Margo Gladys

I attribute my success to my resilience, my quiet resilience. I actually did a keynote speech on that a year ago for International Women's Day - that was my first keynote. I'm Jewish, and I came here alone from Poland, but when I reflect on my parents and those before them, they've been so resilient. Poland has gone through so much, and they didn't have the chances I had. My parents grew up during communism where they weren't allowed certain opportunities, but they had that strength and inner resilience to keep going, no matter what. I think I inherited that from them. Certainly being alone in New York, coming here with nothing, no support, nothing, just a couple of dollars 20 years ago, I struggled with a lot of mindset adjustment because many of us Eastern Europeans have this attitude of stand in the corner and be quiet. I had to overcome that, and I'm still working on it - adjusting my mindset to show up the way I want to, to be self-compassionate, self-confident. But deep inside, there is that very quiet resilience. It doesn't roar, it's not like a proud person, but it's resilient. That's something I'd love to teach younger girls - you have to keep going, because life will knock you down. Life will always be tough, but we all have to keep going.

The best advice I ever received came from one of my male bosses who was a wonderful mentor. When I came here as an immigrant, as a woman, as someone who had no backup, I was successful but I had this attitude of overly apologizing, of always being nice. He noticed that attitude and he said, 'Margo, stop apologizing, stop just being nice. Men never do that.' This advice, coming from my boss and from a man, opened my eyes that I don't need to shrink. My default state was shrinking to make everyone feel comfortable. I think his advice was to stop shrinking. It was very empowering, and I'm very grateful to him. He said, 'Stop this button' - stop being so nice, stop apologizing. It's been a process because it's not like one day you wake up and you're like, 'I'm the best, yes!' But among many other wonderful pieces of advice, that had a huge impact on me.

I would tell them to be prepared to be resilient, because many of us think - and I was naive to think this - that having your own business and being in wellness means you just meditate, teach classes, and it's so easy and wonderful because you do what you love. But it's not, because there is all this plethora of responsibilities that are not fun - you have to get clients, so you have to hustle, you have to learn to hustle. It's not as easy as it seems, but like I said, life in general is not easy. So if someone really wants to be in it, they have to be prepared to just keep going. And if they're too tired or on the verge of giving up, at least make one step that will bring them closer to pursuing their goal. Just keep going and not give up - it's worth it. As I reflect now that I'm older, all of this was worth it, but it wasn't easy. What strikes me right now is that we live in this culture where we believe that it's easy, there is overnight success, and it's so easy - you just do an online course and you get online followers. But it doesn't work like this. People who accomplished professional success in any field - because I've been in different fields, I've been working with different people, I've been meeting other collaborators - this overnight success is fake. Whoever wants to accomplish anything in life, whether corporate, business, finance, whatever, they need to be prepared to work hard. Be quietly resilient, not overly out there. Just quietly work. And be humble - I believe huge in being humble.

The biggest challenge in my industry right now is the overwhelming amount of information and competition. Wellness is growing, and there are so many people out there promoting ideas, diets, biohacks, routines, and coaching who do a disservice because they don't have the necessary experience. There's this whole mindset that everything is easy - you just do one coaching certification of 25 hours, or you don't even need anything to teach some things. The challenge for the overall industry is being inundated and overwhelmed with all the information out there. Competition is huge. For me as a person who is in the field, the question is: how do you authentically stand out? I really studied all of this since 2012, and I've been on my own wellness journey for 20 years. I know that all of us are different - what works for me is not going to work for you. When I work with my clients, it takes some time, it takes some work and experimentation. I have a very deep understanding of physiology, of Eastern practices, all of that, and coaching and psychology. I really studied it, and I keep studying because I want to get better. But people like myself who try to provide the best service are competing against people who are excellent at putting themselves out there, who maybe don't provide quality services but they are just good at Instagram, at YouTube, at all this tech. The biggest challenge for people on the older side like myself is this tech - it's a different world than 2012 when I started. So the biggest challenge right now is: how do you stand out in this noise of information? People who put quality over purely selling themselves find it very hard to get clients, to get exposure. People who are not noisy have a very difficult time. And for clients overall, they are drowning in an overload of information as well.

I value integrity I think we should always strive to pursue what's right and not hurt other people. That's a big one for me. I also value growth tremendously. Maybe it's too big of a word, but I think we are all happy when we pursue something. To me personally, whether it's professional or little things at home, I want to keep learning, and I believe that if we keep learning and growing and expanding our horizons, that's what keeps us alive. If you stop growing, learning, expanding, you stopped living. And the third value is humility. I believe in being humble, and there is a big difference between shrinking and humility to me. By humble, I mean believing in yourself and being confident, but not necessarily being cocky and belittling other people, because that's what we see so much of right now. I think humility would help the whole world to engage in conversation, in talks, in dialogue. These huge egos lead to where we are in the world right now. If everyone just shrugged their ego, put down their ego a little bit, and engaged in a little bit more awareness and recognizing that we're all valuable, this world would be a better place.