Onlyness &nbspwith Nilofer Merchant

Aurora: tell us a little bit about you, your background. The beginning of the journey.

Nilofer: Well, I sometimes call myself a recovering tech executive turned author because I’m trying to capture that twenty five years of operational experience I bring into this work that I currently do. For a long, long time, I worked in tech. So at companies like Apple and Autodesk and worked with just about every major tech company you could name and help ship the first Apple Web server. So the very first Internet web server was mine. I helped shape the first Wasi wig software so you could create web sites. I actually hand coded Time Warner’s first web site And so I have a really strong deep background in tech. And then lately I’ve been working on how do we recognize the only-ness of each of us when we show up at work?

Aurora: So talking about only-ness and we have we have your fabulous, wonderful book here and the power of only-ness. So how did your experience being a titan in the tech industry, I actually just simply call you legend and your personal journey and upbringing, how did that bring you to this book and to what your gifting all of us with this theme, this idea, this opportunity to open our hearts and our brains to?

Nilofer: Yeah. So I’ll tell you both the professional story and the personal story of how it came to this idea, the idea of only-ness, that each of us stands in a spot in the world. Only one stands. And when you center that, you have the source of all ideas. I came to this idea sort of a two prong way. One was I was sitting in a lot of meetings and noticing that quite often the same group of people got heard over and over again. So it was the loudest person in the room got heard. The person with the highest title that hurt the person who, quote unquote, looked like the leader as traditionally defined, which is often white and often male, often cis. Often you know that the default. I noticed that it was almost always and of course, this is 25 years of background of innovation. Almost always it was the person who is being ignored who had the insight, the divergent point of view that we needed in order to actually do the growth and innovation of the company. And I was like, gosh, why do we keep listening to the same people instead of listening to the full source of ideas? And that was sort of the work epiphany. And I come by it from a personal perspective of not being seen for who I was when I was young. I grew up in a really traditional Islamic family. And in that world I was raised to the understanding that I would grow up and marry well in an arranged marriage and provide for my family. And I start the opening of this book, Power of Only-ness about that moment where I said, I don’t I want to do what you want, but I also want, what I want, which was an education. I asked my family if they could please ask the guy if I could please get an education. And long story short, they they wouldn’t ask. I walked out of the house for what I thought was gonna be like, I don’t even think I’d make it to the end of the driveway as I write. And so I found myself surprised that I was suddenly disowned by my family because we couldn’t agree on this one thing. And what was happened, even though most of us don’t have that story of arranged marriage or living in a traditional Islamic household. But the common thread that I think all of us can relate to is that we’ve all had that moment or someone’s not seeing us, the person they’re seeing, the shell of us, the silhouette of us. You know, in my case, I was being seen as a young woman whose role was very much defined by that role of the family. Right. It can, it we’re not seeing the person. We’re seeing the silhouette. And so I think that’s the relatable piece that I kind of carried into my work life, which is how do we see the real source of all value creation, which is each of us.

Aurora: This reminds me of how unique and distinct each of our fingerprints are. And the only ness of a that, so so share with us. You have this epiphany moment that the same voices, the same silhouette is being heard and listened to. So how do we get or how do we become aware of our only-ness? And I think the inherent power of that only ness.

Nilofer: Yeah. How do we become aware of our only-ness. You know, it’s such a big question at some level, both obvious and not obvious. So first is I always say each of us stands in a spot in the world, only one stands. And I say it’s a function of your history and experience as well as your visions and hopes. And the reason I say those two things is I’m saying, what is that that is shaped you. But more importantly, what choices have you made about how those experiences in your life have shaped you? But I don’t want it to be like an archaeology experiment. I don’t want you to look backwards. I want you to look forwards and say, what do you imagine is possible that everyone else might dismiss as being too wild or too radical? And yet, because you see it, you can pull on that thread and pull us into the future. I talk about in chapters two and three, how do you claim all of that for yourself? It’s not about like finding it. Like you might pick up a rock. It’s about excavating it. Right. So that you discover what it is you care about and actually make the choices about: this is what I want to claim for myself, and therefore, this is how I can then manifest it in the world.

Aurora: Share with us an example. You know, when our listeners who are thinking about only ness and they’re thinking about, well, how do I arrive at that place? How do I make. How do I make that first choice? How do I begin the excavating?
Nilofer: Yeah, well, just yesterday I’ll just tell the story of a young lady I met, I was on a film shoot for fun project. That’ll come out soon. And this young woman was there as part of the crew. And at one point she came backstage, you know, like where I had my little dressing area and I was changing and stuff. And she came and she said, hey, I was in tears. Half that half the group was in tears while you were talking. And I wonder if you could share with me how do you develop confidence enough to act? And I said to her, you know, well, let’s let’s start emailing and having this conversation. And then she reveals she has this beautiful Web site. She’s an Indian woman who really loves the intersection of that desi culture and American culture. So she has an art site that has like this consumer things where like the Coca-Cola logo is mixed in with the Urdu version of the Coca-Cola logo. And just beautiful like intermix of advertising experience with her desi background. So she shares it with me and she goes, but it’s such a small, small, small idea. And she spells small like s, you know, like 10 S’s and then small. And I’m like, this is it. Actually, you have the nugget, which is what is that incremental thing that first it seems like it’s it’s inconsequential. And so you’re likely to even dismiss it yourself. And yet after studying, by the way, I did three hundred case study examples in order for me to write the power of only ness and every single story started with this seemingly inconsequential thing, because everything, by the way, starts out that way, that you then just start pulling on just a little. It’s like that little thread and and soon you start yourself being connected to this woven larger fabric. But if you don’t pull on that singular little thread, you’re never gonna find the larger thing. And so I wrote her back, of course, and said, this is it. If this is what excites you, pull on it.

Kelly: So I love your quote, you say making a contribution doesn’t need perfection. It only needs you. And I just know as a perfectionist myself that that’s where I get tripped up. You know, you just start your mind gets ahead of you. You just start thinking of all these things that, oh, this is gotta to happen. And I guess that’s got to happen. And I don’t know what to do from there and then just paralyzes people. Do you see perfectionism as like the, you know, decimator of only ness. 

Nilofer: I don’t know if you know this learning construct, but let me let me share it. It’s because I was just coaching someone through this. That phase where it’s it’s the conscious competence phrase and I’ll walk you through it. So first, you’re unconsciously incompetent. So, you don’t know, you don’t know. Then you’re consciously incompetent where you know, you don’t know. Third phase is you’re consciously competent, which means you’re learning, you’re actually practicing what it is you’re trying to figure out. And then you go to unconscious competence where it’s just seems so natural. Right. And this phase that I’m describing, you’re in that stage of conscious incompetence for you know, you what you don’t want. But you don’t know yet if you’ll ever make it to the practicing the new thing. And in that moment, it’s like you’re in a gully. And you’re like,
10:00 I’d rather go back to the place I know, right? I’d rather go back to the husband who abuses me, the workplace that’s, you know, doesn’t work for me. The mom who doesn’t want me to get an education, I’d rather go back home and live in that certainty of it sucks, but I know what sucks and upright and mess versus the future, which you’re like, huh? I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. I don’t know if when I put myself at this level of risk, I will actually be able to learn what I need to learn. And it’s that anxiety that we have to kind of like just look at dead in the face and say, you know what? You don’t know. You don’t know what’s gonna happen. And that’s OK.

Aurora: What comes up for me, Nilofer, when I think of that, I think for me it’s probably less been the perfectionist. It’s probably been sort of the unworthiness. And I think that’s why you talk about that step being claiming it, right?

Nilofer: Right. Because we’re especially for women and especially for women of color. We have been told we don’t count. Right. And so then for you to actually get to count yourself oh my gosh, it’s like going against almost every muscle memory and to believe in yourself. When no one else seems to believe that you get to count.

Aurora: Yes. And would you agree, like in that in that curb of change and in that curve of learning, I think the the ability to stand in the truth of our worthiness that then propels us to claiming it that then hopefully also opens up the energy for the manifestation.

Nilofer: Yeah, right. So I think I love how you just said that. Right. It’s the claiming which is that first step. Because then you start just even like one step forward. And how do you manifest anything by the way. Right. Just think about how do you build a product or how do you. Whatever it is. How do you build a house? Is always first by going, well, let’s imagine what that house could look like and then let me see if I can lay a foundation and so on and so on. And so even just that building of a house, you don’t get to occupy that new space right away. You don’t get to come invite people over and show it off. 

Nilofer: And what I think a lot of us want is we want the finished rooms so we can show it off instead of the building process of the messy, dusty, icky, like figuring it out.
Kelly: I know, that is to say, though, when you’re building a house, you have a blueprint. So is there a blueprint? 

Nilofer: I think the degree to which there’s a blueprint, it’s that you’re willing to conceive of something even though no one else sees it. So like for me, if I just use that idea of only-ness which is seems sort of a meta thing right here, I am trying to encourage other people to live in their only- ness and I’m the one who coined the term and has been I’ve been doing research now for seven years. I think a lot about what it looks like, but sometimes I think about it as how to fix the old thing instead of spending time imagining what the new thing looks like. Does that make sense?

Aurora: Yeah

Nilofer: So if I use my metaphor, I might say I’m trying to fix the drafty part of the castle and I’ll spend time talking about it as if we’re fixing the drafty part of the castle instead of painting a picture for what the village looks like, the new village that we’re building downstream. And I really have to toggle myself over to be like are you describing any village well enough so that other people can find their way to the village. And I have to spend more energy, more creative act, just almost putting that sort of flesh to the bone or dry wall to the framing of here’s what it could look like and then more people will come because it can go like, oh, I want that village to right. That’s how we sort of started our conversations because we’re so excited about that common village. And I think that’s more of where we can think about the blueprint as an architectural thing. I’d like describe it, draw it, show it to other people, have other people come help you with that blueprint. And that’s how that thing ends up architecting the future.

Kelly: I love how your book is just a myriad of examples and so I’m wondering do do more examples come across you every day of people’s only leanings? And what are some ones that have come across recently?

Nilofer: Yeah, you know, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So you can see how novel voices start to shape worlds. So Gretta, who is helping us in climate change is a beautiful example. Ava Duvernay, who exactly seven years ago was a public relations person, is one of our top directors today, a woman of color who imagined Hollywood telling the stories of people of color. And what I love about her story, too, and I’ve written a Harvard article about that is how much she literally was getting pushback about nbody wants to listen to stories of women of color. Nobody wants that. And she was like, oh, I want that right. She listened to that first voice. And then more importantly, she started saying, who else wants that? She started building the new table, as she calls it, the beat way, beautiful way of saying it, building a whole new table instead going to the old table.I could hardly write one of those stories a day because I see it all the time. 

Aurora: And when you start seeing it right, you’re giving us the gift to find our are our only-ness for when we start owning our only-ness, it opens up a window for us to see the only-ness in others, which you hope propels what?

Nilofer: I hope that all of us get to count. Not that each of us has a world changing idea, but that anyone can add the ideas that do that they do have. And here’s what I think it will help us solve. I think we can solve cancer. I think we can solve Alzheimer’s. I think we can solve for climate change. I think we can solve for a series of problems that, by the way, are affecting every single person. But we’re not hearing the new ideas from those new voices that can really lead us forward. And when we do, whether it’s Greta’s advocacy or other work of people actually building the right ecological new ways of water purification or whatever it turns out to be, it will be because they get their shot.

Aurora: And I think that’s connected to I think the the ask, which is to honor your only ness so that you may honor the only ness in others.

Nilofer: Amen. Amen. You know, I think one of the things I live out loud and I share the stories of where I struggle with living in my only-ness. One of the reasons I do that, because I’m trying to show that path right. It’s just a path. And I shared recently how even the metrics I was using in my own had I wasn’t even being very conscious of. But it was limiting my ability to create the new thing. And so I published on insta in different places. I was actually forcing myself to share it. Here’s my struggle and I get feedback from people like, oh, you’re oversharing or whatever. But then I get feedback from people saying, Oh my God, I just learned something by watching you struggle outloud that I too can face that metrics conversation about why am I measuring my meaning by how much money I am earning. That’s that’s not a very good metric. What is a better metric? And then a whole series of new conversations happens. And so that’s exactly right. Any time when any of us are living out of our own truth. And that singular, distinct, beautiful spot in the world, only one stands. Then you’re kind of you’re can I show other people how to be that, too. And then we get to see not just the originality of the 30 or 40 percent of people we always hear from. But the other set of us who have other things to add and add our own little bit to the world, however small or big that is.

Aurora: Absolutely. And when we think about our current times, right, when we think about the fact that we’ve entered this incredible new decade and we couple that with all the challenges happening in our world at every level. Right. Whether it’s planet, whether it’s societal, whether it’s health, the possibility of propelling solutions by expanding the landscape of what we see, who we see, who we hear, that really is underpinned by our own vulnerability.

Nilofer: Yeah. You know, I I had a woman from a major banking institution. I was leading a workshop at this organization and she came to me during the break and said I had this idea I’d love to share with you. And so she tells me a story about how she wants to serve the under banked. You know, those people have to go to the check cashing places that take like 9, 10 percent of the dollars. And she describes how this bank could serve them. How there’s a really cost efficient way of doing it. It would bring in a new clientele, blah, blah, blah. Just really had a very specific kind of fleshed out idea in her head. I said, oh, my God is super exciting. When are you presenting it to your team? She’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m never presenting it to its team. I just wanted to share with you. I was like- well why wouldn’t you share? Because it seems like, first of all, it’ll drive market growth. That’ll solve a real market problem. That’s good market changing innovation, very key of what everybody needs. And she says, oh, in order for me to do that, I would have to tell this group that I grew up poor, that I grew up from a single parent, could barely put it together paycheck to paycheck. And that I used the check cashing places that are usury, right, that are just so abusive to people. And she goes and I look at this room full of hermes ties and YSL bags and all this stuff. And I’m never going to tell them because in this room, poverty is not OK. And what I wanted to tell her, but she couldn’t see and she didn’t believe right, is as soon as she was vulnerable enough to share why she could see this market opportunity, I could guarantee because of my experience of working with so many other people that half that room was hiding, too.

Aurora: Yes. Yes.

Nilofer: Right. And in fact, the data which I kept finding over and over again when I was doing the research for the book is somewhere around sixty one percent of us cover at work.

Aurora: Sixty one.

Nilofer: Sixty one. The data behind that, by the way, click down, as I kind of expected that 61 percent to be the same group that I would like that look more like Aurora and myself kind of thing. And I clicked into the data and it said that 45 percent of straight white men do it too.

Kelly: What do you mean by cover?

Nilofer: Cover. So it’s ways in which you hide yourself so that you’re never really authentic at work. It could be that you put on like the false bravado of loudness because you think that’s how men get hurt. It could be that you’re out of office message hides the fact that you’re celebrating a Jewish holiday in the whole your work culture is Christian. One of the stories in the covering work that I’m referencing had a story of a woman carrying around a comb and she was black and she worked all the time keeping her hair quote unquote neat because neat in air quotes as I’m doing it was how white women wore their hair. Yes. and so there are all these different ways of covering. And, of course, covering is a way to say I won’t show up as my full self, which, by the way, translates into I won’t show with all my ideas. There’s a direct linkage between that. My son in law, I remember when he was first having kids like the very very early days of our grandbabies. And he said how much he wanted to stay home, how much he wanted to be the first one to pick him up from school, blah blah blah, all this stuff, right when daycare. And he said, I can’t I can’t tell any of my colleagues because they’re gonna think I’m not a workaholic like they are. And so he knew that he didn’t want to signal his co parenting interests, even though, by the way, he’s one of the best parents and just amazing at. And I was like, well, you know, if you don’t- By the way, it makes it it denies women that same right. Right. So if you could do it, it would be not only brave for you, but it would help the other men who are covering, who also care about being a good parent and who want the liberty to leave work at a certain time so they can take care of that commitment and then come back to work later when they need to or whatever. But I remember how security was. And this is not a scared guy. Yes. Right. It’s covering.
Kelly: Yeah, that’s a great example. Thank you.

Aurora: I guess I intuitively knew that that number would be high. I don’t know that I assumed. Or would naturally believe that the number for cis white men would be as high.

Nilofer: But it makes but it just tells you it’s the human condition, right we cover when ever we don’t fit societal norms.

Aurora: Yes, yes. 

Nilofer: I think about 30 percent of people get hurt all the time.

Aurora: Yes.

Nilofer: And then the rest of us at some level don’t. And if you just look at the demographics like women or black people in America. Right. So women are 52 percent of the population, black people are between 13 and 14 percent, blah blah blah. You go through the demographics, but then you think also about quiet people.

Aurora: Introverts.

Nilofer: Or you think about young people. Right. Greta’s being. She often gets, quote unquote, dismissed. Right. Which I don’t dismiss her. But I see a lot of people who are more established, quote unquote, leaders dismiss her and they say, well, she’s too young to know any better. I have young people all the time come to me and say, I should start wearing glasses. Right. Because then I’ll look older.

Kelly: Oh, wow. Mm hmm.

Nilofer: And I’m like, well, if you don’t need glasses, why there have to you to cover. Be yourself. Right. Like that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. At some level. But I understand. I understand the human like I need to figure out how to fit in because I see power over there. I see the people who always get hurt, whether they have degrees whether or not. Right. We do all these ways in which we listen to the most beautiful person in the room sometimes. So a woman of beauty has power in a way that a woman who is by traditional beauty, I have to define. Right. The way a Vogue magazine might present beauty, a beautiful woman that fits that archetype like Cameron Russell did when she talked about it from a TED talk gets gets a certain amount of power versus people who don’t look like Cameron Russell. And so we got to just recognize power comes all always ways. And then all of us try to figure out how to fit into that construct, whether it’s the glasses, because we don’t look older, whether it’s the lipstick, because we want it, you know, or the Botox or whatever. Right. There’s a whole bunch of ways in which we do behavior. So we look at the people who get hurt and we go. Oh, OK. I got it. I got to figure out how to be like that. And I remember when I was first researching the book, I had a friend and she at one point live tweeted me a conversation. Here’s what Michelle Obama and Oprah are talking about. And she was saying a woman of color is going to get this. And she goes, the reason they’re going to get it is because they’ll have already figured out that there are two degrees away from power. So they’re never going to get a seat at the table.

Nilofer: White women sometimes think that if they just do a one change thing, they’ll get a seat at the table. And so they co-opt themselves to be able to give up. Right. Who they are in the thought they’re more easily, they think because they’re one degree away, that if they just make one small change kind of capitulate themselves.

Kelly: One more notch of perfection.

Aurora: This hits at the nerve of what scares me, petrifies me, and part of why we’re doing we’re doing this work as it relates to white women because of what we saw happen in the election of 2016.

Nilofer: You know that speech that was just given by Michelle Williams that was just done at the Golden Globes and she said women need to vote their interests. And I found the speech really derogatory because first of all, those 53 percent who voted didn’t think they were voting against their interests. They absolutely were voting their interests. And they were choosing whiteness.

Aurora: Yes.

Kelly: Bingo.

Nilofer: And that’s like maybe they don’t see it. So it’s different. But you can’t talk down to them and say you’re not voting your interests. You absolutely are.
Kelly: Yeah, when I was reading Onlyness. Nilofer, as a privileged white woman myself, I kind of was feeling drowned by like my own hegemony. Like I was almost like, oh my gosh, I need like a Nilofer like coaching session, like, is this book for me, too? And then I. I do. I did realize that it was for everybody. But I do wonder sometimes, like how how does one apply only ness to a life of entitlement.

Nilofer: Well, I think it’s what you’re doing right now. Kelly, Right. So you have decided that you will use your privilege to create equity and change perspective.

Kelly: A lot is a lot of people don’t care.

Nilofer: They care about certain things, I think everyone cares about something.

Kelly: OK. OK.

Nilofer: Whether or not they act on it is different, right? Whether or not they they choose to put their ideas in action. Their passion. Action is a different thing. But I think if you really talk to people, I’ve never met a person who doesn’t have something they would passionately solve.

Aurora: And I’m going to, and I’m going to try to thread this. So when you’re listening or you’re reading the book, Kelly, and you’re trying to find your onlyness in the aspect of a white entitled privileged woman. Your searching for what makes me unique, I think that’s the call. You have something that makes you unique. We all do. That’s the gift that Nilofer has given us, is that she’s given it a name and she’s told us there’s that there’s only one you. And in that you is a plethora of unique and only gifts. But I think our work is to tap into what that is, because I think that when we do that work and when we claim it, then we allow everyone around us to claim theirs too.

Kelly: Yeah. Nilofer, the note I wrote to myself is and correct me if this is wrong. But onlyness. But you’re not the only one. 

Nilofer: Mm hmm.. Singular, but not separate. 

Aurora: Yes.

Nilofer: I’m a big etymology geek, so like I’ll look up words all the time, I look up a word a day at least.

Kelly: Me too.

Nilofer: Individual is the single, smallest unit of measure of the humanness of the species human. And so we can never be isolated. We are always connected. And yet we in American culture reinforce this rugged individualism storyline, which is actually meant to separate you and make you feel like you’re all alone. And it’s the reason why we have a loneliness epidemic of epic proportions. It’s the reason why we have a huge suicide rate. It’s the reason why people cannot form power. You know, people of color etc cannot form power because they think they need to do it by themselves. It’s a mythology that is sold and oversold over and over again. And yet the actual notion of individual can never be seperate. So it’s how are you distinctly yourself and always connected is by definition what onlyness is.

Aurora: Yes. Yes. Beautiful.

Nilofer: And I think the piece and thank you so much for letting me push back on you. Kelly, the piece that you were saying is like in my that special is this book for me is it’s a choice that you’ve already made. You’ve made it with this podcast You’ve made it already. And the thing what we, you and I are doing now in this podcast is encouraging other people to look at how do they make the choice for them.

Kelly: Thank you, Nilofer. And so what is your Opt-In for our listeners today?

Nilofer: I think it’s this. How do you claim for yourself? What it is only you see, even if no one else sees it. And give yourself over to it so that you can become the change you want to see in the world.

Aurora: Wow. Yes, yes, yes.

Kelly: Chills, chills, chills.

Aurora: And part of that, you know, our other question and you share this a bit. You know, you share this at the beginning in your book. How would you identify arriving where you are now, what you will come next, because we know there is a next with you, Nilofer. How is any intergenerational wisdom helped and you can see how that you’ve threaded that forward to your now?

Nilofer: There is a guy I write about in Onlyness that most people don’t know actually gave me away at my wedding. And Andre Dellbeck was a professor at Santa Clara University and he was teaching a course called Spirituality and Business. I was not a spiritual person by any sense. When I took his course and in fact sort of came at it very cynically because I thought, well, we can’t get a bad grade in a course called Spirituality and Business, right? So you basically dial it in and show as little effort as possible, get an A, move on. His first assignment, funny enough, was to describe a tree that was the entire assignment said that oh my God, can take like seven minutes. I’m done. I’m out of here. And I sit down, I observe the tree because, you know, that’s what the assignment was to observe a tree. And I started seeing the wind rustle up the tree. I started seeing the squirrel go up the tree. I started seeing the acorns fall and get taken away. I saw all these interconnectedness of this single tree. And I was like, oh, my God, we’re all interconnected. It was crazy. And. And he helped me see how we’re both singular, but not separate. And that course really changed the trajectory of my work and influence so much of what this book is. And when I was showing him, in fact, the book, I felt like a little bit like a little daughter going back to the father. Like, you know, like, yeah, I want you to like this work. It turns out he was in his hospital now and he died shortly thereafter. But his very last act in the a couple days before he died, is he read the book. And forever, a teacher, he read the book marked it up and said, by the way, you’re offering secular language for the deepest spiritual insight that’s ever existed, but you’re going to position it in such a way that a whole bunch of new people can see it. And I’m really proud of that work.

Aurora: Beautiful.

Nilofer: So he is in that work and. And every time I ever think about the work that I’m doing, I think, oh, this is just I’m channeling Andre right now and what he’s taught me and hoping to carry it forward and teach it to another party. So we’re I’m always doing that. I hope to be doing it with as much wisdom as he brought to his work. But it’s with real like humility that I approach it because I think it’s hard stuff. 

Aurora: Ms. Nilofer, I do want to ask one parting question, because you as I said, we call you legend. What is next? What are you cooking up? How are you going to continue to lead us in expanding not only our minds, but also the expansion of our hearts and our onlyness?

Nilofer: My pursuit this year is really onlyness at work. I purposely, intentionally did not study work specific contexts in order for me to write the power of onlyness. I purposely, intentionally did that because I was sure that if I started looking at it in an organizational context, I wouldn’t study the the purest form of it. And I wanted to understand it first, knowing that I could always back into okay, how would you apply this at work? And now I really want to apply that I am looking for organizations that want to figure that out with me so we can pilot ideas and test theses and practice, you know. And then from that, partnerships and lessons, I could get a chance to maybe write the insights that come from that.

Kelly: Well, if we all saw our onlyness the world would be a better place.

Aurora: Nilofer thank you for being that beacon, that light.

Nilofer: Aurora thank you so much. It means so much to be with both of you.

Kelly: We love you, Nilofer

Aurora: WOW! I absolutely love Nilofer!

Kelly: She’s incredible. You know when we met her the first time at Ted Talk Women I was completely blown away by her. And now, after this conversation…well, I’m obsessed.

Aurora: And really there is so much more to learn from Nilofer. Be sure to check out her book “The Power of Onlyness” and her article featured in the Harvard Business Review. You can find links in the show notes.

Kelly: Let’s start off this new season right and let us know what’s on your mind! What’s an idea you’ve been holding back? Find us on social media @theoptin.

Aurora: And thank you again. We love you so much.

Kelly: Thanks for listening.

Aurora: Talk next week.