PODCAST Episode 019

Published 21 January 2026

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

[00:00:00] People pleasing, hides the actual advantage you have. You are here to give something that people don't know they want until they experience it as a culture creator or change maker. Your recognition comes when you turn up the volume on your specific, unique point of view. Holding back from fully leading from that point of view means you waste so much energy and compromise the impact that your work could be having.

Validation as a strategy might have worked before or maybe never did, but where you are going. It's about having the guts to go to new unvalidated places on your terms and bringing people with you. This is not a normal [00:01:00] career ladder, but that's exactly why you wanted it, and valorize is the skill to blaze that trail.

I'm Louisa Shaeri. Join me every week when I'll be talking about how to make the uniquely transformative point of view at the core of your boldest work viable. Visible and valorized.

Main:

In today's episode, I want to speak to three arenas that transform when your work is transformative or it has a liberatory intent. Three arenas that need to transform for that work to work. I wanna invite you to be aware of them, get across them, be intentional about them so that you're not over-indexing on just [00:02:00] one of them and can welcome the challenge that comes with.

What happens when things are changing, when things are transforming, and you have that degree of agency and you experience being a co-creator, being someone who can carve out and invoke and facilitate change in the world. And so I'm gonna talk about each one, I think, on a separate episode. And the first one is.

Identifying the specific change that your work moves forward in the world. Last week I went to an exhibition of works by Kerry James Marshall. I knew about his work. He did the Obama portraits a few years back. But I'd never experienced his work in person. And this exhibition is massive. There's like more than 70 works of art and a lot of his paintings are really big [00:03:00] or big enough to stand in front of them.

And you really feel immersed and affected by, and I want to. Speak to it quickly because: talk about valorize! He sees himself as a historian, specifically a historian of Black American lives. What I felt from it was a celebration of black joy, black culture, black resistance activism in such a way that it was unequivocal.

It was like an unequivocal message, a repeated. Invitation to keep looking and witnessing and seeing and experiencing that. And in doing so, I imagine transforming how black Americans see themselves having a voice in that conversation, in the, in the cultural presence and [00:04:00] conception of what it means to be a black American.

In the context emerging out of a backdrop of the transatlantic slave trade, but really foregrounding what has been created by black Americans and celebrating it. Anyway, I highly recommend if you ever get to experience his work. I wanted to bring it in because it's such an amazing example of what I wanna speak to today, which is the first of the three transformations I want to talk about, and the first one being the transformation that you are taking responsibility towards in the world.

I said responsibility towards, because I think what I notice with people I work with is that there's often a larger. Desire for the kind of world that we can live in. A larger desire for what could be possible for how systems and ways of relating could [00:05:00] be attuned away from the parts of modernism, industrialism, colonialism that don't work.

I don't think any colonialism works, but you know what I'm saying. The, the legacies of those, the, the structures that are still. In place. And so there's a desire amongst those that I work with and in in myself for contributing to what feels generative and connective and increasing of life chances and belonging, and how do we make sense of the world that we're in.

I think there's a big argument to be said for trusting something about. The wisdom of whatever life is, whatever it is that gives life to have a power that is beyond any and each and any one of us. But I [00:06:00] also think that there is something in each of us that is. Called to be who we are here to become.

That is called to go on some kind of journey, and quite often for people I work with, that is a journey in the beginning of emergence, a journey of locating yourself in coordinates that weren't prescribed or weren't taught to you, and you've had to figure it out. You've had to figure out who you see yourself as.

You've had to make intentional connections to places where you derive meaning and you derive identity, and you derive truth that aren't prevalent, that aren't mainstream, that aren't dominant. And so when you are setting out, creating your own business informed by that and informed by. The desire to create your own structures, to create your own economic model, to create [00:07:00] something that is an offering in the world that does something, changes things.

Yeah. There's often the, it's often informed by a, a larger desire and responsibility towards something that is bigger than any one of us. That is bigger than just you. That is bigger than just your business. And so knowing what that is. Knowing what you are for, what your work is for that is beyond your work is a really powerful locator.

It's like I know what I'm in connection with. I know what I'm for. I know that there are other people who want this too. I know that this means something beyond just me. But then sometimes we come into relationship with, okay, what is the piece of this that I work on? What is the piece of this that I contribute to?

And making that into a self-sustaining [00:08:00] livelihood brings in a whole bunch of adaptations and habituated assumptions about what's required to create something that other people will want and pay you for. That can muddy the water of that commitment that can make you be half in and half out. Like needing proof first.

Needing approval first, needing validation first. And this is because we don't think that we get to design a business around what works specifically, what works for you in order to create that work in the world in order to offer something. We assume we don't have the choice, and it can be really disorientating to discover that you had the choice and therefore you have the responsibility to choose.

And then how do you choose? How do you choose which piece of it? Which piece of this? Frontier, this [00:09:00] transformation, this change in the world are you choosing as the bit that you are stewarding and taking care of and inviting people to pay you for. And so translating the wider commitment, the wider desire for the kind of world that we live in, into a model and.

A choice of what specific piece you are creating for and therefore valuing and building value around and valorizing as this matters. This piece is also the piece that I'm choosing to put my resources to, right? How do we value, we actually. Put resources towards time, attention, money, effort, energy, all the things.

What piece of it is for me, [00:10:00] and this commitment is a commitment to saying, I believe I can. I believe this can work. I believe people will want it, that people will value it. And this is the issue we come to is. You're creating a business, a business or a practice, a solo practice, a way that you are in charge of how your work exists, the financial structures around it, or the resources, how they float.

But when you've navigated systems that you had to squash and fit in with and didn't quite work and didn't quite see the value that you bring, your thinking goes to the assumptions of what. A system will value what the mainstream will value. What people in your past have valued and thinking that you need to compromise yourself.

Compromise the work, compromise [00:11:00] your boundaries, compromise your energy, your body, your own limits in order for that value to be perceived. What the first transformation of what changes as a direct result of your work? What does your work valorize? What? What transforms with the work itself in the world or for the people who work with you?

What changes as a direct result of their interaction with your work,

your ability to. Decide and determine that that holds value as a direct impact on whether that becomes true. I'm gonna talk this through when you are not sure it's harder for someone else to trust and come on board with a possibility [00:12:00] and commit their resources to it. When you are half in, you will bring a half in type of energy towards you.

You will bring in half in commitment, half in resources, half in values. So the idea that a business creates value and then receives value. When your work is transformative, what you are called to do is decide what holds value, not just perceive what is already valued and create more of it, but to decide that something that has been devalued or undervalued or not yet realized holds valued.

Not only that, that you are prioritizing it and making it the value, the thing that your work is about. Determining that what you believe holds value and committing to it, and building the structure of how you [00:13:00] work according to that. Taking on the responsibility to elevate that, to valorize it, to determine this matters.

This is important. It's so easy to approach it with an apologetic or learned way of thinking and identifying it as something less than emergent, unproven as, oh, I'm, I'm just starting out. Oh, I'm, I'm just trying something. I'm just seeing if people want it. I'm just experimenting. I'm just seeing what will stick.

And the tentativeness of that is really you not recognizing the power that each of us has to shape our reality, to shape our collective existence, to shape the way that we narrate the meaning that we give the attention, that we give part of the show up skill set inside flare houses, knowing how do you move yourself [00:14:00] to take action towards something that isn't?

Has proven that isn't as established or maybe that you've never done or you haven't done it enough, or no one asked you. And this being such a core and key piece of the puzzle for a later skill set, which is team Up, which is moving others, bringing them with you, consenting people deciding to be a yes for your work, for the way that you work, for the culture that you create around your work.

You can't move other people unless you are moving yourself. And so it is part of the work to take yourself there first. And one of the ways that you can take yourself there first is to get really specific about what is the piece of this change that I am building my work around. For example, for me, I know that there are so many.

Amazing things that [00:15:00] people have to give to this current moment and are unsure if they're allowed, if they can. And for me, the specific piece is you knowing the value of what you bring and then building accordingly. That's the piece of it. But the larger thing for me is that your work gets to exist. That it gets to be impacting and shaping our, our shared world.

That it excites people, that people feel alive, that people feel seen, that people feel more possible. There's a supermarket in the uk. That has recently introduced cameras everywhere where they then have screens hanging from the ceiling and tracking people's faces, AK facial recognition. I'm just going to get food, and here I'm being surveilled and my data and my face being taken.

Like, what the fuck? And I really believe that solo and small [00:16:00] businesses are and can be a huge piece of this. It's where people's trust is at the moment. People are not trusting big institutions, big corporations. People trust small businesses because you cannot function unless you are actually doing something of value.

I am not interested so much in small businesses as I am in the people who have a vision, who have an instinct for something that could be different, who like being on the edge, who like bringing a new frontier and have new thinking, have a perspective or are a bridge between, and you knowing how vital and valuable that is.

So the piece of it for me is working with individuals. On their thinking and their relationship to their own limits, their own resources, their own dreams, and trusting them to the extent that they build plans, structures, [00:17:00] and a micro economy for themselves, a value system so that their work is sustainable so that they can be doing it.

So that's the piece of it for me. I'm not doing accountancy, I'm not doing, um, tactics. Occasionally there's some strategy that comes in. I'm not doing how tos, I'm not doing skills of how to use certain technologies. I'm not doing any of that. I want to work with the individual on who they're being and how believing in the value and trusting their own perspective, trusting what they bring.

So that's the piece for me. And why that piece? Because I get the most from it, as in I get the most satisfaction, the most fulfillment. I feel like I'm good at it because of how much fulfillment I get from being able to see someone in their current circumstance and then [00:18:00] also see them in the courage and their.

Journey and the possibility that they are holding and to more and more embody that version of themselves, more and more embody the leadership and the culture change agent version of them that is doing it, and that is living and, and benefiting and enjoying, being recognized for, and being sought out for the thing that they bring that they didn't know could be this powerful for me.

That's. The delicious, exciting, but also it comes easily. I feel like it's the part of my journey that I was undervalued for is being able to sense someone's incongruence, sense someone's energy, and get to the heart of where they're blocking themselves, where they're in their own way very quickly, but also do the same when it comes to structures [00:19:00] and the decisions that they're making.

And because often when you're doing this kind of work, your structures have to be bespoke. You can't cookie cutter everything. There is a higher degree of self approval, self-trust, self authority. To embody, and that is a particular journey that not everyone has to go on. And so I get so much positive reinforcement for doing this.

I see it working. I see people go through that change. I see people transform because I'm honed in on, which is the piece that I really love. I don't have to do the whole thing. I do the piece that I'm most excited and most energized by. It's often the piece that you have a natural skillset for, or that you are just drawn to.

I didn't know that this was a natural skillset. I had no idea. I just knew that there was some part of me that needed [00:20:00] to go in this direction and I trusted it. And this emerged over the last five years. And I'm no longer in emergence. I'm in stability. I'm in. I've arrived, I'm in, I'm. Grounding. I'm growing.

I'm setting roots down. I'm growing this to be a big, stable ecosystem that people can come into and be part of their ecosystem. It's so satisfying, but it means that you have to decide on, yeah, what's your piece? Who specifically is your work for? What specifically do people pay you for? And how do you make a felt experience of what they might pay you for palpable ahead of someone paying you?

How do you give them a flavor, a taste? And one of the most impactful ways that you do that is in the decision about what your work is for, and then not holding back from that [00:21:00] being very, very explicit and clear and transparent and simple. So that every decision, every structure in your work is in integrity with that intention.

And when you do that, it leads to that actually happening because your resources, your learning, your skills development. Your identity, your self-belief, your reputation, the proof that you're building are all going in that direction. And so too are the people who you work with, the people who can already see the value, putting their resources in that direction.

And so there's a beautiful symmetry whereby it's not a possibility anymore. It functions, it's real. There's no persuasion necessary. Years ago, for my 30th [00:22:00] birthday, my partner took me to Paris and we spent, I think it was three days. We both loved food, and so we did a huge amount of research about where to eat, and one of the places was this restaurant called Kristoff's.

We booked a table at Kristoff's on the internet and we turn up, we'd booked it for lunch, arrived five minutes before it looked shut, but then when the church, there was a church nearby, when the church bell struck 12, the door opened and we went inside and typical Parisian restaurant, no music, and we sat down.

There was no one else there, and the floor was plasticky, and it was very paired down simple. It wasn't a fancy restaurant, although the prices were quite fancy and there was something awkward [00:23:00] about that atmosphere. We weren't sure if it was gonna be any good, and the guy who let us in just disappeared.

And we looked at each other like, oh no, we made a mistake. But then along he came and he was wearing these like sliders, like plastic slippers, and when he walked along the floor, they kind of made this sound and he handed us menus. And so we picked what we wanted and then he went into the kitchen.

Nothing happened for 10 minutes and we were like, no, we've definitely messed up here. This is probably gonna be terrible. Like none of the atmosphere was trying to evoke like a, a really special experience trying to persuade us that we were in some fancy establishment. It was the exact opposite, [00:24:00] but when the food came, I kid you not, it was one of the best meals I've ever had in my life.

Exquisite food. I, I could still picture it and tell you exactly what we had, but Christoph's was out of this world. And the reason I'm talking about that is because of the simplicity. He was just about the food. I think that was Christophe. I think there were no servers. It was him in the kitchen and. No persuasion, no frills and bells and whistles trying to convince you of anything.

Just delivering on the thing. Delivering on the reputation.

And so when you are clear on what is the specific piece of your work, what changes, what is your work, valorizing, when the structure of what you're [00:25:00] doing is actually in integrity with the thing that your work is for. When you keep it simple, when you're not trying to do everything, when you are clear on which piece changes as a direct result of people working with you, that your work exists, just the fact that it exists is a stake in the ground, is a visible commitment, is a proof in of itself.

That something is so possible, so real as to build your livelihood around it as to say, yeah, this is it. This is the thing I'm about, this is what I care about. This matters means that every other decision points resources towards that being true, being real, being possible, being sustainable. It is not [00:26:00] concerned with fitting in.

It's not concerned with persuading or convincing. It's not concerned with anything except the thing it's for. It opens the one specific door that needs to be visible and clear for someone, for the right person to say yes. Going to Christophe's. We weren't looking for a restaurant with an environment that would impress someone else.

We weren't looking for a place with a cool Instagram selfie background. We were looking just for good food, a good, amazing food experience, and that's what we got. So you being clear and you committing and deciding what changes as a direct result of your work. What specifically are you transforming for people with your work?

[00:27:00] You actually have to close doors. You have to say no, you have to let go of all of this stuff that you're keeping sort of one foot in and being maybe about and like, oh, maybe I, maybe I can also be this to this person and maybe, maybe I should cater to a broader audience. Maybe I should know what is the thing that you want to be known for.

What you want to be known for is what changes as a direct result of working with you or encountering and experiencing what you're doing. Where do you take people? The more clear, the more simple, the easier you make it for someone to say yes. And in order for that to happen, you have to first say no to anything That is not exactly the thing.

You have to say no to the people who aren't quite right, who won't fully get it, who want you to change what you're doing in some way. You have to be clear about the boundaries of what people pay you for and what you [00:28:00] are actually not willing to do, what you are not about, where the scope ends, the integrity of your work with this transformation that it's for.

Leads to it actually being possible, being sustainable, being something that is viable, being something that you grow reputation around, that people seek out that specific thing in a specific way that you do it. Then what expands is your ability to say no even more and to keep saying yes to the thing that you're about.

You get to be more picky. Opportunities come to you. People understand what you're about. They get it because you are not, because it's not confused. It's not trying to carve all bases, it's doing its thing and only its thing. And so I wanna invite you to be selfish about what you are saying yes to. Make it something that you can keep saying yes to forever.

Make it something that you would be prepared to be doing repeatedly for the next five, [00:29:00] 10, however many years. Make it something that you want to be known for. Make it the thing that you want to be the mark that you leave in the world. Make it the thing that you believe in the most. So when you're super clear on what specifically changes as a direct result of your work.

And everything you do is for That is one of the three pieces that leads to this working. In the next episode, I'm gonna talk about the second one, which is the ways in which. You [00:30:00] transform.