Hey Glow Gang!

Here's your weekly reminder that we can do anything. That YOU can do anything. And that a vision board can help you get there - per our trailblazing woman this week: Katie Doan, founder of Next Step Coach.

Let's get glowing

-Shilpa

News Of The Week

Simply The Best 🙌🏽

Music Legend

RIP to the queen of rock ‘n’ roll 🎶 Pioneering rock ’n’ roll star Tina Turner passed away yesterday aged 83 following a long illness. RIP legend. Via The Guardian: Tina Turner affirmed and amplified Black women’s formative stake in rock’n’roll, defining that era of music to the extent that Mick Jagger admitted to taking inspiration from her high-kicking, energetic live performances for his stage persona. She’ll live on in our hearts through her timeless music 💜

Entrepreneurship and Tech

Time for a new storia 📖 Storia, the new mental health app founded by Elizabeth Uviebinené, has raised £500K to launch a beta version. Inspired by Elizabeth’s bestselling book, Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, Storia will be a guided journaling app designed to help users find their inner story by organising their thoughts and unlocking their authentic voice. Sounds pretty awesome.

Speaking of apps: We need YOU! 👊🏽 Please sign up to the ARtist Waitlist to gain access to an online beauty marketplace powered by augmented reality that works for YOU. Joining the waitlist will help us get the app out into the world 😊 Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell everyone you know!

More News Nuggets

Extra Nuggets 👀

Glowreel Recos

What we’re loving this week, AAPI Heritage Month Edition:

Read: The Resisters by Gish Jen. The most interesting dystopian novel that you’ll ever read, with a touch of baseball ⚾

Watch: Moana. Because sometimes all you need is to watch a feel-good kids’ movie with a strong female lead 🌊

Make: Blueberry Cardamom French Toast Casserole by The Chutney Life. You had me at french toast! 🍞

Support BIPOC Women Owned Businesses

Shop your favourite BIPOC woman founded brands in Glowreel’s Little Purple Book! This week’s recommended product: Calm capsules by Arrae.

$48 (USD, ships worldwide)

Trailblazing Woman Interview

Katie Doan On Visualising Your Future (And Making It Happen)

Katie Doan is the founder of Next Step Coach. Through Next Step Coach, Katie is helping people, and especially women and women of colour to lead fulfilling working lives.

Recently, Katie collaborated with Glowreel to lead a vision boarding workshop - supporting attendees to visualise what their ideal life looks like professionally and personally (yes, it was awesome!)

We caught up with Katie to hear more about her journey behind building Next Step Coach, why she decided to start her own business and exactly how vision boarding works. Let’s go!

Katie! Great to be chatting with you today. Before we get into it, can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m a proud Vietnamese Australian woman. I grew up mostly in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, travelled the world as much as I could in my youth, lived in London for nearly 5 years and settled back in Melbourne again to raise my two young daughters with my husband. Fun fact is my first experience of reinventing myself was at aged 6 when I declared to my parents that I shall henceforth be known as Katie!

You spent 20 years working in the health care sector - what type of work/roles were you in and what was your experience like in this sector?

I started my career as a Physiotherapist. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to help others and I was always interested in health and wellness. After a few years, I became interested in addressing problems at a root and system level and working upstream in population health and illness prevention. I pursued post graduate studies in Public Health and Health Services Management and Strategy and spent the next 15 years leading large scale complex collaborative projects in health organisations here in Melbourne and in London.

It’s strange to me as I reflect now that it never occurred to me to think about my experiences in the workplace through a woman or woman of colour lens. Perhaps this was because health is a female-dominated field with many women of colour. There are gifts and challenges in this viewpoint. The gift is that I rarely thought that I couldn’t pursue something based on my gender or ethnicity. The challenge is that there have been times I placed a disproportionate level of responsibility on myself when there were systemic issues that were bigger than just me.

Let’s chat more about Next Step Coach, which you established in 2021 - can you share more about what it is , who it’s for and what you hope to achieve with it?

There are four pillars to Next Step Coach. Firstly, Career Strategy which is supporting people who are seeking new career directions to pursue work that they love and fills them with meaning and purpose – getting on the right path for you. Secondly, Strategic Leadership Development which is to support people to excel in their ideal career. Thirdly, Strategic Planning where I work with Executives and Boards on developing a Strategy that takes their organisation to where they want to go. Fourthly, Diversity, equity and Inclusion – this is where I get to elevate the voices of women and women of colour.

I started Next Step Coach to support women, and in particular, women of colour, to stop working for a paycheck and start doing work that they love and doing it well. We owe it to ourselves and future generations of women to find out what makes us happy and go and do it. I know that my daughters will watch what I’m doing far more than listen to anything I may say so it’s part of my job as a mum to do work that I love. I know how fortunate I am to have this life and so my business is all about supporting others to find their way.

What motivated/inspired you to start Next Step Coach?

I had the great fortune of having a coach as different times in my career, usually when I was stepping up into a bigger new role. I loved the space to reflect, to grow and to share what I learnt with those I was coaching. In my last role in an organisation, I was offered the opportunity to stay on as Chief Experience Officer. As tempting as this was, it was certainly flattering and a big boost to my ego, I knew it wasn’t the right move for me.

One of the questions I ask myself regularly to sharpen my perspective is, “At the end of your life, what will you regret not doing?” At the end of our lives, we often regret what we didn’t do more that what we did do. For me, I knew I would regret not starting my own business.

So, it was time to bite the bullet, turn down the safe, secure and high-status job with a predictable pathway that I knew was not right for me. And time to leap into the unknown to pursue a dream spending my days doing what I love.

The highlights and challenges of building your company so far?

The greatest thrills I have in my work are the moments when I see it in a client’s eyes, face, whole body that they’ve had a breakthrough. For someone to realise that they had the answers within all along is pure gold – I live for that. The next most thrilling part of my day is seeing that person return in the next session and excitedly share the progress they’ve made from this new insight. I can’t see a day where I’ll ever stop doing what I do – I honestly believe I will be doing this work until I take my last breath.

The challenges have all been in the mind. In the early days the voices of self-doubt were loudest. I used these challenges as teachers – like weight training in a gym – but a gym for strengthening my mind. I’ve used the daily challenges of starting a business to strengthen my health and wellness practices. My morning routine is my sacred time and I get in my meditation, nature walk and journalling all before it’s time to get the kids off to school. This mental fitness enables me to see that I can handle any challenge that comes my way. I know that I can work through it.

Katie, you recently facilitated a vision boarding session for us. How does vision boarding help people achieve their goals, and do you recommend it’s something that everyone should do/try?

The Vision Boarding sessions at EY were great fun! Vision boarding helps on a range of levels. Firstly, simply carving out time for yourself sends your brain the message that you are worth the investment. Self-care is not selfish – if we take the time to figure out what we really want, we can take strategic, proactive action that will be of benefit to ourselves and others. Secondly, it’s a chance to refresh and refocus on what’s really important to you. Often we say our health and relationships are important yet the end of the year comes and we’re no closer to living that reality. Thirdly, the creative exercise of selecting images that represent our ideal future is a great way to access a deeper, more intuitive part of ourselves. Fourthly, having an image on paper that we can regularly refer to is a great way to keep the vision top of mind and puts our brains to work to notice opportunities that align with our vision.

I recommend that everyone gives it a try once – give it a go as an experiment and see what happens.

Your top tip or tips for women of colour who are also wanting to carve out their own path and make a difference?

My top tip is to ask yourself, “What would I do if you knew I couldn’t fail? What would I do if I knew I could handle any success? What would I do if nobody judged me?” Then believe you’ll figure it out and just go for it.

Lioness Thoughts

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This week's email was brought to you by Shilpa Bhim, founder of Glowreel. You can see more of her work at www.shilpabhim.com or follow her on Instagram @shilpa.bhim

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