Confidence Classic: Step Into Your Power and Break Free from Self-Imposed Limits with Iman Oubou

0:00Here's something most small business owners don't want to think about. What happens when something goes wrong? A customer slips, a shipment gets lost, a tool breaks, or someone gets hurt. You can lose thousands overnight. And most people only realize they need insurance after it's too late. That's why I like what Next Insurance is doing. They make getting business insurance as easy as ordering lunch online. You answer a few quick questions and Next figures out what you need. And just like that, you're covered. No phone calls, no headaches, no BS. Just fast, affordable coverage that actually protects you when things go sideways.

0:32Don't wait for a problem to remind you you're uncovered. Policies start as low as$29 a month. Get protected in minutes at nextinsurance.com. That's N-E-X-T insurance.com. I had never really explored my own relationship with power until I was in a position of not having any power at all. And that's with these investor meetings. And so at that point, for me, instead of actually taking a step back during those meetings or after those meetings and figuring out what went wrong and how can I claim that power back, I played the victim and realized, okay, there's nothing I can do. Instead of me taking control of the role I play in changing my circumstances, I dwelled more and more and more into becoming more of a victim as opposed to a change agent in my own life.

1:19Let's make sure that you know and you're self-aware of your own relationship with each of these themes. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, We are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to, so these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back.

1:55I'm so excited for you today. It's so rare I have one of my real friends on the show. But today, Aman Ubu, she's an American entrepreneur, author, published scientist, and national beauty pageant winner. We're going to get into that, so if you're cringing right now, don't. She won the title of Miss New York United States and was second runner-up at the 2015 Miss United States pageant. Aman was awarded the Women's Advocate of the Year Award in 2019 in Dubai and has been featured in Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, Fortune, Vogue, everything. She's founder of Sway Media, leading publishing platform aimed at championing female thought leadership by providing access to editorial and writing support, as well as a supportive community of like-minded women.

2:40I mean, I'm going to go on and on about her, but I have to tell you, she was named one of the female entrepreneurs to watch in 2018 by CIO Magazine. Same year, Aman was a keynote speaker at Harvard and MIT. She was a first ever face of Morocco ambassador, a new initiative uplifting female voices in Morocco and the Middle East. And she was also part of the first all female judge panel at Miss Universe 2018 and judged Miss Teen USA, Miss Earth USA and other state pageants. And now she is the author of The Glass Ledge. Aman, thank you so much for being here today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to finally be doing this podcast.

3:19I remember how much fun we had when you were on my podcast a couple years ago. So this is going to be fun. Oh my gosh. All right. So let's get started. And I want to jump into the pageant thing first, because for me, I used to be one of those people that would be like, oh, she's a pageant person. Oh, how ridiculous. You know, oh, she's too pretty, too perfect. That's such BS. Putting wrong emphasis on looks. That's what I used to, you know, wrongly think until you became my friend. So can you tell us a little bit about the pageant life and what pageants really mean and why they are so positive and impactful?

3:56Yeah, I was one of those people that thought the exact same thing. And honestly, I only went into it because my mom pushed me into, quote unquote, getting more in touch with my feminine side. So I kind of, you know, had to please her at that time. And, you know, I went along with it. She went through so much trouble to tie me up and I was accepted. So I was like, fine, I'll try this out. And I had the exact same perspective as many people, you know, it's shallow, a bunch of pretty girls walking around on stage. It's not very substantive, but I tell you, it was a very surprising and shocking experience for me because I had never really felt so empowered to be the best version of myself until I competed in my first beauty pageant back in Colorado in 2013.

4:42And that was also my very first time encountering this environment where women are supportive of each other, even though they're competing for the exact same thing at that same time. And up until then, I was obviously in college. I never even dared to rush for a sorority or even have a lot of girlfriends around me because I just never felt that kind of support system from the girlfriends I had prior to that. I was never a girl's girl. And I just was terrified of being like in a room full of beautiful, competitive and smart women because I would just get insecure right away. But there was something very different about being part of the pageant world, because I think you are also trained to show up as a different version of yourself.

5:29one that is secure with herself, self-assured, wants to see other women succeed, someone who also knows who they are and are very self-aware and they know what their values are, what they would want to do with that title, how are they going to show up as a change agent in the community if they do get that title. All of this stuff isn't really talked about enough when we address pageantry. And I think it's a little bit of the media's fault, but also it is what we're shown on TV. On TV, the competition is mostly about how you show up on stage, how you look, your fitness, your body type, and then your gown.

6:06And then there is that one stage question that is often asked and a lot of women sometimes feel the pressure and it's not the best answer you would expect. But you have to understand that's a very nerve wracking position to be in. So it's not a reflection of the person's intellect. You know, I think anyone going up on that stage, especially if they haven't done it often, would sometimes mess up. But I think for me, it was what I fell in love with the most about pageantry and outside of just competing and wanting to win because I love winning is of course, changing myself and bettering myself and having something to look forward to that I can showcase my best version that I worked for for so long.

6:49Oh, it's so true. And because of our friendship and because of your support, I ended up judging one of these contests. And it was an incredible experience learning how hard these women were working, number one, how they were all supporting one another, the same, you know, that you just described to us. And it was such a powerful and positive experience. So yet again, you know, just stereotyping the way all of us do in some way. It's so fun to open your eyes to the possibility that something is very different. And I'm really grateful that you did that for me. So thank you. And it's funny to hear you talk about a time in your life where you didn't have supportive women around you when you've built so much of your success around supporting other women.

7:30And that's really how you and I came together. So can you talk us through how that journey changed for you from being one of you kind of out there on your own to you building community around supporting others? pageantry really was the vehicle for me to realize that I do want to build some kind of platform that brings women together. And when I won the title of Miss New York U.S. in 2015, you know, you usually pick a platform to have as a title holder. And for me at the time, I chose women empowerment and women's entrepreneurship. And so that's, again, why I launched a podcast shortly after to really be able to bring those stories to light and really tell stories that weren't necessarily prioritized by mainstream media, but they were important and inspiring the next generation of young women who might be feeling a little lost, which I was at the time.

8:18You know, I think when I won Miss New York in 2015, I also was a science communication specialist. I was a scientist. That was my day job. And to me, I was going to live in this double life a little bit because by day, I'm like this nerdy scientist who's also like helping all this biotech emerging startups to translate their technology and their science into words people without a science background can understand and then by night I'm like doing appearances on the red carpet with Vera Wang and all these celebrities and things and it's just like people look at me like wait you're a scientist that's your job and you're Miss New York how come like what's the connection here and I just I never really expected for people to be that surprised by the multidimensional facade I had.

9:03And it's like, oh, just because I'm a scientist, I can also be a Miss New York or a title holder. But I think, you know, people think that if you're doing pageants, then you automatically are a model or do you want to be in entertainment, which is not always the case, especially not today anymore. But prior to pageantry, I didn't really have the women's support. I mean, in college, even growing up, I don't think that I ever was able to build healthy friendships with girls or young women. I'm not really sure what it was. Maybe it was also insecurities that I was struggling with that I, you know, I'm now learning how to process properly and overcome.

9:37But the platform that pageantry gave me was ultimately what led me to kind of build up on that and create kind of a similar world to what I experienced in pageantry. but in the media, in a platform like Sway, where those stories come together in one, under one roof. Because I think when I was first kind of navigating the pageant world, what I loved the most is hearing other women's stories that were competing with me. And that wasn't something that made me insecure. If anything, that was something that made me empowered and excited. I was like, wow, I'm in the same room as all these awesome women.

10:10So that means that I also, I'm awesome. Like, you know, it's kind of being surrounded by great women who also want to see you succeed. I'm like, I don't see that. How do I replicate this experience in the real world? Because when I was in STEM, it was mostly men. It was a very male dominated world, you know, and I didn't really experience that kind of women's support in my day job. So ultimately, my goal with Sway was a little bit selfish. And with the podcast is, I love this feeling, how can I continue replicating it even outside of the pageant world, even after I'm retired from the pageant world.

10:44I want to continue having this family of women around me that continue to support me and also show me what's possible. And so that's ultimately what I ended up doing. And again, meeting women like yourself. And I was a little bit surprised too, that it was met with a lot of excitement because I think my first initial instinct was that, you know, not a lot of women want to come together and help each other out, you know, and this was, you know, 2014, 2015, A little pre-Me Too movement, pre-women's movement, but I was excited to see that maybe I created that platform in the right time as we were all kind of taking our voices higher and higher and elevating each other, whether in the workplace or in personal lives.

11:25And it was just the perfect timing. Meet a different guest each week. Confidence creator. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1 ,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way.

12:07Build your business identity fast with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free resources, forms, and step-by-step guides without even creating an account. Sign up for a free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer-drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, builds a sale, and more all at no cost. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Learn how to build a professional website, what annual filings your business needs to stay in good standing, and simple explanations of complicated business laws. With Northwest, privacy is automatic.

12:40They never sell your data and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence free. If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another meditation app. Takayatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days.

13:25Takayatry is 100 % online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Unlike therapy-only apps, Takayatry is psychiatry. That means you're seeing a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All their 600 plus clinicians are in network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out of network fees. You'll meet with an experienced licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and can prescribe medication when it's right for you.

14:11Your care stays consistent and evidence-based. Head to talkiatry.com slash confidence and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkiatry.com slash confidence to get matched in minutes. I ask you to try to find your passion. Share with us something that I'm very familiar with, which is some of the challenges that you dealt with in launching Sway and growing Sway. I think the biggest challenge was just access to resources. Obviously, I was very lucky to have a lot of the initial women in my network invest in the opportunity and wanting to be part of it and help me at the pre-seed level.

14:57But again, those checks were smaller and only can go as far. So when I was getting ready to raise my official seed around like a normal startup, especially with all the traction we were getting and the brand we built and the community that's around it, and also the mission that we really set for ourselves, I didn't really think that we would have that much of a hard time getting investors to be excited about the opportunity because also remember at the time, a lot more VCs and investors were committing to investing in more women forward, more women driven and female forward initiatives. So I was like, perfect, great timing.

15:34I have it all, let's do this. To this day, it still has been challenging for me as a founder and just for the company to really land that big seed funding that would really make us just worry about the operations and the growth as opposed to being scrappy, that scrappy startup we've always been. And a lot of the time for me personally going to investor meetings as a young female founder, at the time when I started first fundraising, I was like 24, 25 and on the heels of my beauty pageant success, that didn't really help. A lot of the investors were men and, you know, much older. And I think kind of with the outdated, preconceived notions of person like me is capable of or not capable of in that case.

16:28And so I was met with a lot of, you know, inappropriate comments. The focus was more on, on my appearance. and sometimes when I try to tone that down because of the previous comments I've gotten, people be like, wait, you showed up in flats today? Why? Like, that's not okay, you know? So it was always like a comment around what I'm wearing, what I look like, the fact that I'm a dorm room is New York and it's not a good thing because people can't take me seriously. It was a lot of noise that I was not prepared for because all I was trying to do is, here's a great business, the opportunity is here, the number we're here, that's all we need to talk about.

17:07Why are we distracted by other things that don't have anything to do with what I'm here for? You know, don't ask me out for dinner. Let's talk about this business deal at the conference room we're in right now. So it was a very, and you know, I was, yeah, I didn't know how to really react to that. And I think what ended up happening, and this is again, what I talk about at the beginning of the book is that I internalized a lot of that. That became my truth. That became my narrative. I became kind of also defensive and aggressive and just angry. And that's not really my nature. I was already like before I would even go to meetings, I would anticipate the frustration, you know, the comments that are going to be met with.

17:49So it was just, I think it affected me a lot more than I had realized at the time. And ultimately that led me to get in my own way and kind of start adapting strategies and behaviors that didn't necessarily help me much because I was scared of this notion of power imbalance. And I just was like, I'm not good enough. I don't think I'm going to be ever taken seriously. It was just, you know, all in my head at that point, even when I had some positive comments and stuff, it was hard for me to believe that. And it was hard for me to even visualize what success looked like anymore, because I was so sucked into this echo chamber of victimhood.

18:33And so that was really challenging. And I think it took a lot of self work for me and a lot of almost cultivating an uncomfortable sense of accountability to overcome that stage I was in and almost like rebuild myself from the inside out to become this new woman before I go out there and set up to continue growing my business and rebuilding it in a much healthier way. So of course I ended up focusing on building my business as opposed to go and raising money, which maybe that was a good thing for me as well as being able to really, or being forced to be more creative and more scrappy to actually generate revenue as opposed to always chasing funding, which we were able to do.

19:15And then also it was something that pushed me to be more creative and more focused on the business itself, as opposed to constant outside validation from investors. Why in the world would you then want to write a book? I'm so curious about this. Look, I've always wanted to write a book. I think everybody wants that. But I was lucky in the sense that when I was going through this time, tough time, rock bottom, I call it, there was an article about me on Forbes about rejection and especially like being part of the female founders that struggle to really get access to that funding, you know, only 2 % of venture capital funding goes to women.

19:52So it's a very low number. So I'm not the only one. And I know a lot of women are going through it as well to this day. So there was an article that I was mentioned in and an agent saw that and there, she reached out to me and you'll love this. Cause she's like, why don't you think about writing a book about confidence? And you know, she reached that to me at my rock bottom. I've been like, I had zero confidence at the time. I'm like me, a confident. No, I'm like, plus I'm like, I know my friend, she's much better at this. And like, I'll leave her be the expert at confidence because she truly is the confidence queen.

20:25But I'm like, I'm open to writing a book, but confidence, probably not the subject I'm an expert in. I could write as part of the book, but it's not all. And so what I told her was, look, I have probably a lot of self-work to do myself before I think I'm in a good place to write a book or give advice to other women, because I myself right now, I'm struggling a little bit to find my way out, out of this devastating, I would say fail at the time, but I know I'm going to get out of it. And I feel like that's going to be a much better story to tell because I know I'm going to uncover a lot of lessons along the way of rebuilding myself and rebuilding this business in a way that's sustainable.

21:01And maybe we'll check back in a couple years and then see if there is a story there, if I made it out alive and maybe there's some lessons to share. And so, yeah, that's exactly what happened in 2020. We kind of reconnected and we talked a little bit about my journey leading up from the moment she reached out to the moment we reconnected. And I told her about just what happened and all the kind of tactics and things I had to unlearn and learn along the way to be in a better position to build my business and not let the outside world and external barriers become kind of a burden on who I am. And that's kind of how the book really conceptualized.

21:39So we talked a lot about how I was constantly trying to break glass ceilings. And that was kind of like my journey. I was out there trying to break glass but I didn't realize that I was also teetering on a glass ledge, which to me is a representation of self-imposed glass ceilings. And I'm like, that's what I really want to talk about more in the book and just what I want my message to be because I had realized that during my fight for women empowerment, I had actually became disempowered myself. And a lot of that was because of the self-imposed glass ceilings I was putting in place for myself without really realizing it.

22:16And that's really what I want to shine the light on. And that's how the book came about. Wow, so it's so full circle. I love that idea of that real glass ceiling being the one that we've put on ourselves. It's so accurate, number one, and not talked about very much. So share with us some of those lessons that readers will learn from The Glass Ledge. Yeah, so I think the way I structured the book is in 10 chapters. Each chapter has its own theme that I kind of dive deeper and using my own personal experience. And some of the examples are power, likability, appearance, which talks about also relating to both discrimination and also coming from a world of pageants, expertise, confidence, which I definitely, you're part of it as well.

23:05Conflict. Conflict is a big one for me because I just didn't know how to address conflicts and I would shy away from it and run away from it as opposed to being comfortable with that concept and finding my balance with it. And then the same thing. I think a lot of the chapters that I, you know, the way I outlined the chapter is not to go one way or another, but rather figuring out what your balance is when it comes to that theme. So power, for example, I have never really explored my own relationship with power until I was in a position of not having any power at all. And that's with these investor meetings.

23:37And so at that point, for me, instead of actually taking a step back during those meetings or after those meetings and figuring out what went wrong and how can I claim that power back, I just kind of played the victim and realize, okay, there's nothing I can do. You know, the world is unfair. It's unfair that they treat me that way, which is true. It's unfair, but instead of me taking control of the role I play in changing my circumstances, I kind of dwelled more and more and more into becoming more of a victim as opposed to a change agent in my own life. And so that's kind of what I make sure in each chapter is let's make sure that you know, and you're self-aware of your own relationship with each of these themes.

24:17Same thing with likability, right? I think for me, when I started a company at such a young age, my biggest thing was to be liked by my employees, by my community, by my investors, instead of actually putting my foot down when I needed to and demand respect. And so my relationship and my understanding of the theme of likability wasn't really right. And it wasn't really well explored. And I didn't even know anything about that. So I make sure that you're aware of how you act and why you act the way you do so that you're able to know how to balance your relationship with each of these themes. And really kind of, you know, sometimes you need to be liked, sometimes you don't need to be liked.

24:58So at what point do you really know what strategies to adopt? So that's really what I wanted to make sure is not telling you what to do and how to act in certain situations, but giving you the tools to know how to change your situation faster than the outside world can change for you in regards to all these themes. That's so funny. I remember when I was young in business, I was the opposite of you. I did not want to be liked. I wanted to be respected. And so I went the polar opposite way, which was not the right way to go. But I was so tough and hard on people and created such concrete boundaries because I was so fearful that if they got to really know me or see that I am caring or that they'd want to take advantage of me or they wouldn't respect me.

25:40Right. And I went off the rails the other way, which again, didn't benefit me. And in business specifically, until you find that balance of, you know, showing who you really are and that vulnerability coupled with boundaries and having a healthy respect for yourself and the job that you do and commanding that respect and culture that you're looking for in business. It definitely is a dance where many of us can fall. That's why I'm all about like the balance. That's why I call it the glasses and balancing on the glass ledge because everything in life, every issue that we deal with, there is not one way or another that's always going to work in every situation.

26:19For example, my femininity, right? Like I was either not feminine. I was a tomboy growing up or then with the beauty pageant was like, just like all feminine. And I would just be that. And then when people started kind of making kind of comments and appropriate comments about just my appearance and femininity, I completely suppressed that. And I just left it alone. And I'm like, no, but you can use your femininity as a tool, you know, in the right situations, in the right way, if you find that balance of how you explore your relationship with your femininity. And, you know, there are times where my masculine side has to step in.