of bricks to be in an environment where I was told the opposite, where I wasn't supported. And I think that a lot of that came from fear.

I think that people who don't look like you, they're not the same gender as you. I think they really struggle to see talent or even intelligence in people who are not similar to them. And, you know, I think that's kind of where it all starts. And, you know, I think that's, that's kind of where, where it all starts. And, you know, and out of that inability to recognize there's been a fear that individuals won't be successful. And then they start to project that on you, which is just so different than, you know, how we would raise our girls. Yeah. I mean, it's so much of what you said. I'm nodding my head. One of them is that it's,

it's hard to recognize talent that doesn't look or communicate or, or have the same background as you. At least that's what we're seeing in a lot of companies. So how did you hold on to the belief of your talent and your abilities in the face of people telling you, and then how did you get them to recognize it? You know, it's, it was very difficult. And just thinking back on this is, you know, it's, it's pretty emotional for me because it's really hard to thrive in an environment where people doubt you, where people are betting against you. And then on top of that, it's a competitive environment where unfortunately there are some people who are, I guess, just raised in a way where they want to see other people

fail, you know, because they want to win. So they want to kind of kick you when you're down. You know, I would say the single most important thing for me during this time period, you know, is something that probably as a teenager, I thought I would never say, but it was my parents, you know, hearing, you know, hearing the voice of my parents in the back of my mind that, you know, I could do anything. And, you know, my parents know who I am. These people didn't know who I was. My parents believed in me and invested in me and, you know, sent me to the best schools and, you know, made sure I had what I needed. And even when I started my career, they were my biggest supporters. So I'm often asked, I know you're not going to ask me this question because you already know, I'm often asked, you know, who was your mentor? And I,

I almost want to laugh when people ask me that question. I'm sure there's so many women in so many careers and so many, you know, areas of finance who do not have a mentor. They don't have anyone around them that, you know, that, that looks like them or is taking an interest in them. And, you know, when people ask me that question, you know, I always say, you know, I didn't have a mentor, but I, I had a really strong mom in my corner. My mom is my biggest supporter and she would do anything to help me. I really just kind of stayed close to home. You know, I tapped into my why, why I was there and the impact and the legacy that I'm trying to make for my community. And I really focused on sticking with it for my clients. No matter how difficult it got or how much I didn't feel supported, I needed to would just put my fingers in my ears, you know, my invisible fingers

in my ears and I'd say, la, la, la, la, la, you know, when the feedback was coming, that's what I had to learn to do because a lot of the things that were being said to me, they weren't helpful things. They weren't, they weren't things that gave me energy and made, you know, and made the work easier or more productive. So I think as a mom listening, it's just been such a good reminder of being there for our kids, especially our daughters and, and believing in them because we all have moments where we doubt ourselves or have fears or whatever. And, and just sharing that, I was just reminded, okay, my voice, she'll hate me in the teenage years, but my voice may come back where it matters. And also just the importance of having somebody who believes in you

professionally and how important that is in a work environment. And again, how much more I admire you for figuring it out when you didn't have that. So when people give you feedback or advice and it just doesn't resonate with you and your gut tells you something different, do you just do the la la la fingers in the ears and go on with your own path? Do you let some of that in? Like, how do you cope in those moments? And what do you take and what do you discard? I have to say that I'm highly conditioned to hearing things from people that are just like absolutely off-putting. And I am phenomenal at having absolutely no reaction because I am a, what is the word they're using now? You know, like a presenting minority. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm biracial and some people probably wouldn't know that I was half Caucasian,

but I, you know, a lot of times people just interpret me as black society interprets me as black. And, and I've, I've heard a lot of rude and all of it, racist, sexist, you know, misogynistic things throughout my lifetime. And I, and I would say primarily because of my racial stance, I've become very effective at allowing it to roll off of my back. You know, I don't know what it would be like if I had to, if I didn't have that kind of conditioning already. But I think that conditioning actually kind of aided me in, sadly, in having to deal with what I dealt with when I first started my career. I would say the one differentiating factor for me is that because I believed so much in myself, I also believed in my business acumen and my business intelligence.

I would be in joint work meetings where the client was saying something and the joint work up person was just not understanding the client. And I just felt like I had a better handle on the business of people than even some of the folks that were supposed that I was supposed to be learning from. So I, at the end of the day, I did, you know, very instinctively, you know, put my fingers in my ears, say la la la, let things roll off of my back. And I did, you know, out of survival, I did pivot and I, and I did do things my, my way. I know in, in our industry, it's very much like you have to do it this way. This is the only way if you only do it this way, you'll survive. Well,

I, I did it that way and, and I, and I wasn't surviving. So I knew I had to change things pretty quickly. And I, you know, as soon as I started to, to get pretty productive, I hired a business coach. And one of the things that she said to me was that, you know, what you're, what you're, what you are telling me you've done is excellent. I'll have, know that most business owners don't build a business off of some you know fabulously mapped out business plan or some blueprint someone hands them. They build it off of gut instinct. So if your gut is telling you that you know you need more information about some person before you call them, follow that. If your gut is telling you not to go back and review with people who are in a pretty destitute financial situation, because chances are they're probably in that same destitute situation six months, a year,

or even two years from now, you have to make kind of business ac know, business acumen, business, intelligent decisions for yourself so that you can survive. And it's, it's not just about what they say to do. Yeah. And, and you kind of had to create your own different way of doing things. So how do you do that? Trial and error, obviously trusting your gut. But how did you come up with the Andrea Williams way of running your business to have it be as successful as it is now? I mean, I can't say it's perfect. It is successful, but- It's never perfect, right? Right.

But there are plenty of things I'd like to improve, but I just, you know, I just kind of knew from the beginning, I mean, day, day one, when they teach you phoning language, you know, they would, they were teaching us phrases that I think people would say back in like the seventies, they just, you know, it wasn't current. And I, I just couldn't honestly show up as my authentic self if I sounded like a robot. So from the beginning, I always made sure that as opposed to memorizing my language, I would just internalize the thought, you know, what, what message am I trying to get across? And I was confident enough in myself, in my, you know, in my, in my ability to create speech that I could do that. You know,

I didn't need to memorize for me. I didn't need to memorize something. I knew how to explain things. That's what I felt. And I think that's also from, you know, part of, from my conditioning of being a brown person is I've always made an effort to think about what I say before I speak so that it presents a certain way because we're always coaching people's perception of ourselves. So living a life before this career where I've always had to coach people's perception of myself, I knew how to do that. And I relied on that instinct. So when I was calling my family members and friends, you know, I didn't start off with the canned language that they gave me. I made sure I sounded like myself. And when I learned

about the products and tools and, you know, how to explain things to people, I immediately switched up my language. I made sure I understood it first. I think you're doing yourself a disservice. You're doing your clients a disservice. If you're just regurgitating what you've been told and you don't actually understand it. So at the core, I made sure that I started to study to, to study. I, you know, I, I read books. I made sure I really could explain things. Yeah. We see this a lot with women is the focus on

creating and building credibility. But what I love the most about what you said is when you take other people's stuff or like a canned or robotic approach, what ends up happening is you don't bring you to the table. Correct. And at the end of the day, your clients want to work with you, right? Or what they're attracted to is the you of your business. Yep. It's a huge miss. A huge miss to not sound like yourself. I couldn't agree with you more. So coaching people's perception of you. Talk to us about that. Is it exhausting? It sounds exhausting to me. It's work. It is work. I have to say it's work that I'm conditioned to do where it's second nature now because it's been my whole life. I've been told that I have a good vocabulary or I form sentences very well. I hope we all do. But, you know, it, it just, you know, it's like, well, why does someone have a

good vocabulary or why does someone sound articulate? It's well, it's because they're doing the extra work to dig down, to find the most appropriate word. And because I've always had to coach people's perception of myself, that is more automatic for me. And it has really aided me in this career where I can use very big words. I can use jargon when it's appropriate. I can use Spanglish if it's necessary. Ebonics, you name it. Depends on who I'm talking to.

But that's just something that a lot of people who are, you know, first generation people of color have learned to do is code switch. And, you know, and there's a big discussion these days about code switching and how exhausting it is. And, you know, I, I wonder how, how much my mind would feel rested if I didn't feel like I needed to code switch. Yeah. I wonder that too. I've heard somebody somewhere along the way said, I feel like I have two full-time jobs, the job that I'm doing and the job of trying to fit in to the culture and to the environment and it's exhausting and a lot of hard work. I wonder, does that resonate at all with you? Oh, yeah.

I definitely think it is two completely full-time jobs. And I think that's where I had to make a decision. I could either do my job and do it well, or I could worry about fitting in. And I have to say that I definitely did not choose, you know, to worry about fitting in and they noticed and, and, and we're vocal about it. So I, you know, I had to, I, I started to build a really awesome business, but then I had to deal with a bit of a, the backlash of like, oh, you don't show up or you don't come to the Cubs games with us. And I think it took some time, but eventually some folks in leadership eventually expressed to me like, wow, why would you want to show up to these events or spend time with the

community of people that didn't accept you from the beginning? And then they stopped bothering me about it. Yeah. And I admire that so much. I wish I would have had the strength or the fortitude or whatever to make that choice, because I feel like I banged my head against the wall doing those two full-time jobs for far too long. And when we met and started talking, I mean, that was a really big, like aha moment where it's like, she's doing it. And without all the noise and all the stuff,

like I just have always been so impressed with you. So Andrea, what is it like now? I know your goal or your role wasn't to, you know, change things in your organization. Your, your goal and your role is to create your successful business, but have things changed? Are you playing any part in that? Do you have any vision for making things different in your organization or outside of it? Absolutely. You know, I think time has gone by, leadership has changed, people have matured, you know, the larger corporate entity has rolled out resources like, you know, White Man's Caucus and things like that, where, um, people are engaging in exercises where biases are,

are called out and all of those things are excellent. And it has definitely made an impact. I, I'm excited for the future for, you know, the community of, of people, the clients who are going to be reached because we are creating more inviting environments. You know, my managing partner, Corey McQuaid, he's so awesome. And he is someone who has kind of, you know, lived a mission of inclusion his entire life. He was raised that way. His parents are awesome people. And it's so exciting and comforting to see that parents are, you know, raising their children that way, even, you know, 40, 50 years ago. And, you know, and together,

we're able to make an impact today. So I knew that, you know, someone once told me that your environment will take you before you take the environment. There was no way this, you know, little, little brown girl was going to change, you know, the whole Northwestern Mutual or even my office on my own. All I could be concerned about was my success and my impact on my clients. And I'm more of a, you know, work in silence and let your results be the noise. And when I put my head down and I chose that as my full-time job and I worked really hard and I started to get really awesome results, you know, that's when the home office started calling. and I started to get really awesome results, you know, that's when the home office started calling

and that's when, you know, other people started to notice, you know, my leadership and, you know, in the work that we do. And it didn't take, you know, having to go to the happy hours and, you know, brown nose or try to change myself to fit in. I just kind of accepted from the beginning that, you know, I'm not really like these people, you know, in very many ways and that's okay. But, you know, who I am like is, you know, I'm like my clients and I'm really grateful and fortunate that I get to spend 90% of the day

with people that I choose to be with. So it isn't all that bad. I just, I honestly didn't think a lot about, you know, my office or my office culture or my leadership a whole lot. I really just focused on the work and how that gave me energy and drive. But these days I'm excited to see our culture change. I, for the first time, have actually recruited someone into the business. They started this month. This person is an Asian American woman.

I'm super excited for her. And one of the first things that she contacted me about was like, what's up with this phoning language? Like, who talks like this? And, you know, just kind of goes back to my gut instinct that I had, you know, almost 13 years ago. You know, who talks like this? And, you know, just kind of goes back to my gut instinct that I had, you know, almost 13 years ago, you know, who talks like this? If I'm thinking it, someone else is thinking it too. So hopefully we can, you know, we can institute some, you know, larger corporate changes to how we, how we start people off. But until then,

you know, I'm going to work on her success. I'm going to work on, you know, making sure that she gets off to the right start and tell her to what, you know, what to ignore and what to lean into. Yeah. So there was a lot of great advice in there for women who maybe aren't feeling like they can be their authentic self at work or want to be, but it's not being recognized or valued. Share with us how you feel or have used your differences to your advantage. Well, I think just in what I was explaining earlier, you know, having a, having a different life experience and having to be very careful with how I presented myself aided me in, you know, what we call sales, you know, coaching people's perception.

Perception is reality. That has been very helpful. On top of that, I think being a woman and being a minority, being a Black woman, I think that has helped a ton because there are a ton of underserved communities. And I even hate to use the word underserved. And yes, financial services has underserved women and the minority community. But someone the other day, you know, brought to my attention that, you know, it's not that these communities are underserved. It almost makes it sound like they're impoverished and they're not. I'm an example of that. I have,

you know, a really awesome practice full of these people, but really successful people. But it's really that other communities are over-served. And, you know, in the work that we do, isn't that true? Aren't the same guys calling on the same law firms? Like those attorneys don't need any more help. They've already been called before. You just keep over-serving them. We've got to go to these other communities. And because there are these other communities that haven't been reached out to, I never run into another advice. Even like, I don't, I can't even name names of companies. I'm just not running into any advisors at all.

I never have any competition ever. Ever. I've never had a client like stolen from me ever because I have this pathway because of my gender and my ethnicity into communities and it automatically builds trust. And, you know, and the doors are really open to me there. So, you know, one of the things I'm very appreciative of is that a while ago, African-American woman, she was an orthopedic surgeon. She came and found me and she reached out to me and asked me to get involved with the National Medical Association, which is the, you know, association of medical professionals, if I'm being very specific from the African diaspora. So they could be, you know, from, from anywhere all over very specific, from the African diaspora. So they could be from anywhere all over the world, but they trace their roots back to Africa.

And it's awesome to go there every single year and give talks on financial planning. And a good chunk of my clientele comes from this community. And I really have to attribute a large portion of my success, you know, to, you know, to this organization, to this woman, and at the end of the day, to the very thing that makes me the most different from most of the people that I interact with in my office, you know, my ethnicity. And for that, I am grateful. Yeah. Andrea, I am grateful for you and for, uh, your example and for your courage. And, um, uh, I'm just grateful to know A N D R E A K O R Y N. Andrea Corrin. Am I saying that right? Yep. Okay. Just making sure that the middle name threw me for a second there. She is actually writing a book or coming out with a book and you can join the wait list on financiallyfluent.com.

Andrea, tell us a little bit about the book. So the book is for people who want to build a baseline knowledge, functional knowledge of financial planning, personal finance concepts, you know, from things from their employee benefits to understanding investments. And I think one big miss that advisors are not recognizing is their need to teach. People can read it on their own and advisors can even give it to their clients so that when the clients are coming in, they're having more robust conversations because there's a nice layer of prerequisite knowledge already established. That is so needed and so great. I hope too, they consider using your book in colleges. Absolutely. All right. Well, again, thank you for your work and for spending

time with me today. It was so good to see your face and hear your voice. Okay. Our job is not to convince others of our value. And for the love of all things, holy, if you want to grow your confidence or your self-worth, stop giving other people the calculator. I learned this one the hard way, and I hope you don't choose to do the same. Mel Robbins has a quote that says, Be yourself so that the people looking for you can find you. This is true, and it works, whether we're talking about a romantic relationship, friends, clients, or careers.

Show up as the only person you can authentically be, you. If they don't appreciate, notice, value, or understand you, well, you have a choice to make. Blaze a new trail or find a new place to work that does. And this is woman's work.