The Power of Rebranding, Staying Consistent and Building Habits

good evening your time now is 552 I'm Janette Reyes and I'm monosar rabdi and this is off the Record not for real this is off the record I feel like a lot of people do a lot more talking than doing that's why they don't reach their goals it wasn't like do I want to work out today or do I want to read today it was like no you get up and you work out that's who you are rebranding and becoming the person you want to be is not like in the movies it's small steps like

it's not sexy what does it take to Rebrand if I couldn't pull up my calendar and see dedicated time couldn't tell what that goal or what that focus is from looking at my calendar then it's not real for me Rebrand what I think of is 2 a.m. I pull out my laptop and I'm like I'm going to reimagine my entire life on Pinterest right now I put my Pilates classes for 6:30 in the morning because one of the things I hate doing is wasting money so what's going to get me out of bed is I

can't waste these $32 what did you do in those moments where it just felt like you are scaling the largest mountain ever and you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel it's one of those things that I call a daily deposit it's something that helped me build the skill set of holding myself accountable Les welcome to the group chat thank you for having me I'm so excited to be here listen we are so excited we are huge fans of yours I started listening to your podcast balance black girl years ago and I

remember in each phase of my life like I remember I was in LA for a little bit and I would listen to you on the way to my morning commute um or during my morning commute and you have just always dropped gems and we've been talking about that you've been like the voice in our head literally cuz it's like we're playing you in the car for me it was my commutes to and from Philly when I used to work there and my husband was in DC but all that to say girl you've been you're one

of the ogs yes you've been in it for a minute um so welcome to the podcast we're happy to have you I mean y'all are some of my internet besties in my head so I'm so glad we're doing this in real life yes very much I can't believe this is the first time we're meeting but again I feel like I've known you we always on each other's stuff so yes internet best is for sure oh we have to mention too we've hit you up over the years asking you for guidance questions when we were thinking

about starting our podcast and you've always been I love a girl like you're a girl's girl right like you were always available to answer any questions and and you never gatee kept so I mean of course we got to have you on the podcast so for people who aren't familiar with you tell us a little bit about yourself yes well thank you so much for having me I'm so excited I also love getting to be the guest because it's a lot easier and more fun yeah and in the host chair um yeah so my name

is Les I've been a content creator for over a decade now starting primarily in Wellness but kind of moved into more lifestyle content most people in my community know me from my podcast balance black girl which I've been doing for almost seven years now which is a long time um Seattle native now in my kind of East Coast Era here in New York and just taking it all one day at a time yeah what prompted you to start the podcast in the first place because you started it before it was like a thing thing I

feel like why why take that on while you had a full-time corporate job all that I did yeah at the time I was a social media manager at a startup which was a wild job in and of itself but I was literally sitting at work one day and I just got the idea it just was like start a podcast name it balance blackgirl interview black women in wellness and I was like check got it I ordered a microphone off of Amazon and launched the podcast a week later we would have molded over maybe three four

years give or take we would have been like you know what let's let's pray on this and then order the microphone when it goes on sale um but yeah no I remember hearing that episode where you're talking about how fast you started this and I was like oh yeah definitely not us U but I love that and it shows just how committed you were and you don't miss a week that's what I love about you like you really are committed and you're consistent yeah which is the biggest thing with podcasting because it's not like social

media where there's an algorithm or something pushing your content out you have to content there for people to find constantly yeah what what would you say um your listeners like the topics that resonate the most with them what would you say they are anything that is like life advice the girls love life advice last year my top episode was I did a birthday episode I turned 35 last summer and I did 35 things I've learned by my 35th birthday anything where it's like Lessons Learned or you know gems dropped or how to navigate your 30s

moving into your 20s whatever it is people love just those things that make them feel seen where they feel like they're getting advice from someone they trust one thing you do really well um is you give really practical actionable like I love when you say pull out your notebooks and start writing this down I'm like okay pen out yeah right and I I love that cuz it's not like stuff that's intangible up in the air so I don't know if that's something that you're just naturally good at or if you're consciously like no these are

the bullet points I want to give people I I think it's when I was in The Listener chair that's often what I would look for I'm also somebody who I have a short attention span people lose me quick so if people get too long- winded if I can't connect the dots if I can't see how do I apply this to my life they lose me quick and so I'm always thinking about that from the listener's perspective is how can I keep them how can I make sure that even after they finish this episode they have

something that they can apply to their lives and then also if they see good results from that they're going to want to come back and that's kind of where Community comes from one of the episodes where you kept us oo and I brought the pen out it was the Rebrand for 2025 both personally and professionally Mona and I are going through what we call our sexy Martha Stewart era very much so love that it is that's soir phrase we're trying to do a lot of like you know the hosting stuff a lot of the Homemaker

stuff but still go out still be fly yeah and still be fly so the girlies can do both um but we've been talking a lot about rebranding and you did an episode on that it's very fitting it's beginning of the year so can you touch a little bit about that episode and also what is what does it take to Rebrand yeah I've been thinking so much about how much my life has changed over the past couple of years and um funny enough I mean I feel like I connected with you guys via Tik Tok and

something that it'll do is it'll pull your old videos up back to you and so last year late 2024 I was just seeing some of my old stuff that was serving up to me that I had posted in like 2021 2022 and I'm like who even is that person and she just was living a totally different life and so it just got me thinking about wanting to be more intentional in my own Evolution and I think having a marketing background I'm always thinking about ways to make something sound more fun so that I want to

do it and I was like Rebrand that just sounds way better than you know growth they're like Evolution um it just sounded like something more fun that I had more agency in when it came to how I enter the next chapter of my life so let's talk about what it takes because for me Rebrand what I think of is 2 a.m. I pull out my laptop and I'm like I'm going to reimagine my entire life on Pinterest right now but then I don't actually act on it it's just almost like a ritual and I just

feel like thank you that felt like I accomplished something and then I close the laptop put it away and the next year same spot so what does it take if you really do want to not only just talk about it but put action behind your words yeah I love that question I would say I'm a big calendar person and so for me anytime I'm thinking about goals that I have intentions that I have whatever my focus is if I couldn't pull up my calendar and see dedicated time couldn't tell what that goal or what that

focus is from looking at my calendar then it's not real so I'm always thinking about okay what are like the daily weekly monthly actions that I can take that help me become that version of myself that I want to be and I think what's often hardest for people is you have to be willing to do things differently and we can get in ruts or routines where we do things the same and then wonder why we're the same and so I think getting comfortable trying new things and doing things differently and for me holding myself accountable

to doing things differently has been a big part of it how do you um because holding yourself accountable people would say would agree that's very important that something that we should all do how do you make sure that you do that because I think there's there's the most disappointing thing is when you fall short of your goals and it's almost like you're betraying yourself like you start to trust yourself less when you set a goal that you're actually going to accomplish it so how do you make sure that you hold yourself accountable and you stay

true to your goals this kind of relates to what we were talking about when we were before we started recordings you've kind of talked about your fitness journey and how you're getting more into it I really think that Fitness is what taught me how to be the person who does that because it taught me how to have more discipline how to create more structure for myself how to do hard things and realize that I can and work towards it so I got really interested in Fitness in my early 20s and I would say before that

that I was somebody who gave up on things very easily I never saw anything through I was not very accountable I was not very disciplined about anything and when I got more into fitness it taught me how to be more disciplined it taught me how to hold myself accountable and I thought okay if I can wake up early and if I can do this workout that was hard then maybe in the middle of the day I can do this other thing that was hard and so it's one of those things that I call a daily

deposit it's something that helped me build the skill set of holding myself accountable more and once I got it set in the Fitness area I was able to apply it to other areas you know I'll add uh something and Mona I'd love to hear how you hold yourself accountable too but one of the hacks I figured out with me is I've been trying to stick to waking up at 500 5:30 in the morning because I've realized like I might be a night owl but the world just does not cater to night owls right so I

put my Pilates classes for 6:30 in the morning because one of the things I hate doing is wasting money so what's so what's going to get me out of bed is I can't waste these $32 and it's worked like it's just been the hack whereas if it's just working out just to get the workout in I'm going tell you right now like I'll be like we can just do it tomorrow right so what would you say for you like how have you found a way to like hack it abuse um I'm like girl if you

don't get up the whole world is up right now and you gonna be left behind so yes but I don't recommend that because what ends up happening is you just like it's so it's kind of negative right and then you just beat yourself up up so much where you're like look at that you were supposed to work out four days a week and you only got in three and I learned you're actually supposed to celebrate like wow I got three in um but that is a very effective motivator for a short period of time I

will say um but I guess it's easier said than done sometimes right because when that alarm is ringing and you are tired and it is cold outside Fitness is an easy one to point to because consistent consistency gives you results right and so it's easy to say this is the goal that I want this is what I need to do but actually doing it is really hard so what do you suggest for people who just feel like I may have a good two weeks and that third week I just get derailed yeah I've had to

kind of manipulate myself into it over the years and something that's really helped me is taking it on as an identity so instead of being like do I want to get up and do this thing today I tell myself I am a person who does this thing whether that's working out or whether that's like reading gotten really into reading over the past few years and I talk a lot about that even though it's something I didn't used to do it wasn't like do I want to work out today or do I want to read today

it was like no you get up and you work out that's who you are you are a reader so pull out your Kindle and read or you are a journaler so I have to trick myself into saying like this is who I am and it almost takes the choice out of it a little bit because if we're relying on motivation of like when I want to do this we're never going to do it I think that's really powerful what you said and the flip side of that is uh taking ownership of negative things right saying

like I am not into I don't know like I'm not a healthy eater I'm not into whatever you're holding on to something that you want to change and so when you're saying I am this person it makes it seem impossible to change that habit um I did want to ask you for when you're talking about the Rebrand you mentioned speaking of words three words that you should I guess pick that you want to identify with for your Rebrand can you explain yeah so I had a marketing background I work in marketing for several years and

often times when we're working on campaigns brands or mood boards we would think about mood words of like you know if this brand were a person how would we describe it either what are the core value words how do we want this to feel when people see it and so I thought about okay well if I think of myself as my own little brand like what are the words that I want to describe me and it may not be who I am yet but these are the words that I'm shooting for so I think the

words that I used I know Sheik was one of them now I'm like blanking on the other on authentico another one so I'm thinking about okay these are the words that I want to be described as and they may not be true today but I want them to be true so they're kind of my North Star of like how do I want people to describe me and then how do my actions bridge that Gap so that people can describe me as those things I love that so I did write them down yes my three are

being intentional love authentic I stole that from you and consistent that's a good one so with those three what's the next step what do I do do with that yeah I would say you should create opportunities for you to be those things so Define what consistent means to you and maybe pick like one habit that you can be consistent with let's say you want to get more into reading and you want to be consistent with that you could say I want to read for 10 minutes three times a week and have that be that one

proof of concept that you are a consistent person and then after maybe two weeks of doing that you could be like yeah I'm consistent now I can accurately describe myself as that and then move on to the next thing and kind of almost like setting a layup for yourself like giving yourself an opportunity to meet those words that you want to describe yourself as and you said something that was very interesting which is it's almost like you embody the lifestyle of that person so you ask yourself what does a consistent person do how does a

consistent person dress I guess consistent for that more authentic is a better word to use as an example because then it's like okay if I'm my authentic self how do I dress if I'm authentic self what kind of am I listening to and it's more of a lifestyle change than just individual changes can you elaborate on that yeah I think it's more so about how you how you embody those words especially for words like authentic something that I think would get in the way of my own authenticity was kind of a little bit of people

pleasing and being like okay am I doing this thing or am I saying yes to this because I genuinely authentically want to or because I want to make someone else happy and so in those moments where maybe I feel that pull to do the people pleasy thing I'm thinking okay but what is the authentic version of this if I'm taking how they feel out of it what is it that I really want to do and so for those ones that are a little bit more like squishy I kind of take that approach with it I

wonder um because you you mentioned in your episode that you want these things to kind of come from within and not influenced by outside uh factors or people I wonder though like for example with um decisive is one of the words for me like I want to be the kind of person that makes a decision and sticks to it and doesn't mull over it for for a long time um I'm I'm the kind of person where I like to picture someone who is decisive and then pull a different version of that that's authentic to me

do you recommend that and if not what what would you say yeah I think you can totally do that because it's more inspiration it's like proof of concept um but I think with that we want to make sure that you are you're taking that quality of decisiveness and that inspiration but you're not making decisions as if were that person like you're still making decisions as you but you're taking a cue on that decisiveness from them yeah yeah yeah what about the visual element do you encourage storyboarding or making vision boards for example which I love

yeah I mean p I'm a big Pinterest girly I'm also really private about my Pinterest I have like a Fina Pinterest that's like not under my name or anything and sometimes I'll share it it's not and so people are like oh I want to follow you on Pinterest I'm like this is just for me um with the decision I just want some stuff that's for me and I mean I think you guys probably also know this like when you live so much online it feels like so much is for other people that sometimes you just

kind of want stuff for yourself to that point though I are you the kind of person like there are some people who are like don't share your goals openly publicly because you know that can work against you they're going to people they're going to be people who don't have your best interest in mind and can thwart it do you subscribe to that belief I would say yes and no I mean I think I'm somebody who I would rather do it then talk about it so I don't really like I feel like a lot of people

do a lot more talking than doing that's why they don't reach their goals and I feel like instead of posting about it I would rather just do the thing to actually help me get closer to it but I also think that like when things are authentically for us and we're putting in the work I don't think other people's you know like evil eyee or whatever is strong enough to stop things that are truly for us yeah that evil eyee though that' be scaring the life out of me I'm like so blessed kind of like discernment

of who to share with what you know like I will have maybe people close to me or other peers who do similar work where I will happily share like hey this brand gave me this rate or here's this project that I'm working on and share it in trusted spaces but I don't feel the need to like post it online for everybody to see it on that note I just wanted to ask quickly um what advice would you give to somebody because there's always those naysayers in your corner right so there's you can say that you

want to be a fitness girly for example and there's someone who's like girl I've never seen you run a mile or I've never seen you put on even running shoes so what do you say to someone who has to deal with that yeah I often think that people who are doing the things that you want to do or who are more successful than you are never going to say that and it's always people who are also not doing those things or who are probably not more successful than you who make those types of comments because

and unfortunately it's often the people really close to us because if they see you changing if they see you doing certain things sometimes that holds up a mirror to what they're not doing and they feel more comfortable with you saying the same and that's where those comments come from um and so I think it's just important to remember that like anybody who has the thing that you want would probably not say that to you because they're too busy doing the thing and to that point surround yourself with it's so great to have friends who have

similar goals like you align in that area because it's like friendly competition right but it's also the accountability factor that you mentioned one of the uh words that you mentioned for yourself I believe was abundance yes and I loved the way you explained what that means for you yeah it I have struggled a lot with scarcity in my life with a lot of things whether that's just with money whether that's with opportunities with so many things and over the years I've had so many beautiful experiences where I'm realizing that there are so many things possible

for me that I never knew would be and so it's just opened up this whole idea of how good can it get and let letting things get as good as possible and not thinking that the other shoe is going to drop not putting a limitation on the things that I want and just letting myself be open to all that I can receive yeah I struggle with that a lot because I'm always like this is good a little too good what's coming what's next yeah what's next um and the abundance mentality what I like about it

is you're just like maybe great things are coming or it's also preventing a limiting mindset as well um you also mentioned um it's going to erase oh yeah making small changes because again remember I told you at 2 a.m. I'm inspired I got this vision board and I'm going to do 6 a.m. Pilates and then I'm gonna cook every meal and then I'm going to also be a fashion Guru all these things at once but you suggest making small incremental changes yeah like focusing on one thing at a time whether that's like one habit at

a time one thing that you're bodying at a time for a couple of reasons one it's just more manageable and more realistic and easier to stick to and then two when you do that one thing and you stick with it for a little while that's like proof of concept it's giving yourself a success story of like oh yeah I I created that habit so now I can create another one versus if you try to do it all at once and then you don't do any of it then it's easy to beat yourself up and not

really make any emotion I like to say it's almost like rebranding and becoming the person you want to be is not like in the movies right like you feel like it's supposed to be dramatic and like you know what I mean night to day the hair it's almost like make Montage yeah exactly it's it's small steps like it's not sexy and and I mentioned it earlier like with my fitness journey like I would have gone the the route of like I'm going to completely one time I was vegan for like a day literally like it

was just like I'm a vegan now and I went shopping and then like by that evening the next morning you have no that it was just like I'm looking at all this food like I'm not going to eat this and then I unsaved all of my YouTube videos on being a vegan but it's like small stuff and it's not exciting except for when you look at look back and you look at all the small things that you ticked off the list and it turns out to make a big difference y was there ever a moment

where you maybe didn't feel like you are a consistent person or you didn't feel like the person that you wanted to be but you looked back and realized no I actually you know in this part of my life there is evidence that I'm consistent whether it's like well I go to work every day and you know work towards my career goals maybe that translates into fitness or Fitness and vice versa yeah it was exactly what you just said I felt very stifled in my career for a long time and I would say career is still

an area that I struggle with a little bit a feeling like I'm not where I want to be and feeling just a lot of pressure to show up a certain way and I do think when it comes to either my Wellness habits is something that I always look back on as proof of what I've done um I've also hit just like some lofty financial goals right had a lot of student loan debt and I was really strict with myself for a long time and paid those off and things like that that I remember helps me

remember who I am and what I'm capable of and I try to put some of that energy towards other areas but I still struggle with it just like everyone you were very open about your student loan debt and what it took to repay that and when and to be done with it what did you do in those moments where it just felt like you are scaling the largest mountain ever and you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel yeah the moment uh where I that really kicked me into gear was I had

one of my loans got sold to like another lender and they were sending me a letter about it and telling me how to like set up my account for this particular loan I'm pretty sure I just put it on autopay after I graduated I'd been paying for years and not really thinking about it and so when it got sold to that other lender I had to actually log into the account the account see where my payments were being applied look at the interest rate look at the balance which I hadn't done before which for anybody

who wants to pay off dead that's step number one and I was honestly just filled with rage because I'd been paying it for years and still owed just as much as I initially took out and so for me it was maybe some of that fire sign energy of like they not going to get me I'm paying this down in a year like I'm done I'm done being taken advantage of for me like anger is a good motivator again fire sign things um and I just got angry I got pissed I was like no they're taking

advantage of me and I'm tired of being taken advantage of so I think about that Meme of like Rihanna throwing the money just like here that was me I was like here I'm going to be done with it and I'm paying this down now and nobody's going to hold anything over my head again it was just like pure anger and how did it feel when you did it really emotional and actually not as good as I would have thought which was really weird I think because College was a really difficult time in my life I

did not have a very positive college experience and for a lot of that I had really pushed and shoved that down and never dealt with it and then when I paid it off all of these feelings came back of that time in my life and what I took the loans out for and how I felt then that it really actually brought up a lot of like not good stuff it took me a while to really celebrate it and even when I started talking about it online I didn't talk about it till like six months after

the fact I didn't the first several months I didn't even tell anybody that I'd paid them off I just had so many feelings that I was sorting through in that moment that makes sense so with the Rebrand once you've picked your three words you're embodying the person that you'd like to to be um what comes after that it's making a plan it's putting it all together I had given my little example ear C about like your goals need to be reflected in your calendar but it's really breaking it down like okay so for these words

for these qualities that you want to embody what are the specific things that you were doing to be that person and then how are you mapping it out how are you adding that into your daily life how are you making it really plain and also defining like what does success look like like we gave the example of consistency for one of your words like what does consistent look like how do you know when you're hitting the Mark um and putting those steps into place so that you can actually take action how how important is the

why part of it because I could see for example you know Janette doing Pilates at 6: a.m. and then I'm like well that's what I'm going to do I'm going to do Pilot's exam and I'm going to be consistent at it but I don't have the why behind it right and so how important is it to realize that you're doing things for you because you want to be that person not because you see you're scrolling through social media and you see you have to wake up at 5:00 a.m. yep the why is everything the why

is absolutely everything cuz the why has to resonate with you and you have to care enough about it I talk a lot about Fitness but what actually got me into fitness was I had my first corporate internship in college and my body just did not agree with like the corporate structure of sitting at a desk from 9 to 5 I was just exhausted I was getting really inflamed I had a lot of like brain fog and I was only 20 I was like I'm a little young to be feeling like this and so I started

working out because I was just in search of energy I was like I need I need to get up and move and like not be falling asleep at my desk every day and I felt like if I'm actually going to survive in this environment I need to pick up this habit so that I can actually get through it that why for me was so much stronger than maybe wanting to look a certain way or wanting to be skinny or whatever that that why didn't resonate enough with me having the energy to stay awake all day

is what resonated with me so finding that thing that you genuinely care about that's going to make you stick with it is important she mentioned social um do you think it's a good idea to maybe like get off social for a bit if you're trying to chase after this you know these goals or anything else that you should cut back on on to make sure you stay focused yeah I mean I think it's it's important to be mindful of what you consume because I do think sometimes we tend to try to embody other people's habits

and I tell people all the time like don't try to do what I do if you see me wake up at 5:00 a.m. and read and meditate and go work out I've been doing that for literally 15 years and I didn't start day one like that so I think social media can be good if you use it for inspiration of people who are maybe a little bit closer to where you are or if you're using it for accountability with a friend that can be really helpful but if you are on Day Zero and then you

look at like what I'm doing that may not be the most helpful thing yeah and that does happen why do you think rebranding resonates with so many people why are people so interested in flipping their life upside down I think because right now it feels like there's so much out of our control that it feels like something that is within our control you know collectively we're obviously just all dealing with a lot right now and I think it's something that sounds kind of cutesy right like a Rebrand that sounds sexy it sounds like the girls

want to do it and it's just almost like a little bit of reprieve from everything else we're dealing with and you know it's like okay we can't control the wildness that's happening around us but like I can maybe control putting on a cute outfit and like trying a little harder and if that makes me feel a little bit better then like we're all taking whatever we can to feel better it's so true about it being something you can control given the turmoil right that we CBE C things that be a distraction from your goals when

I was in Little Rock I had to get off social I was in Little Rock as a reporter right and so like your 20s especially for us in the news business it's paying your dues I mean you're grinding you're not making a lot of money you're working all of the holidays and and then there's just you know the the how difficult it can be to cover some of the stories that we covered and I ultimately had to unfollow some people and then just uninstall the app for a bit because I don't think we were built

to take in so many people's highlight reels right like I think our brains don't know how to actively tell it like tell themselves or itself this is just the good stuff right you're not seeing the stuff that was left on The Cutting floor the things that aren't posted on social media and it can make it seem like what you're going through at the moment or your WIS even like it minimizes them right and it just distracts you yeah so was something that that I had to do for for myself now once you've done that with

the Rebrand what would you say is the next step I mean this is probably something that I know I'm not very good at and we could all probably do better and we kind of talked about this before we started rolling is like celebrating those wins I suck at it I still need to be way better about it but I think it's also really important if we start embodying qualities that we set out for ourselves like acknowledging that and celebrating it how do you celebrate I don't and that's the problem I appreciate you admitting that too

because I would think like I need to be more like less but hearing the fact that you also struggle with it it makes me feel like okay you're not alone in this um and it is something that is important but you could still you know owledge and work on it yeah but what so in theory since none of us celebrating what would it look like yeah I mean whether that's like treating yourself to something or even just like being willing to pop your a little bit which I think we all especially as women like we

downplay everything we don't want to be too boastful but I think sometimes it's okay to like be proud of ourselves out loud which again I still suck at but I would love to see more people do what do you think is the underlying and I'm going to ask all of us um what do you think is the the underlying reason that prevents us from celebrating ourselves I think for me it's a couple of things I think one I don't want to make other people feel bad if I am doing something or have something that they

don't have I don't want other people to compare themselves to me which I think being online so much is something I'm very cognizant of um I also don't want other people to like question how I got things or you know I don't know I think sometimes when women have different successes in our lives people often attribute it to other things where it's like oh she must have slept her way to the top or someone bought that for her or it's like we often don't take women's accomplishments at face value and again I'm fiery because I'll

be ready to fight if I work really hard for something and somebody said I will I know myself and so I keep it to myself not less about to throw hands i' be ready um especially as like if you sacrificed a lot you know I know myself and so so I think it's a combination of those things of like wanting to hold things precious um and also just not wanting other people to feel bad she said you don't know my life you don't know what I've they do not what about you Janette I would say

I don't do a good job just because I don't have the time and the discipline to show the process so then because of that I don't think it's fair to show the result right like I want to show the full context and what it took to get there and because I know I can fall victim to the whole like dang she just popped up and got all this I don't want similar to you I don't want people to not know the journey and think that this was is something that I easily got or maybe didn't

earn or or whatever the case may be um I also don't I don't know that I I don't depend on the Praises of like I don't I don't really care to have the Praises of strangers you know what I mean like it's the people who I who really matter to me so if it's not to inspire which like I said if they don't have the full context I don't know that it's going to be so inspirational then I'd rather just share it with the people who know me who've seen the behind the scenes and can

really celebrate me sure what would you say it is for you for me it doesn't feel as good when I get it because then it doesn't like in the moment when I'm looking if someone else has it or if I see where you know the goal that I set it feels like this Grand thing that I'm working towards but when I get it it feels like anyone could have like I didn't do anything special to get it it feels like anyone could get it so then I feel almost embarrassed about celebrating it because like you

didn't do anything exceptional and actually I'm on to the next thing actually now work harder so that you you can set a higher goal so that feels more like you've accomplished it um but then I realized again you're just moving the goal Po and it's never going to feel as good so I thought that was interesting when you said um paying off the debt didn't feel as good and I know you had your different reasons but it is something to talk about sometimes where you're like wow I thought it was going to be this moment

where I'm like at the top of the stairs throwing my hands yeah like um I did it only me but then you sit here and you're just like okay I don't know what these feelings are so I'm happy that you actually explored that you knew where it came from I I do want to ask I well I want all of us to answer this what would you say is you you mentioned pop your like what's the biggest accomplishment that you've had in in just recent times that's a good question um I mean I think being

able to go full-time and support myself from a creative Endeavor um without having like outside financial support like I don't come from a family with money or it's truly all been like just work and being able to get as far as I have even though it's not as far as I want to go um thus far given you know my background and how I was raised and all of these things it's like wasn't an easy thing I love that what about you what's your biggest accomplishment um I think the house that we bought yeah yeah

it's huge and and I realized like you know it's a beautiful house we're building a home and a life together MH um and being in it and looking and just kind of even all the changes that we've made to personalize it it feels like a really big accomplishment yeah that's a big one how about you uh similar to you doing this full-time uh it's been a little over a year I would say that's the the biggest thing and then just being in this space where you're Your Own Boss is totally as a control freak who

likes it's totally out of my element but then you realize wait a minute this actually speaks to a part of me that maybe isn't so foreign um so yeah so next in the Rebrand next in the Rebrand what do you uh what do you do what's the next process the next step yeah oh that's a good question I'm trying to remember you mentioned uh embodying yes what was the last thing after you celebrate yourself so after you celebrate actually creating the plan and seeing it through celebrating I do Wonder as a goal oriented person um

where it comes from for you that's a good question I do think part of it is how I'm wired um I my parents are super supportive and have been really like morally supportive of everything that I've done but they didn't necessarily put a lot of pressure on me from a very young age I would put pressure on myself to do well in school and to do all these things and I don't really remember my parents ever putting that on me it was just something that I always kind of did on my own also just like

with the autonomy and which I think we definitely need is self-employed people to you know hold yourself accountable to do things if you don't have someone over your shoulder telling you to do it I had at kind of a young age and so I think it might just be a personality thing are you the you're the oldest right yeah mhm that's interesting that you didn't have that pressure from your parents I mean it's awesome that you didn't have that pressure but then you just kind of put it on yourself I planted the seed yeah and

then she said you know I got it from here wor got to do it yeah um and part of the goal uh building and and goal setting is habit building yes so let's talk about that CU that's the action right like after you take the action for so many times it feels it becomes in habit yeah it's about making things easy on yourself I love how y'all were talking about the sexy Martha Stewart era um CU I love Martha Stewart did you watch her uh I definitely did the documentary and in the part of the

documentary where she said she hated waste and inefficiency I was like I felt that because if anything is like repetitive or harder than I think it should be in my brain I'm always like how can I streamline this how can I make it easier how can I reverse engineer this and I did did that with a lot of my habits where I'm like okay if I'm need to work out at 5: in the morning what can I do to streamline that process how can I make it as easy as possible whether that's like setting my

workout clothes you know having my gym bag packed how can I reduce friction in everything that I'm doing is just kind of how my brain works and I think sometimes when we are establishing habits people don't necessarily do that and so it's it's already hard enough to establish a new habit but then when you're not reducing the friction to make it easier on yourself to actually do the thing that's what makes it really hard so when people are establishing habits I think it's important to look at those sticking points what is preventing you from having

that habit and how can you address that so that it becomes routine do you do uh Habit stacking at all where you like attach it to something that like let's say brushing your teeth and you attach it to the new habit I think I used to do more of those things before it was as automatic and now I think a lot of them are so automatic to me that I don't think about it as much but habit stacking can be super helpful for people who are just getting started yeah I think even just identifying the

fact that we have rituals and habits every day and I didn't see brushing your teeth as a habit but then when you do you're like oh it comes so easy so something that maybe in the beginning obviously when you're like a child takes a little bit of effort and then it just becomes like second nature you grab the toothbrush you're brushing your teeth um exactly the best is when it's on autopilot you're like and you look back you're like oh wow I did all of these things and it's become you know second nature I don't

ever see Fitness doing that for being that for me like promising like I was not that person either and it just it becomes like brushing your teeth putting your contacts in like in my mind it's all the same thing oh my gosh it's so it's so funny because it does make me feel better when you say like I was not that person because with extra siid I feel like there's them yes yeah right so when you say that wasn't your thing did you grow up around it by the way like not really I mean I

played some sports but I was never that good at it you know it was something to keep me I was always like very average very okay and I remember starting to go to the gym in my early 20s and seeing other girls at the gym who were athletic and who were fit and who were strong and being like Oh I want to be like them and again for how my brain works to reverse engineer I'm like okay if I see her over there lifting these weights how can I learn how to do that then I

would go to the very beginning of like okay weight training 101 and how can I break this down for myself like you would tell a kid so that I can kind of build up to that point but I definitely was not that person you can absolutely get there I think it's part of the narrative that we were talking about like I tell myself and we were talking about this at dinner last night where for the longest time I'm like I'm not an athletic person like the gym does not see me I don't see it um

but I started playing sports with my husband we play like pickleball or something and he's an athlete like he's played three Sports all his life throughout college right so to me I'm like okay that's an athlete and for him to say like no like your hand eye coordination is good like actually you're keeping up like you're great it felt so good because he was like no you're actually athletic you're you're very athletic and I was like okay maybe I can do this like you know what you're right I did like hit that ball back exactly

um but it helped me change the narrative that I was telling myself that I'm like I'm not an athletic person um and I think about that every time I go to cycling now I'm like I could do this like I actually I have coordination we have an ongoing joke that Mona is quite the philanthropist um oh God no and why do we say that because you generously I donate every month I don't miss a month to Equinox yeah yeah Equinox is like not see me they have a plaque and they say we want to thank

our mon patronizing yeah yeah it's very impressive our Don uh dang she aired me out but now I'm going to go to pilates at 6:00 a.m. no so the first time Janette was like oh I have this habit now I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and I was like okay I'll do it with you or you suggested you like you should do it I was like okay I'll do it with you I don't think she expected that I was going to actually do it I was shocked shocked but then I wake up and I'm like

okay like now what and that's about the why I didn't have a why so I'm over here like now I'm grumpy and I'm up at five and I got nothing to do I don't even work till 11:00 a.m. what am I supposed to do um but yeah I will say that was a great Havoc because then I realized there's so many things that you can Implement absolutely no and and you mentioned like um speaking of like the morning routin and things that you should do um doing things already and making decisions the night before so

you don't have decision fatigue by the end of the day the following day absolutely it's just I'm still working on it like I will spend 30 minutes trying to pick an outfit to work from home like it's just like decision they're going to see you on Zoom from like the chest up like what are we doing but like hacking things and finding I know it sounds a little extreme but like the research behind very seemingly meaning things like you said that make your life just more efficient that type of thing y exactly what would you

say hacks and like the research-based things that you probably do to back some of this I mean I just I like try to set up and optimize as much as I can even like in my business and how I manage my podcast everything is very processed and very automated and very templatized and we have a very specific follow that or process that we follow for everything from booking guests to writing the show notes to scripting show it is like a rinse and repeat process so that me and the people who work with me we're not

spending our mental energy starting from scratch we're able to jump right into the creative thing and it just makes it all so much easier and it was because as I was getting started I found those friction points where I was getting stuck and I was like okay how can I eliminate this how can I make this as easy as possible and honestly lowkey it's from laziness like I actually am my core am a lazy person so me optimizing things is because I'm like oh this is redundant I don't want to do this so I'm going

to make it easier on myself which that alone I'm going to steal from you because for me I feel like if it's difficult you're doing something so like if it feels difficult I'm like Ah that's good that's a good thing so I will rework that we've only scratched the surface with all the things that you touch on on rebranding I love your episode on like thinking like an athlete or you know approaching life as an athlete does um so if you can plug where we can find all these episodes and also the Rebrand for your

podcast if you want to touch on that a little bit if you're okay with SH yeah yeah yeah yeah so uh my podcast that I've been hosting for the past almost almost seven years is called balance black girl and it's going to be in the spring of 2025 evolving under a new name that is just like a little bit more grownup version um so you can subscribe to balance black girl wherever you see it now like YouTube Spotify all the places subscribe now so that when it switches over you don't miss anything uh but I

have new episodes every Tuesday and a whole archive 300 episodes that people can listen to oh my goodness yeah no she's she's a great listen to guys if you want to be better it's like self-help but in a healthier way right it's practical it's relatable and and we appreciate you for not gatekeeping thank so thank you for joining us and for joining the group chat thank you for having me and you can of course subscribe to uh off the record on our YouTube at off the Record Instagram at off the reccord podcast and we will

see you here next week for our next episode [Music]