Managing Your Generosity to Prevent Burnout with Saleema Vellani

Catherine A. Wood 17:53
Salima, I feel like we’ve been attempting to record this conversation for maybe years now, because I think you were one of the people in my life who told me I should start a podcast before I was ready. So, so honored to have you with me today. Excited to have you here.

Saleema Vellani 18:15
Thank you. Thanks for having me on your show.

Catherine A. Wood 18:17
I am I feel like this is going to be such a wonderful conversation, because we have so many years of knowing one another and kind of watching each other’s journeys at different chapters of the way. And I’m really excited to hear more about yours, the ones that I kind of was a closer witness to when we both lived in DC, and since myself having moved into Boston, all the ones that I don’t know so intimately. So by way of getting us started, I’d love for you to share your pronouns, and I’d love for you to introduce yourself by way of your story. I think we always learn best through stories.

Saleema Vellani 18:53
Sure, thank you. So Hi everyone. My name is Salima halani. I my pronouns, she, her, hers, and I’m originally from Canada, from Toronto. Live in Washington, DC, which is where I met Kat, which is now home for me, after living around the world, between Brazil, Italy, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and I speak a bunch of languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and I just very much feel like a world citizen that has really seen a lot, lived a lot in different places, different cultures. And for me, I would say my life mission is to really help entrepreneurs. Specifically. I mean, I’m really drawn to women. I help all sorts of entrepreneurs, regardless of gender, but essentially, people who are really trying to make an impact, who are really trying to feel energized by what they do, and feel like they’re really living their purpose, and really want to make an impact on other people and make a few $100,000 a year while doing that, and monetize their value and productize themselves, and essentially have a portfolio career business and so that they could, because they’re passionate about different things. Things. How can we monetize and package and price the different things that we love and that we’re good at so that we can truly just be ourselves, authentically, be creative and live the lives that we want?

Catherine A. Wood 20:12
I love that I mean, I’m just appreciating some of the like bites of wisdom that you’ve offered me and like pushed me to consider over the years, because we’ve known each other for going on almost eight years now. And you know, I remember you telling me that I need to, gosh, I need to facilitate more. I need to work on my public speaking. We you and I have talked so much about systems, about the podcast, about writing a book, and it’s been fun to kind of see the ways in which you just naturally mentor people and offer support and connections and introductions, and then the way you’ve really leveraged that into your business model, which is something I’m really excited to dive in with you today, because I feel like I I saw your business kind of in the early years, and it’s kind of exploded and flopped, and it sounds like grown again since then, and it’s been really like such a honor to witness on the sidelines. And I don’t think everyone has done a lot of the personal growth work that folks like you and I have done in order to be able to share and willing to share about the journey. So maybe we’ll, just maybe we’ll start there. Like, I’d love to hear, I’d love to hear from your perspective, like, what was your growth journey, like, from five to seven figures, like, what’s it been? Like, yeah,

Saleema Vellani 21:44
thanks for sharing. And yeah, I have a lot of respect for you, because it’s just been great seeing you grow and just watching each other, even from a distance or the sidelines, it’s just been really empowering and inspiring. So thanks for doing the work that you do. I feel like we’re on this journey together. But, yeah, the growth journey interesting. I think we often think of it like, we think about it in like, chronologically, right? But really, when the business is very much you, or you are the product, or you, the business can’t exist without exist without you, because it’s very much aligned with who you are and your purpose and your values. For me, I would say I was scraping around the bottom for a very long time before I started my current company, I was like a five figure business for a long time because I just didn’t know how to I didn’t know how how to do what I did. When I was younger, I had a lot of success. When I was 2223 started a translation business in Italy just online out of a crisis I was I didn’t even know it was a business. I didn’t even know it was called entrepreneurship. There was no community of sorts I was in. I didn’t know anything about that. So when I started my my my journey, it was because I graduated into a crisis, and I just didn’t know what to do, other than use the skills and resources that had, which were languages and So way back then, you know, we went from zero to six figures within a few months, which was really interesting, because it was just about figuring out, how do we help people with the market, you know, being adaptive to the market, and understanding the trends and where we could be unique, and how do we, you know, bring in our unique value proposition and have a secret sauce and all of that. And I wasn’t really thinking about it in those terms back then, because I was just doing and acting on instinct and very much a visionary without knowing that that’s who I was or who I was going to become. And so interestingly, I had a lot of success when I was younger, and then when I moved to the US to go to graduate school and get the job, the dream job that I had dreamt about getting, and my parents had pushed me to, you know, get a stable job, and that really wasn’t my I didn’t know that that was not going to be my path. I ended up learning about entrepreneurship and realizing how how popular and how trendy and how cool it was here in the US, and that’s when I started learning a lot more about entrepreneurship. I started teaching entrepreneurship, but for many, many, many years, probably close to a probably close to a decade, I didn’t know how to really do it again. And so it was like, how did I do this when I was younger, and now, with all this education and experience, how come I can’t do it again, and how come I’m teaching it to other people, but it’s not aligning with me, because I’m not doing it, and I’m not as successful as I used to be, and so that I struggled with for many years, and that’s when I met you. Kat. Was like, I was like, how did I do it before? How am I teaching it and how, why can’t I do it again? And it was really hard. And I think ultimately, as you said, there’s a lot of personal work, that it’s a lot of mindset work, that you have to do a lot of work on yourself, and that’s why my book is called innovation starts with i It’s very much about doing that self innovation work. Because you, if your business is very much you and or you’re doing a business where it’s like your knowledge or your the service, or whatever, you’re the person that’s executing it very much has to align with you. But if you’re not evolving, or you’re not you. Investing in yourself to in a way that’s helping you evolve so you can provide more value and you can, you know, you can actually grow, and your business will grow because you’re growing. Your business can’t grow if you’re not growing. And so for many, many years, I was doing bits and pieces, and I was investing in myself a little bit and trying to grow here and there, but not now. I really, truly know what it means to invest in oneself and to really grow. I didn’t know that back then, and so I was scraping around the bottom. You know, they always say when you go down, you gotta go back up. But for me, I was at the bottom for a very long time, and many of you probably know what that feels like when you’re just like, I feel like I’m in a hole. It’s like you’ve made some strides, but like, I still feel like I’m not where I need to be. And so then I had to sort of do a reset and reevaluate my life. And at that point, it was covid happened. There was just everyone was reinventing themselves. I was already writing a book on reinvention, and that’s what I really, you know, decided not to keep doing what I was doing because I got some advice that, hey, like, it doesn’t seem to make sense from a business model standpoint. I used to do a lot of innovation work and design thinking workshops. And the the industry had changed and become saturated it. It just was not as as I wasn’t as sticky as I used to be in terms of, like, in demand, because it just became so saturated. And things go in and out of trends, right? And so the market had shifted and and it was actually interesting, Kat, because I just remembered that one thing I did it. I didn’t consider it market research at the time, but I had my assistant at the time reach out to you and some of my friends and be like, hey. Like, what is Salima really good at? What would you hire her for? Pay her for? And, like, what do you like? Just tell me more about, like, how you see Salima. And it was interesting because I started to to just, I was like, I can’t do this all myself, and I need somebody to, like, go and find out more information about me, because I had a lot of blinders on, and I thought that I needed to be this person. I thought that I had I was good at this. I thought I was the design thinking expert and and whatever, and I had to work with organizations, and that’s just the way it had to be. But after getting insights from you and some of my friends, my assistant had come back to me and said, Salima, like no one mentioned that they’d hire you for design thinking. No one said that they would, you know, bring you on for innovation work. They said that, you know, they love the way that you built a personal brand. They love the way you engage and build community. They’re impressive you’re getting a TEDx talk or growing your LinkedIn platform. Or they love the entrepreneur in you and like, how you’re able to to really give great advice. And it was like, really. I was like, you can’t make money off of entrepreneurs. Come on, like, this is not going to work. And so for a while, I kind of was like, No, this is not going to work. And I think Kat, you were in that space starting out as well, and there were many people trying to do that. And I was like, I don’t think this can work like this, just it’s not scalable. And finally, I was like, You know what, Salima, if you don’t, if you’re going to, you know you can’t just do this yourself. It’s a lonely journey, and most entrepreneurs fail because they think that you know their brilliance got them here, and they think that they’re going to take themselves there. But no, it’s your team that’s going to help empower you. Need to really have a team that’s going to help you see beyond where you want to go and and help you get to where you want to go. And it was listening to the advice from my assistant and a couple other people who were like, Salima, like, you should help entrepreneurs. And don’t come to corporate. Don’t do whatever you’re doing, like help entrepreneurs. That’s when I decided to really make that work. And I said, You know what? I’m going to trust that this is like, I’m passionate about this. This this is what I meant to do. I’m going to do it, and it will sort itself out. And I think from there, when I really followed my gut and my intuition, and thank you for asking that, because I feel like I haven’t talked, I haven’t really told the story being where I am now. I’ve told it from the earlier stages of when I started out. But, yeah, I didn’t know that it was going to blow up into a seven figure business. I didn’t know that it was going to get to this point this fast. I didn’t know that just following my intuition and but again, it’s not just that. There’s a lot of other things, but essentially, really following what I felt I needed to do and my purpose. It would all manifest in it, and it did manifest in many ways beautifully, but also you really want to. There’s a lot of things that you need to know or think about as an entrepreneur, because it can’t just be. It’s not just I’m a I could be a bit Woo, woo, and I can be a fairly spiritual person. But it’s not just about manifesting. Like you actually have to know how to lead a business and know what your strengths are, know what you really, really suck at, like, what are your weaknesses? And making sure that you fill those gaps with people that can fill those weaknesses. And so, yeah, it was just a really interesting journey that I went on, because we grew a lot faster the goals that we had for end of 2024 we reached them in end of 2022 and it was beautiful. The growth was beautiful. We celebrated. We hosted a huge party. We I had like 60 people. We went from 10 people to 60 people on the team. It looked great, but inside, I didn’t see that. The foundation wasn’t there. The systems weren’t set up. The team wasn’t the you know, it wasn’t the right team that I needed to take the business to where I needed to go. I wasn’t the right leader. I. Didn’t know how to lead that team. I didn’t know how to show up and and really empower, inspire and give feedback to people. Like, there were just a lot of things that I was I didn’t know how to grow the people. And so ultimately, you know, we grew, but we also fell right back down, like, flat, and it was really hard, because I didn’t have at a lot of single points of failure. I had burnt out. I had a crisis that went on for very long time, for about a year, where just a lot of things failed and a lot of just a lot of problems all around because we grew too fast, and some people saw that coming, but I was too optimistic and too idealist, thinking that the universe will take care of me, and it just didn’t happen that way. So I it, I try to set everything up, but again, I see things so differently now, having been through that journey. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was a pretty tough time. I didn’t know what burnout was until I experienced it mentally health, like my physical feeling of like, feeling burnt out, the stress in my shoulders, like the the feelings of like, just like I don’t want to exist anymore because I just can’t handle this, like I don’t want to live anymore, like there were some really dark times, and it’s lonely. It’s so lonely because nobody can understand what you’re going through, and you have to show you feel like you have to show up a certain way to your team. You feel like you have to show up a certain way to your client. But deep inside, I was broken, and this is the first time I’m sort of telling people about this publicly. But yeah, it’s it took me a very long time to recover, and I still feel like I’m still recovering from some of it. So, yeah,

Catherine A. Wood 31:33
oh, man, um, oh man, my like, heart is going out to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to support you along that way, I feel like I wish I had, I had known, and I think that we often say that right it’s like to our peers and colleagues when we’re like going through it, it feels so freaking lonely and and you know what? I know so many people who have shared similar experiences, like yours, who grew too fast, who, like, just didn’t know what they were doing, who felt like this pressure to keep face and like be the leader that they thought they were expected to be, versus like, you know, just be honest and get the like sufficient support and well Being support to like, interrupt that downward spiral. So I I so appreciate you sharing that, because I know so many of our listeners will relate. And something I was just appreciating as you were sharing now, we don’t record the videos for episodes. It’s just audio. But you were smiling. There was so much of it like and for me, sometimes I feel like we smile as a way to like, bypass our feelings. But when I was noticing you share it like it just the thing that I really was present to is how much you’ve done your work to make peace with your journey and learn from your journey. And like, say they not that I’ve been saying that all week, but like, you can tell, right? Like you can tell that you’ve done the work to to learn from the experience and and I guess some of the learnings that I hear that maybe we can expand upon. Like, I love that, I love that practice that your assistant did with us. That’s like the first lesson I offer in my book, like, oh, an invitation to go out and ask your network, like, where they can see you next, what opportunities they would see you thriving in, because it’s really vulnerable, and I love that you had someone else do it right? It’s like for those of us who don’t want to do it for ourselves, we can have our team do it, and it’s so risky, like being willing to be wrong right, like being willing to just acknowledge that that you’re wrong and that we all screw up and and own that humbly and allow ourselves to be contributed to and supported, but and the other thing that I really loved is like, we get to be wrong, and we also get to stand fast in our truth. And like I heard you say that you loved working like you thought you needed to work with corporations, and it sounds like there was a part of you that loved working with entrepreneurs and that that stuck out for me because that the same is true for me. Like everyone told me, I needed to work B to C, work with corporations, work with companies, and I’ve just never wanted that for myself or a company. I love working with individuals, and I also love when the individual reaches out rather than the company, because there’s so much more personal investment when someone is like, hey, like, I have a vision for how I want my leadership or my company to look different, versus like, Hey, here’s my senior manager. She really needs some executive coaching, right? It’s like a totally different conversation. Yeah, so I guess those are some of the lessons that that I’m hearing, but I’d love for maybe you to expand upon some of those lessons, because it sounds like you know you you are really clear. There’s the whole mindset regime of lessons, but then there’s the strategic and tactical, and you speak about both often. And I always appreciate the way you speak about it, because you’re like, it is not just the manifesting and woo, woo people like you actually need to know what you’re talking about and do your market research and, like, understand the business strategy. So maybe we can dive in a little bit more there.

Saleema Vellani 35:41
Yeah, for sure. Let’s do it. And thank you for noticing that. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve been through. It took a lot longer to recover. I think I’m like, 80 85% recovered, um, yeah, like some things I lost. I chronically, like, I’m I have some issues because of that, that unfortunately, like, I’m going to live with now, which I had signs and people tell me, watch out for your health. And I was like, I put my health on the back burner. And so yeah, my voice changed, my body, my certain issues I have now because of the burnout. And I just want to say, like, yeah, it’s not worth growing that fast to like, at the end of the day, what’s life without health, right? What’s life if you’re not going to be alive or you’re sick? Like, what’s the point of doing this, right? Like, did we not sign up to do a business because it enables us freedom, because it gives us flexibility, because, because we can take care of ourselves more, right? And so it’s so interesting that, like, I just grew the business to a point, a level that I couldn’t handle, and it set me back, business wise and personally. And I just want to say that it’s not worth that, like, if you can avoid doing that, I just would not want anyone to go through that. Like, I’ve lost my mom, I’ve gone through a lot, I’ve been divorced. I’ve gone through a lot in my life. I I’m like, an expert at reinvention, right? Like I talk about it, that’s what my book’s about. But I had never gone through as something as difficult as what I went through when I went through that crisis. Like there was nothing as bad as that. And so I just want to say that, like it takes a lot longer to recover, and what you want to do is try to avoid getting into a situation like that by being really proactive and smart about how you want to grow your business. What do you really want for yourself? What do you really need, and what, how do you want this journey to look like? And I know that a lot of us who are spiritual, we’re like, well, it will, yeah, it will go its own way. I’m going to go with the flow. It’s going to be what it’s meant to be. But like, honestly, you also have to have the business strategy hat onto and and feel free, yeah, we can talk more about that.

Catherine A. Wood 37:38
Well, I appreciate you naming that. Like I know before we hit record, you were like, but I just want to make sure we talk about the hard points. Like we can totally talk about my success journey and like it wasn’t without hardship. I had been intending to speak about that after the lessons learned. But if you feel it feels like maybe the burnout kind of led to the lessons. So maybe we should, maybe we should start here. Sure what felt different about this? Like it sounds like this experience of breakdown was distinct from some of the others that you mentioned. What made this one? What made this one so hard.

Saleema Vellani 38:23
I would say this one was hard, because when you feel like things are going really, really well, you often see yourself as like, Okay, this is going really well, like, I have enough doing well that, like, nothing bad can happen to set me back. Or, like, if something were to happen, it might set me back a little bit, but it can’t set me back that far. And I think it’s that assumption we have when things are going really well, that we don’t need to do that work, or we don’t need to invest more in ourselves or in our business, or that we have every the status quo is risk free, and it’s going to just everything’s going to be fine. I’ve set things up in theory. It seems to be, it has to work, and I think we have to assume that, first off, there’s a lot of things that we cannot control, and we just have to relinquish that control. What’s meant to be, maybe meant to be. But sure, there are, I do believe that there’s things that you can make better decisions. I would say it was really just my ability to make decisions, and I think it was sometimes not making decisions. There’s the cost of not making decisions. And sometimes I didn’t want to make decisions, I didn’t feel confident in my own leadership to make decisions. And then when I did make decisions, I didn’t always make good decisions. I try to do the best with what I knew at the time. But what I would say is, when things are going really well, or you see that things are going better than you know, pretty good, pretty good. Things are well, like, you’ve got some clients, you’ve got things going, you’re making some money, you seem pretty happy. Just know that, like, sure, there might be difficult times. We learn from those difficult times. I think going through the burnout has also shaped me into who I’ve become, and I’ve become a lot wiser. But also, did it have to be a crisis like it could have been a sprinkle of. Failures throughout the journey. Why did it all have to come crashing down at one time over a period of six months to a year? Right? And so I think that ultimately, yeah, I would, I would really just say that knowing what you can tolerate, and, like, knowing what you really want for yourself, and really knowing, yeah, like, I didn’t want to be a huge business. I did not want to have a team of 60 people, but I thought that that’s what I needed to do. Because I thought that’s what certain people advised me, that this is the national next step. But ultimately I can’t blame those people. And for a while I did blame those people, and I said, Well, you advised me to do it this way, or you told me that this was the right thing to do, but that’s I’m the leader, like I have to lead, and I have to make the ultimate decision, what do I really want as a business owner, as a person? And I could have said, no, like, that’s not the company I want to build, or this is not aligned with my values. But of course, when you’re going through burnout, when you’re going through so much, it’s so hard to see that, or when you’re so busy, because when you’re successful, you’re also really busy. You’re like, well, I can’t think about making different investments, or I can’t think about like, changing up what I’m doing, and so I think it’s like finding the right balance, but knowing that, like when things are going really well, that’s when you really should be invested in, and trying to get to that other, that next phase, and really thinking about all the different scenarios of possibilities, all the different assumptions you’re making, because chances are, things won’t just keep working the way they’re working. And something somebody might not want to work for you anymore, clients might the economy can change. Like, things just happen. And so you want to make sure that you think about all the possible scenarios and do that scenario planning process, so you can identify, like, what are the chances of probably, what’s the probability that this scenario work out, and start planning around those different scenarios, so that when a crisis or something does happen, you know how to act faster, you know how to make a better decision. And I think that’s something we don’t really often do, especially as if we’re big Empath empaths are like feelers, and we’re like, we’re just going to feel this out and make decisions as we need to make decisions. I do think that there’s an element with my finance, my CFO, like we do a lot of scenario planning, because we have to assume the worst case scenario, or, like, what if this doesn’t work out that way? And what? What are other options? And I think thinking about all the different options, when you’re in a place of abundance and creativity, you can actually come up with lots of ideas and different paths, but once you’re in a crisis moment, it’s a lot harder to do that, and then you are stuck with whatever you could do with that time. So,

Catherine A. Wood 42:22
yeah, you know, I hear you say, I hear you talking about, like, the growing from 10 or 15, wherever you were at, to like 60, right? Like, because you thought you should. And I feel like that challenge is something that empathic entrepreneurs struggle with across the board because we’re pleasers, right? We inherently want to take advice and be yes people, and we’re open to feedback and contribution, and we have to like, weigh those gifts of our personality with our intuition and what feels values aligned and true and like inherently on the same page with what we want, with how we want to live our life and run our business, and have that experience of work life balance, which, you know, many of us go into entrepreneurship, seeking that time freedom, and then it’s often the first thing that goes out the window, right? It’s like your nine to five becomes the five to nine. And so I really, I really hear that and, and I guess, like, I’m curious, you know, because I don’t think I’ve talked to one guest on the podcast who hasn’t mentioned their own experience with burnout. Like, I think that on the journey to becoming like a truly prosperous Empath, like you have to break down to break through, like we all experience burnout, we all have our lessons to really learn and then embody and then integrate into how we operate and how we lead to thrive and prosper and grow. And so I’m curious. I’m curious, like, what were the signs for you? Like, what were the signs for you that you were burning out? How did you know and how did you break through? Yeah, thank

Saleema Vellani 44:14
you. So yeah, you know you feel it. And I think really listening to yourself, your heartbeat, your breathing, the pain in your body. Like I actually hadn’t, haven’t done yoga in years, but, like, I used to exercise a lot, and because I paused the gym for like five or six months, because I was so busy, I saw my calendar fill up, I wasn’t able to lead an executive assistant to manage me better, and so, or I didn’t really have an executive assistant for part of that time. And so it was like I started working earlier, so like 5am to 11pm or 12. Like I was basically not sleeping very much. If you look at my sleep patterns on my phone, you’ll see that 2023 I slept, on average, like four hours and four. Minutes. Like, it was pretty bad in 2022 as well. Like, it was just really, really, really bad because I wasn’t sleeping well, I was ordering Uber Eats a lot, or trying to automate my my meals, and I wasn’t really taking care of myself. I gained a lot of weight. I My hair started to fall out, like my face, you could tell I had that burnt out look. And I just was, like, so exhausted that I couldn’t even feel exhausted, because I was just on this, like, gotta go, gotta keep running on this hamster wheel. But what was I actually doing? Like, what was the value of what I was doing? And I couldn’t even see beyond that, because I was so busy. And so, yeah, I think you feel it in your body a lot, like your shoulders, you feel tense. I try to, like, binge I try to, like, fix it by going to the spa or massage here and there, but, like, it just came right back because I, I was band aiding, and I wasn’t fixing the root of the problem, and so the burnout, yeah, like, I shy to I didn’t even talk like me, and you weren’t in touch, right? Like, I know you asked me, I probably ignored your message about getting on your podcast because I was like, I can’t handle these things. I can’t even show up to be myself, like I was so embarrassed about how I knew I was not showing up with the right mindset and the right energy, and it was just, it’s so deep that, like, there’s just nothing you can do to act or pretend to be authentic, like it’s just you. You feel like you lose part of your identity. It’s like you just feel not yourself, but you’re not even fully aware of that all the time. And it’s just like, not really pleasant to be around. You go into a deep scarcity mindset, which totally sucks after, you know, having someone being someone that killed it and was successful and, like, on paper and even outside, people were like, oh, slime, you’re so successful, whatever it was. But like, ultimately, like, you don’t want to share that, because you’re like, if I share that, and I haven’t been, like, gotten to the other side, like, is that going to be? It’s not going to be a hero story. It’s not going to be a quest. Or, like, it’s not going to be, you know, what it what is the upside of it? And I was like, when is you just feel like you’re in this tunnel, this, like, black hole, or this, like you can’t see the the light, and you just want to see the light, but you’re just scraping along the bottom for a very long time. And I think that assuming that okay, it’s been so bad. It’s just got to go up. No, like, I had to do a lot of work to, like, get to a better place and and feel confident in showing up and being a good friend, being a good partner, being a good leader, being a good everything to people. I just, I just couldn’t do it. How

Catherine A. Wood 47:17
does it look different now? Like, how do you care about yourself different? How are you leading different?

Saleema Vellani 47:23
Yeah, so how it’s changed is that, first off, giving yourself Self Love and time and care and patience, and knowing that it just takes time to recover, surrounding yourself with people that can uplift you or you can lift them up as well, I would say the most important thing was solving so I actually brought on a fraction, a few fractional executives to help me in areas. Some were amazing. Some were not, you know, failed, or it was not as helpful, but it was ultimately my decision, and I know now how I would hire differently, but I had an incredible coo who stepped in, and she was a good friend of mine, and she saw what I was going through, and she stepped in and just took over a lot of things that I just didn’t know how to handle. And it was a lot of cleaning up the mess. Like it cost us significantly to clean up the mess. It cost us a lot more than the profit that we had from growing to seven figures. It cost us a lot more to clean up that mess because of a lot of a lot of things I can’t even talk about, but a lot of things happen that we were not expecting, and that those are things like, you know, when you’re at a level like that, and you’ve got employees, or, you know, you’ve got people that you gotta take care of, I’m talking like legal finance, like, all HR, like, all the things that you didn’t want to have to deal with as a prosperous Empath like you like, want to just do your thing. You want to be a visionary. You want to work with your dream clients. You want to feel great. You want to be in community. But as you grow your business, you will need people, and you will that’s you can’t scale on your own, and you want to get the right people. The right people you get through is by knowing what your values are, first your personal values, and when you know your personal values, then you can define what are your company values, and then you know and align everything in your business around your values. And so you’re the clients that you pick. You want to screen and say no to most people and yes to the ones that are values aligned. You want to say no to most people that want to join your team, unless there are values aligned. And so saying no to a lot of stuff, not just the people, but like, notice stuff that’s not aligned with your values or your vision. I was saying yes to too much. And I started saying one piece of advice from one of my fractionals, was saying no more. He’s like, can you say no to more stuff and pick three things to focus on every day? And I would say that, you know, that changed things, because I was like, I was trying to say yes to everything, Business Development conferences. And that was another thing that led to my burnout, was I was not focused. And I think that’s one thing we struggle with. Is we struggle with focus. We struggle we have lots of ideas. We want to do lots of things. We want to say yes to a lot of things, say yes to a lot of people, but we have to know, like, where we stand and how priority is it like? Can it be a yes and no? Can it be a later? A lot of times things can be a later. And so now I just say no to a lot more stuff, and it feels great and Like. You know what, like, I can say no to a lot of stuff, because at the end of the day, if the person loves me or they want to, you know, spend time with me, or they understand, or they, you know, they’ll get it. And if they don’t, then probably wasn’t worth, you know, having that conversation anyways. And so, so I really think, just really knowing your values and where you stand to make sure that the business is something that you want to do. So you wake up energized and not like exhausted. You look at your schedule and you have now, I have a rule, no more than four hours of meetings a day. This is my last hour, you know, like making sure that I have something like an executive assistant that can manage me upwards, because a lot of us aren’t good at managing ourselves, but making sure you know how to manage your assistant, to make to manage you in a way that works for you. So I would say, yeah, in a very different place. Aligning my organization and myself without by my values, has changed everything. We’re in a much better place. We’re back on track. And yeah, our revenue shot right back up after we got aligned on values and started really getting then this is more of a business thing, but really knowing what you what you offer, that’s unique, that’s repeatable, that only you can do in a way that you do it. There’s gotta be some innovation or some kind of uniqueness to it, and that makes it sticky. That’s niche. And a lot of times we’re scared of saying, no, we want to work with everyone. We can help everyone. But no, actually, when I was getting on calls with everyone, and only a few people were actually converting. I was like, Why did I why you don’t need it shouldn’t be that hard. Business is actually not that hard. And when you’ve done it a few times, you see, you just need certain pieces of the formula, right? You need some cash in. You need some amazing work being delivered. You need great people. Need culture. You need certain things. And when you have those pieces, the business just works. When you have product market fit or message market fit. You’ve got the price right. You’ve got, you know, the right articulation of value, like it just sells. Things just work, and you have the delivery set up. You have a way to, you know, think about, how are you going to grow long term? And you go through phases, and all of that sorted itself out when I got aligned on my vision and values and communicated that with the team.

Catherine A. Wood 52:03
I was appreciating watching your hands as you were talking, because it was like it just felt so strategic and organized, and I’m just appreciating how you fill those gaps for your clients, right? Like it’s totally coming to life over here. I I want to talk this may feel like a little bit of a deviation, but it just feels really relevant. I want to talk about generosity, because for me, like you are such a generous entrepreneur, it’s something I’ve appreciated about you from day one, and I think it’s something that we really need to learn how to manage responsibly as we grow and scale. So how have you learned to manage your generous spirit?

Saleema Vellani 52:56
That’s a great that’s a great question, and that’s one thing that during burnout, I lost that I was generous in some ways, but it was kind of becoming more transactional because I felt like I because I lost myself in that journey, and I didn’t feel like myself, and I wasn’t doing the Salima thing of, you know, connecting people and and just sharing and doing things and whatever, and speaking and Building community. It was a very dark place, but yeah, for most of my career, or at least most of my journey as an entrepreneur, other than those very early stages when I was isolated in Italy, I was very much about giving, and I think it’s just partly who I am, what I’ve learned from my mother, right? My mother was an entrepreneur. She was a Montessori teacher, and she was very giving. She would do all kinds of stuff for her kids, and even the parents would do all kinds of stuff, take me to my extracurriculars and and all that, and bring snacks for the kids. And it was just a culture of generosity. And it’s partly also just being, being Indian, I think, like Indian descent, I think that there’s just that kind of hospitality, or that, like generosity that we have in our culture and so, so, yeah, I think for me, it was really just for me, I just like giving without expecting anything in return. And I did that a lot of my career, because I think it just came from my passion to serve others. And I truly think that that if you’re not, if you’re an entrepreneurship for yourself, then I think the best thing you should do is to be a contractor or do something else. But if you really want to build a business that’s going to make an impact, make an impact, it is about serving others. It has to be about serving your customers. If it’s just for yourself, it’s not going to work. Because you have to think about, what is your customer thinking? It’s got to be, there’s got to be something for them that they’re going to get so much value, not just mediocre and not just good. It’s got to be great, your products, your service, your programs, they’ve got to be you’ve got to really build something. You know, it’s not about doing something extraordinary, is what my Harvard professor would say. It’s really about doing simple things in an extraordinary in an extraordinary way. And so think about how you can deliver something with those surprise and delights and extra things that make it. Special. Maybe it’s just you checking in with your customers every now and then and giving them a phone call, showing them that you care, sending them a little gift for cat. I know you used to send or this you send those holiday cards and those handwritten letters in the mail. Like it’s about doing those extra little things that make you sticky, make you memorable, but it’s gotta be something that’s authentic to you, like I’m not a snail mail. Like I don’t send out mail to anyone, really, other than I used to send books out, but finding a way that actually works for you, because it’s gonna the other person’s gonna feel does it feel authentic, or does it just feel like you know you’re trying to do something to get something in return? And I think that’s that’s and if their values align, then they’re not gonna feel like you’re taking advantage, or you’re trying to do something to get something. It’s gotta just really come from a place where you love giving, and for me, it’s actually like I haven’t done a podcast like this, and it’s so long, Kat, like I was saying no and postponing everything for a very long time since during that burnout journey. So now I feel like this is who I am, and this is how I want to show up and be authentic, be myself, be vulnerable. Some people are going to stick some people aren’t, and that’s okay. I’m going to focus on the people who do align. And yeah, I would say it’s really about it’s gotta be about being of service to others. How can you really leverage your gifts, your expertise, who you are, your identity, to serve other people and and when you serve other people, just trust that the universe will take care of you. And that part I still am very spiritual about, because it does happen. Like, somehow we always make payroll, right? Somehow we always something always happens. But it and having the right mindset, like, things do manifest. Of course, you do need the business structure. You do need all the strategies and all the other stuff. But essentially, yeah, like, I truly do believe when you’re doing your purpose and you’re giving, yeah, it’s, it’s hard. I know it’s hard because a lot, oftentimes, we’re thinking about revenue. We’re thinking about, you know, getting enough income in getting our financial wealth up and but really, there’s this framework that I learned at Harvard. I talk about it in my LinkedIn newsletters and my social media bit. It’s called the holistic wealth matrix. And a lot of times, we’re focused so much on just building that financial capital and getting money in the door, but really how that happens is really strongly building your emotional capital, so your mindset and your resilience. It’s about building your social capital your relationships. It’s really about deepening your relationships and investing in the right relationships that are going to help you, where you could also give help to them and and then your intellectual capital. How can you become a better expert? Or how can you be better at what you do? Because there’s a lot of competition out there, and we really need to understand where we stand in the market. What position are we taking? And so knowing your market, who’s out there, you know, coopetitions big. So like, collaborating with your competition is another really smart thing to do, because what’s yours is yours. You know, I talk to a lot of people who help entrepreneurs, but we have different audiences slightly, and that’s okay, and we’ll attract the right audience. And really being in the abundance mindset is so important, and it’s hard. It’s hard. Usually we get stuck with the scarcity mindset because we’re scared, well, what if that could be my client, or what if, you know, I don’t want to share my network, because that’s like, and I was always, I never really thought about like, I guess, that, like, someone’s going to steal someone from my network, or whatever. Because I was like, What’s mine is mine. It’s going to come. And that’s fine. I trust that. And I just think that, like, as an empath, or, you know, a prosperous empathy Empath, as you talk about, like, just trusting that what’s yours is yours. It’s going to come, but you have to give, and just give, and not in the spirit of giving to get, but just give. And it may not be from the same person, and that’s not like, hey, let’s give this and get something back. What can I do for you? It’s like, How can I be of help? And don’t expect that someone else is going to help you, but people will help you when you’re in that spirit of generosity. And I see it a lot as we move from five to six figures, and when you move to seven figures very quickly, the community of people in the seven and eight figures is very different, because what’s gotten them there is the social capital. It’s their relationships. It’s their ability to give and be helpful to other people and connect and make introductions and be part of many communities that’s gotten them to where they are and help sustain them and help them grow to where they want to get to. And I think that’s something I try to encourage in our programs. I haven’t talked a lot about what we do at my company, but that’s something that we do is get our clients to go on a 100 coffee challenge and actually go and meet people, meet each other, and and it’s really about deepening those relationships. I think that’s something we’re so obsessed with growth and and making the revenue that we need to make. And really we should be more focused on being focused on having a good strategy and executing on that strategy. And if we do that, the growth just happens and the financial piece all gets sorted out.

Catherine A. Wood 59:36
Lima, it’s wild that you haven’t shared your burnout story before, because it’s so beautifully distinguished and clear and and it feels like you’ve really transformed it like you, you may still have, like, a scratchy voice, but like, I’m really, I’m just really present to how much healing you’ve been. You’ve done to get to this place. I noticed I’m curious like, what feels like? What? What has you feeling ready to share it now? Because I think that that’s really relevant for folks like you know, how do we make peace with our process to actually be able to share it authentically? Because there’s nothing as like refreshing as being with an authentic, embodied entrepreneur, right?

Saleema Vellani 1:00:29
Yeah. Well, one thing I learned from you, and I use this phrase a lot, is from your masterminds. You used to hold in person in 2019, before covid was like you would ask us when you facilitated to lean into our discomfort. And that’s something that I encourage our clients to do. That’s something I think about. Think about myself. And I honestly wasn’t totally ready for the podcast right now. It’s going to be like, Oh, cat, can we do it like, later? But then you were like, well, I’m going to, you know, have a baby and be gone for a while. And I was like, You know what? I just really want to connect with her before she becomes a mom, before she goes on this journey. And, like, this might be too good time. It’s a little uncomfortable. I’m not like, maybe like, like, I said 85% there. I’m not totally ready to share it, but I’m like, you know, I’ll try and see how I could feel, all the feelings, and it’s part of, I think it’s going to help me heal by sharing it. And it’s just, it’s just part of who I am at this point, and it’s something that I accept and I have to embrace, and I hope that sharing it will help other people so they don’t have to go through what I went through, and maybe they’ll be able to take some nuggets, because I, I think I didn’t understand what burnout was when I went through it, but I can say that it’s made me a lot wiser, and I’ve And now, when I’m at Harvard and learning things I’m like, I can feel the pain of that like I understand that because I’ve been there, but I’m also investing in myself and learning things that I’m like, Oh, I don’t need to make that mistake, because now I’m learning this and I can implement this and not have to go through that. But again, life is just all about that, right? It’s just being aware when you’re aware of yourself and what you really want, what your values are, like. I think now I’m super clear. I don’t think I can. I’ll definitely go through other crises. I’ll definitely go through other things. But I think burnout, I’m, I wouldn’t say I’m totally burnout proofed. I sometimes do get busy still, because I love what I do, but I don’t think I’ll, I’ll ever have to go through that again, because I’ve, I’ve, it was so bad that I learned so much, that I’m like, I just can’t let myself, I can’t let that happen again. So, yeah, well, I’m

Catherine A. Wood 1:02:17
so glad that you learned the lessons so that you have more to give, right? It’s like, I think that learning how to manage and leverage your generosity is like, so key to the journey of a prosperous empath. And I love hearing how you’ve learned to optimize your spirit, right? Because we all benefit, right? So thank you for today. It’s been so lovely sharing this space with you as we wrap I’d love for you to share the resource or tip that’s really supported you in becoming the prosperous and Beth you are. Yeah, thank

Saleema Vellani 1:02:55
you. I’d like to share actually, my professor, Francis Frey, I’m doing a Harvard program called owner, President, management. It’s a two year program for entrepreneurs, and it’s interesting. I’m actually my professor, Frances Frey. She is, you know, one of the top management business thinkers in the world, and she talks a lot about building trust and empathy, and, yeah, she’s got this book called unleashed, highly recommend. It probably has a few of what I learned in my Harvard lectures in there. And it’s really about not just building trust, but rebuilding trust. And what you need to build trust is what she calls the trust triangle, and having a mix of logic, empathy and authenticity. Usually we’re strong at like, one of them, maybe two of them, but we’re usually weak on one of them. So if you’re strong at logic, chances are you’re probably weak at empathy and maybe authenticity. So it’s interesting, because knowing where you’re strong, but then knowing how to fill those gaps, because building trust, especially if you’re strong on empathy, and knowing how to work with logic and authenticity so that you can build or rebuild trust. I think that’s one of the most important things that we underestimate when it comes to business, because at the end of the day, business is relationships. And like for me, my burnout, like I was trying to hide from my clients, I was trying to I was scared to show up, and I was trying to replace myself before, too prematurely, before I was ready to and I would say that the trust building being authentic, like when I started showing up to my clients and me like, hey, like I was burnt out, and I went through this, it changed the game. Like, authenticity really regained, rebuilt that trust in many of them, and it just created relationships that are thriving now. And so I would just highly recommend reading France’s book. She’s got a podcast and with her partner, Anne Morris, and she’s got just great content. So highly recommend following Francis Frey.

Catherine A. Wood 1:04:43
Francis Frey unleashed,

Saleema Vellani 1:04:46
yes,

Catherine A. Wood 1:04:47
we’ll link it in the show notes. Salima, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure.

Saleema Vellani 1:04:51
Thank you, Kat. You.