Chenise Upshur

I attribute my success to doing things scared. I have this saying that I really held onto all of last year: 'do it scared.' There are so many times that things come up that are just so daunting, and I've learned that you have to do it scared. For example, about 8 to 10 years ago, I told myself I really wanted to get better at public speaking, and I realized I couldn't just read a book to get better at it. I had to actually do it. So I committed to speaking to a group of 10 or more people every single week for 6 months. I joined leadership programs and took on roles that would force me to present regularly. There was even one week where nothing was scheduled, so I called up one of my old professors at Vanderbilt and asked if I could come speak to a group just so I wouldn't break my promise to myself. He made up a topic for me to speak on, and I got to speak in front of about 30 people. That was my first time really experiencing the power of doing it scared. I didn't wait until I felt perfect or had practiced a thousand speeches in front of the mirror. I just got up there and did it. It's not even that it gets easier, there are still moments where I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I'm doing this, but I just remind myself that this has been my mantra for the past 8 or 9 years, and I haven't died yet. I feel like when people see that you're trying, they're actually willing to invest in you and help you improve, versus when you don't put yourself out there, nothing happens.

The best career advice I received was that there is no such thing as work-life balance, it's a work-life seesaw. This idea that some phases of your life are going to be more focused on work, and other phases are going to be more focused on the life part really resonated with me. It may sound like weird career advice because it's not really something that helps you get ahead, but for me, just knowing and feeling okay that this month or this quarter it's all about work and my family may not see me as much, but this is the phase I'm in, and knowing that at some point it's going to swing back and I can lean into family and put 120% there to make up for that time, really helped me make choices. There would be moments when opportunities would come about, and I'd ask myself, okay, Chenise, if things are going to sway, are you in a space where you're okay with that? This was especially important as a single mom because I always had to keep that in mind. In the beginning of my career, I had a lot of angst around finding balance and wondering if a role was giving me the balance I needed. But understanding the seesaw concept gave me the freedom to take a role that required giving work 120% and family only 80%, knowing that my next role could be the other way. That actually helped me make choices that really benefited my career.

My advice would be to do it scared. There are so many moments for young women coming in, whether it's asking for a promotion, asking for a raise, pitching a new idea, or learning a new skill, where you might think, what if it doesn't work out? But I say, what if it does? And even if it doesn't work out, I feel like so many times when things wouldn't work out for me, people would recognize that I was trying and would offer to help, and I would learn such amazing things that I wouldn't have otherwise. When people see that you're trying, they're actually willing to invest in you. For example, someone might say, you put out 3 ideas, 2 of them were great, one was a little off, let me show you how to make that better. People would come and do that because they saw me trying, versus when I wouldn't put myself out there, nothing would happen. So do it scared.

I think in the field of becoming an entrepreneur, creating businesses, and specifically in the coaching niche, the biggest challenge is being a people connector. It's almost like we're having to go back to learning how to connect to people. I don't know whether technology has made it so that people felt for the longest time they didn't have to connect genuinely, or what, but I feel like in coaching, and specifically business coaching, having to create these genuine connections is probably the biggest challenge right now.

I would definitely say authenticity is most important to me, and I know it sounds cliche, but it's true. In my personal life, I'm so busy that I don't have the time to determine whether there's truthfulness or not. If you're interacting with me, I need you to be authentic because I'm going to make decisions based off what people are telling me, and I don't want to make incorrect decisions or incorrect assumptions. We're never not going to be people at the end of the day, so let me know how best to relate to you. I always do my best to present myself in the most authentic way so people know how to relate to me. Maybe because I'm in my 40s now, I don't know, but I don't have the energy to be unauthentic. What you see is what you get. If I'm not for you, that's perfectly fine. I don't have the energy to present different facades to people, so please don't do the same to me. From a business perspective, I can't help people if they're not willing to be authentic. So much of my work revolves around understanding what people's biggest roadblocks are when they're making this transition from corporate to being a corporate escapee, and if they're not willing to be authentic, open, genuine, or even a little vulnerable, my work isn't going to be impactful with them. There have been clients who were so resistant to being open that I had to stop our sessions and tell them I need a level of openness that they're not willing to give me right now, and suggest they might need to work with a therapist first. Because authenticity has to be the primary focus of my business work, it's really bled even more so into the personal.