301. Are you too smart to succeed in business? With Dr Rosenna Bakari

0:00There's a woman who went to Cornell at 17 years old and got her PhD. She became a psychologist. She built a career that earned her nothing but praise her entire life. Then she decided to start a business and couldn't quite get it off the ground. So she took a leadership course, aced every exercise. And at the end, the coach sat her down and said something that made her cry.

0:19Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I took this leadership class and I approached the leadership class very intellectually. And so then they said that, you know, they dropped the bomb like this. you've done some amazing things. You've gotten here based on who you are and is, and you could stop here and people would continue to give you accolades. However, you cannot get to where you say you want to go the same way that you got here and tears fell. Like it doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. Like that's just not gonna, that's not the train that you need to take. And I just cried because I felt like she put me in this hole where I felt like I was going to have to restart something.

1:03Our guest today is Dr. Rosina Bakari. She's a psychologist, an author and an empowerment expert. And her argument is uncomfortable. The skills that made you exceptional in academia, being right, working alone, winning on intellect, are almost perfectly designed to make you fail in business. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work.

1:39Today we're asking, are you too smart to succeed? Rosina has spent years studying what holds brilliant people back. And it turns out the answer isn't laziness, bad luck or the wrong market, it's ego. specifically what she calls hyper ego. And she's got seven ways to get out of it. After this short break, we'll find out why Rosina cried in that leadership class, why passion and purpose might just be as dangerous as intelligence, and the question her mentor has been asking her for 20 years. Do you want to be right or do you want to solve this problem? We'll see you in a sec. If you've ever done sales for your business, then I bet this is going to be familiar.

2:14Your pipeline looks full, activity looks great, but you're not sure which leads matter, which ones are wasting your week and which call you should have made three days ago. It can all be very confusing, Al. Very confusing. But luckily, HubSpot's prospecting agent gives you a clear way forward. It shows you who's actually ready, gives the details of the reps you need and points them towards the conversations worth having. So reps know exactly where to focus and what they're walking into. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:51Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I'm Dr. Rosina Bakari and I am an empowerment expert. I am a consultant and author and support people in leaving where they are to get where they want to go. And I'm excited to have this topic because the emphasis is on leaving where you are to get where you want to go. A lot of times people focus on the where you want to go. I focus on leaving where you are. You went from academia into entrepreneurship. And I'd imagine, and you're probably going to be too modest to say this, but from your bio, you looked like you were a pretty smart woman and you had some great successes in academia. But then you went to entrepreneurship.

3:32So is that how you discovered what the problem was with leaving stuff behind?

3:36Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I absolutely did, and pieces of it. And I've had my share of childhood trauma that I've had to work through, too. So let me take a moment and tell you that story so we have a full context, right? So I've overcome childhood trauma from being told I was mildly retarded at age seven following a seizure to being a survivor of childhood adverse experiences to being told I was gifted a year, just a year after being told I was mildly retarded. And so it has taken a lot of me substituting, I'll say, intellect for healing for a long time. Right. So it's like, oh, I'm smart. And then people start telling you you're smart.

4:24Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Oh, I'm smart. I went to Cornell University at age 17. Right. So I learned this thing that I could use to get me to the next phase, to the next step. Like, oh, just be smart. Just be smart. And people will give you things. They'll tell you things. They'll put you in places. But I never fully healed from everything, right? I'm just, but I'm smart so I can get in a lot of doors. and so I'm always thinking about what how smart do I need to be to get in the next door that just becomes a reasonable question for me how smart do I need to be to get in the next door and so when I got to the door of entrepreneurship and now I'm a psychologist right I'm a psychologist I have all this background all this experience but I'm the door is not opening I'm shoving on the door with My intellect is not opening.

5:20Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And so I took this leadership class and I approached the leadership class very intellectually, did all the statements, did everything they told me to. I was acing it, right? And at the end of the leadership class, and they're looking over like where you say you want to be and what you're doing now. And they did really exactly what I'm practicing with other people now. They looked and they said, oh, but here's how you scored on this assessment. You said that you like being alone. Oh, you said that you work well alone. You said like there were all these. And I'm like, yeah, I know. And so what is the.

6:00Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And so then they said that, you know, they dropped the bomb like this. You've done some amazing things. You've gotten here based on who you are and is and you could stop here and people would continue to give you accolades. however you cannot get to where you say you want to go the same way that you got here and tears fell and tears fell because I well I couldn't believe that someone was talking to someone like that as smart as me because you're in your mind you're like wait don't you know how smart I am and they're like we don't and then literally it's like we don't it's not brains that you need anymore.

6:43Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Like, it doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. Like, that's just not gonna, that's not the train that you need to take. You have to learn how to collaborate. You have to learn how to do outreach. You have to learn how to network. You have to learn how to ask people for what you want. And you have to figure out what it is that people want, not what it is that you want to give them. I understood nothing of what she was saying, right? I understood. And I just cried Because I felt like she put me in this hole where I felt like I was going to have to restart something. Now, when you've been through what I've been through and someone tells you to restart, that feels overwhelming.

7:27Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Because it brings to mind, like, wait, but what I did to get here is really, first of all, a facade. Like, this is the mask that I put on to get into the world. And now you're asking me to take the mask off and do something different. And that felt so heavy for me. So absolutely. And that's what she was having me do. Like, oh, wait, we had to get out of hyper ego. These are my terms now. That's not what she said. But she was asking, oh, we had to get out of hyper ego. Oh, we had to let go of some more of this silence and secrecy. Oh, we have to let go of the emotional dependency. And so that was absolutely the big, probably the beginning of reframing empowerment versus intellect.

8:15You just mentioned that, I think the phrasing was, I had all these accolades. I was, people thought I was brilliant. And then you were like, now I want to take a different direction. Why don't you just stay where you were? Because it sounded like you were, you were, you were lauded back then. You were the, you were the queen.

8:32Dr. Rosenna Bakari:It wasn't working for me. It worked until it didn't work. Right. And so then once I first started as I started a nonprofit and and that went well to some degree, but it didn't go the way that I wanted it to. Eventually, I went into for-profit work, but I wanted to create something on a mass level, right? Not all gigantic, but I wanted to create a business. I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to really share my ideas with the world, not just a few people in my community, but the world. So I really wanted to get into entrepreneurship or build a business. And I just didn't know that you couldn't do that on intellect alone.

9:24Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I've always felt like I've had different ideas. I've had to in order to overcome some of the stuff that I've had to overcome. And so I want those ideas to be out in the world. Like I love the idea of seven exits, right? I love looking at the world differently. in ways that I've had to do. And I see many, many other people in need of similar truths about letting go of what has served you. That's so difficult. And so I wanted to put ideas into the world. But you first have to convince people to listen and that you have ideas worth sharing. And I've seen it before. I've seen it even in my own family with some of my siblings who have these fantastic ideas and don't know how to enter into a world where they can share them.

10:16Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And so I didn't want to be that person who had all this knowledge and awareness and thought processing, and it just goes to the grave with me unexplored. And so I was, and keep in mind too, now I'm older, right? My kids are grown. I'm trying to figure out how to have a different impact in the world. So I've always wanted to have an impact and it just becomes limited when you don't grow internally. That impact just stays in a much smaller space than what I was willing to stay in. So I also saw entrepreneurship as part of my own continuation of my own healing journey. Like, are you really ready to live outside of yourself, right?

11:02Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Create something that you'll be responsible for putting into the world and people will see it as yours and you're willing to own it. Because I spent a lot of my life hiding in the books. Hiding in the books? Tell me more. So being behind, like I've spent a number of years, I'm married, been married for 35 years. My husband is a wonderful human being that I've shared my life with. And so it was easy for me to follow him and follow his career. One of the reasons we move so much and even travel so much. And so it was easy for me to follow his career and support him and share with, okay, so he come up with this idea.

11:51Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And then I'm like, oh, if it's, oh, can we read about it? Can we do this? Can we do that? And then we'd execute it. And so here was the growth part for me. The growth part is that, and this may be an important message for many, many wives to hear, because in some ways it seemed like I was just sort of this martyr, right? Like helping everybody else. But that's what I say. In my own healing journey, what I realized is that I wasn't just helping everyone else. I was keeping myself safe, right? Like you go, and I'll just stay back here. No one can criticize me here. No one can find me here. And so when I realized that pattern, okay, leaving behind what no longer serves you, right, when I realized that, oh, this is not just about me being a supportive wife.

12:43Dr. Rosenna Bakari:This is about me being complacent. This is about me continuing to live in silence and secrecy because if I'm back here, no one will ask me questions. There's no vulnerability here. I just use what I have and I'm good, right? And so that was a big piece of it for me. So then when I open up that book and say, okay, now I'm going to live outside of the book, that was a big learning lesson for me. Do you think that if you hadn't been described as gifted, if you hadn't, you know, got your MSc at 22, your PhD at probably 23, if you hadn't done amazing things, then your life would have taken a different direction, perhaps into entrepreneurship naturally?

13:31What do you think would have happened if you hadn't had these?

13:34Dr. Rosenna Bakari:That's tough because I didn't have a lot of access to mentors. Another thing that made this very difficult, right? So I was, my mother was a mental health worker. She did not have degrees. And so it was natural for me to say, oh, that's what my mom does. She loves it. And okay, because I really didn't have this. I remember like I have some childhood trauma I'm dealing with. I have some poverty that I'm dealing with. So I'm not a big dreamer. I'm living in survival mode for most of my life. So one of the things that I've learned about people who live in survival mode is that dreaming is not high on our priority list.

14:17Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Safety is. Right. And so in my mind, it was like, what what makes you feel safe? Oh, being a partner who's going to take charge and have these dreams for you and you can support that. And so it's difficult for me to imagine what life looks like growing up when you're not just trying to be safe. I still don't know that. I don't know that question can be answered. I know it from an academic standpoint. I don't know it from a personal standpoint. And I'm the youngest of seven, and I am the only one in my family who has gotten this far in their education and has executed entrepreneurship and sort of the golden child of the family.

15:05Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And so I've done that, though, because people were always telling me that I needed to be here. Someone made me go to Cornell. Like, I wasn't even going to go. Like someone said, wait a minute, do you know what this means? I'm like, no, I really don't know what it means. And so it was one of the high school counselors. And so people were always placing me where they thought I belonged. And so it's very different when I'm now in my 50s going for entrepreneurship, and now no one is placing me there. Like I have to figure it out on my own. And that's a whole different journey. because I have the space, like you said, I have the space to fail and I have the support to succeed.

15:57Dr. Rosenna Bakari:So what are you going to do? I don't have to do this. My husband takes good care of me. I don't have to do this. And so it's been really, really difficult to stay motivated and say, why do you keep going? I keep going because I see it not just as how I can earn a living, but I see it as how I can continue to grow internally. Let's talk about that transition then. So you've gone from being right and naturally being right in academia because you put the work in, because you read the books, because you understood, going into entrepreneurship where a lot of people who've started companies are self-confessed they will say they're dumb.

16:42But that helps them because the market is right, not you. It's like I always got this saying, say, be rich, not right. It's nothing about you being right. It's about the market. Tell me more about how that feels.

16:55Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I absolutely agree. A hundred percent. And because Entrepreneur was not the first time I ran into this issue. The first time I ran into this issue was actually during my dissertation. And again, And luckily, I had a mentor because I was trying to fight with my professors. And I had a mentor that said, do you want a PhD or do you want to be right?

17:22Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And my mentor said to me very plainly, she said, I've seen this before. I've seen you smart people never leave here or never get it done because you stay arguing about what's right. She said, I got through my PhD very easily because I simply did everything they told me to do because I wasn't in it for my ego and to figure out who was right. And once she told me that I got it, immediately I got it. And then I went down the right path. So it wasn't the first time that I heard it, but I didn't fully hear it. Right. And this particular mentor stayed in my life. And she and that's been her message to me all along.

18:07Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Like whenever I go to her, she's like, oh, like, oh, you're trying to be smart again or you're trying to be right again or or do you want to solve this problem? And and that's one of my favorite questions to my clients now, too, by the way. You want to be right or you want to or you want to solve this problem? And so when it came to the entrepreneurship stuff, trying to really get out of my own head and be in, like you said, in the market, that is just so difficult for me. I still struggle with this sometimes. I'm constantly revising, revising, revising, because it's not like you know it and then you see the whole picture.

18:47Dr. Rosenna Bakari:It's like, okay, I know this thing. then you see a little bit of the picture and you fix that and you get that then you see a little bit more of the picture and you fix that and I think people quit the smart people quit because it's mentally exhausting to constantly course correct you know we're used to taking the exam once and getting an A on it and then and then you've proved yourself it just does not work like that with entrepreneurship. You are constantly, constantly, constantly revising and getting to know your client or potential client better and their needs better. And so the work doesn't stop.

19:28Dr. Rosenna Bakari:And unless you make the work that you're doing internal, then you don't get where you're going. Like it has to be about, oh, why did you miss this, Rosina? Like, or what were you trying to do instead of this, Rosina? You know, one of the marketing people that I work with, one of the books that I had, had me call up 200 people from my phone. They asked me, how many contacts do you have in your phone? I said, over 200. They said, call up each one of them and tell them that you've just written this book and you want their support. What? Like, what? So that was huge. And I did it. And it's been one of the best experiences ever that I've had.

20:22Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Scary as heck. Scary as heck. Because for me, the scary part was, like, you know that means I'm asking someone for something, right? They're like, yes, you're explaining what it is that you're doing. And if you can't speak about that from a humble position that you're asking for support, then it's kind of like you're not ready. You're still not ready. Right. So that's what I mean. Like you do a little bit of it and it gets you this far, but it doesn't get you where you want to go. So you're always having to do a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more to get out of your own way.

21:02Dr. Rosenna Bakari:When, you know, you just like, can I just read a book or something? Ten years before this, if someone asked you to do that, what would be going through your head? What's the feelings? What's the fear of lifting that phone and calling those people? It got easier because one of the things I learned about myself is that I had helped a lot of people, you know, and so it got easier. I think out of those 200 people, there were two people that didn't want to talk to me. I honestly don't know why to this day. Like they were ready to hang up on me. I'm like, oh, I did something. I don't know what I did.

21:38Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Because most of these people I had not spoken to in five years. And I was still going back and saying, hey, you know, I have this book coming out. This is what it's about. And when it comes out, I'd love for you to support it. Most people I had, I mean, I had some really great conversations. People were like, oh, absolutely. I remember when I was here and you told me this or you spent this time with me. And so that was really good for me. That helped me a lot. Maybe a hundred of those people, no, maybe 70 of those people actually bought the book. But the other ones were still happy to have the conversation with me.

22:16Dr. Rosenna Bakari:right and so that was that was huge for me that gave me a lot of confidence in the end but every day I think I was I was I committed to calling like 20 people a day for however long that took you know so it was over a period of time but that gave me a lot of a lot of confidence to do what I was doing. If you're like me and you hate all this workaholic hustle nonsense on the socials and somebody's getting up at 3am to drink butter and here is a brand new podcast that i know if you're like me and you hate all this workaholic hustle nonsense that's all over the socials you know that dude who's getting up at like 3am to drink butter well here is a brand new podcast that i know you will love it is called seven day weekend and is of course brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals where all good podcasts live.

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23:52So let's go back to someone who's listening who wants to start a business and wants to be a founder, wants to get into entrepreneurship. They are insanely clever, right? Like you were. They're going to move into a world where there's no exams. And in fact, the best thing about the exam is that you can cheat on the exam and it's fine. Or if you don't like the exam, you go and do a different exam. So it's such an unstructured world, entrepreneurship. You're coming from quite a structured, you get A on this exam, you're a genius. What is it they have to leave behind?

24:28Dr. Rosenna Bakari:I think what everybody, no matter where you fall on, how you see yourself as smart in the world, everyone to be successful has to consider leaving behind their ego. What does it mean for you to hear no? Sometimes it's not about I think I'm smart. Sometimes it's about I'm just the best and everybody's told me I'm the best. Maybe I was a sports person. Maybe I was the best at something, right? And you haven't been told no a whole lot in your life, right? Maybe you're the oldest child and you're used to running things and telling people what to do and how it's going to be. For whatever reason, everybody has to check their ego in order to succeed and ask, how is my ego going to get in my way?

25:20Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Is it because when I hear too many rejections, I'm going to turn back? How many rejections am I allowed to hear? I've seen other people do this exercise where, and I've done this a little, I've never been successful at it, where you go and look for rejections. this isn't actually, have you heard of that, the activity? Like you literally go out and ask people for things that they're not likely to give you just to get a sense of rejection. I've done that. I think I got to two and like, and gave up. Like, like you intentionally go out and ask people for things. So, but is it your rejection? Is it the lack of clarity?

26:01Dr. Rosenna Bakari:Because there's not a lot of clarity in it. But that's your ego telling you to protect yourself because you don't want to see the failure come. So we start expecting family members or friends to contribute what they never promised to contribute, right? Or is it that you're not going to ask for help when you need it? You're trying to do it all on your own. How is your ego going to show up in your effort for in pursuit of entrepreneurship. I mean, it's going to take some internal work. How is your ego? So when things are not going my way still, still when things aren't going my way, the first thing I do is check my ego and go, how am I getting in my own way?