Media, accidental expertise, and the elephant in the room with Adela Hussain

Ever wanted to get in the media? You're going to love today's guest, my friend Adela Hussain. This episode covers a little bit of everything, from the power of being unapologetically yourself to becoming an "accidental expert" to business breakups. We'll show you how to lean into those often-ignored "elephant in the room" conversations that most experts tiptoe around, but that truly resonate with audiences.

Can't-miss moments from this episode:

• The magic 5-word statement that helps me uncover absolute story GOLD when working with my marketing clients...
  
  
• What journalists and editors are REALLY looking for in a compelling story (hint: being perfectly put together and reaching a specific "level" aren't even on the radar)...
  
  
• Why aren't we talking about this more?! Adela and I share our personal experiences with "business breakups" (and how they changed our lives in surprisingly positive ways)...
  
  
• Stop creating in a vacuum! Adela has some thoughts on why your media efforts may be failing (and how to make idea generation WAY easier)...
  
  
• Two critical questions to ask yourself whenever you're feeling stuck and overwhelmed (and one of them led to Adela creating an entirely new business for herself!)...

Join us for a candid chat about the beautiful messiness of business. 

Adela's bio:

Adela’s a disruptive publicist and is a master at helping you pitch your business to people that don’t know you…yet. 
 
Known for her high energy and laser-sharp thinking, Adela creates equity in publicity by removing the gatekeeper and helps builds authentic connections between rising, ambitious, liberal entrepreneurs and world-class journalists. 
 
Adela discovered she had a talent for pitching when she first started doing PR for her own fashion tech start up and was featured in 14 publications in 12 months, including the Harvard Business Review without pitching! 
 
A former Management Consultant, she has been featured in the BBC, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Stylist, Psychologies, Metro and 10 other publications. She was also a finalist in Cosmopolitan’s Self Made Award in 2017 and in 2018 she was in Sarah Woods’ Top 10 Female Founders In The UK To Watch list. 
 
Her Pitch to Press Program and Media Mastermind, The Parlour have helped hundreds of founders fall in love with PR and master their media pitching to sky rocket their sales.

Resources and links mentioned:

• Adela’s Website
• Adela on Insta
• Angie's HuffPo article

Transcript

Angie Colee: 0:03

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Colee, and let's get to it. And welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my good friend, adela Hussain. Say hi, hello.

Adela Hussain: 0:39

Angie greetings from London, where it's not raining right now.

Angie Colee: 0:43

Oh, lucky greetings from Texas, where it's already hot and spring has sprung. We're recording this early in March of 2024, and I am excited, so before I go down the weather rabbit hole, tell us a little bit more about your business and what you do.

Adela Hussain: 0:57

Hello everyone, my name is Adela Hussain. As you can see here, I'm British, so I've got a very strong British accent. I help experts play bigger in their business and become true thought leaders by getting media coverage and to get media coverage to attract clients, credibility and reach. So I have a media mastery method. I run a media mastermind where over 12 months, I introduced you to 24 media professionals to help you land media features.

Angie Colee: 1:31

Oh, that's so awesome and I love this. I've been on a media journey in the past too, actually, thank you, and I talked about this because I had an article a very personal article appeared in Huffington Post last year and I can always tell when they send it out because I get a fresh influx of followers and various channels message requests going. I just saw your article on Huffington Post. I'm like wow, that came out in November and it keeps going after you initially put it out there, which is really awesome.

Adela Hussain: 1:58

I love it. I love it when you get that flurry of interest, because a lot of journalists actually and this may have happened to you they don't actually send you an email letting you know the article has come out. So you just suddenly see this flurry of interest and so you go down a little bit of a detective journey trying to figure out why, and then you realize an article's being released and it's really exciting when you suddenly get that impact on your business.

Angie Colee: 2:24

Oh yeah, and I mean it's interesting because I didn't know when I pitched it, but I worked with somebody who's in a similar space to you. I know you specialize in working with wellness professionals. This person specialized in working with experts and I just kind of told her I need some ideas pulled out of my head. I have no idea what is special or interesting, and I don't mean that in a derogatory oh I'm depressed sense, which, if you're depressed, sending you all the love, but we're not objective when it comes to evaluating what rocks about us, which is why I love what you do.

Angie Colee: 2:58

And when I got on a call with this woman, I'm like, well, this is what all has happened. This is my goal. I'm about to release a book. I have this podcast. These are the things I talk about. These are the people I'm passionate about. I've had a couple setbacks and she does something that I do with my clients. Tell me more about that. And it's like well, right as I was quitting my job to start the podcast, I had this experience with an ex-boyfriend that unexpectedly dumped me and she was like that would make a great essay for the Huffington Post personal section. Here's the editor, here's how you frame that Away you go and it's like that's nice, that's so lovely when somebody can point out that's a fascinating story. Here's where to put it.

Adela Hussain: 3:32

I love it. I love it Exactly. I mean, I think it's really. I think what you did there was absolutely what a lot of experts should do, which is you shouldn't brainstorm ideas for the media in isolation. You know, sit there with a blank screen thinking what am I going to pitch the media today? Which is why inside my media mastermind, I bring the journalist in there with you on hot seats to brainstorm story ideas. And the best story ideas come just through the art of conversation.

Adela Hussain: 4:06

I mean, one of my clients, brenda Winkle, last year she's actually my favorite headline last year was, you know, in her hot seat with the journalist. She just said and it wasn't, she wasn't pitching it. She just said, oh, we were talking about menopause. And she said I found out I was in menopause on email. And then she carried on the conversation and the journalist had to stop her and say hang on a minute, that's a headline. And before you know it she got it commissioned there in that hot seat with the editor of a publication here in the UK and it became a two page article that she wrote in her own words. So I absolutely agree with you you can't brainstorm by yourself. Do it with someone else and the stories just emerge in the conversation.

Angie Colee: 4:56

Yeah, but I totally I mean everything that you're saying I think is gold. And I'm going to unpack it a little bit for folks Like, when you are brainstorming and we're not saying that you can't brainstorm by yourself, but we're saying that the gold comes out in the conversations, when you're just, when you're not thinking about it, you're articulating on the fly, you're tapping into your passions, your emotions, whether they're positive or negative. That's when you say things that are absolute gold and somebody who's listening can reflect that back to you and say, oh wow, that thing that you just said, that was really awesome. I found out I was on menopause. I was experiencing menopause through email Fantastic. Tell me more about that.

Angie Colee: 5:33

I'm curious now, whereas when you sit and I you know this is a professional writer of over 13 years here saying when I sit down and I brainstorm articles or ideas or content, I tend to go serious mode, like Angie personality yeet out the window. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to have five reasons why, like, I get so in my head and think everything has to be Pulitzer worthy or, you know, super serious to paint me as an expert, that I wind up inadvertently stripping out any kind of personality. I actually did have a friend not too long ago. Actually, it was like a couple of years ago. He's like social media Angie and email Angie are two different people. Are you aware of this?

Adela Hussain: 6:10

And I was like I love that person reflected that back to you. Because that is you know. They say you should write as you speak. Right, because that's where the gold is. And it's interesting because when I deal with a lot of these prestigious editors of publications, they say things to me like we write about the locker room conversations.

Angie Colee: 6:34

You know in.

Adela Hussain: 6:34

Bustle in New York. They specifically say we write about the bar. You know the bar stool conversations, like the conversations you're going to have with a girlfriend over a cosmopolitan in a bar or the locker room conversations in someone else. I think that's such a great little analogy to think about. What is the story that people want to hear right now? What's the unsaid story? Often the bar stool conversation and the locker room conversations We've done slightly privately, in quite intimate moments for people, and that's where the story gold is oh, absolutely.

Angie Colee: 7:12

I mean, that's even the. We're kind of meta now, but that's the premise behind this show and that's actually what happened to me was that I was in the growth stages of that painful, messy stage where you're like I am just messing everything up. Why even bother? I don't know what I'm doing here. Those people on stage are golden children that have all of their shit figured out. I am hopelessly over here messing up and will never be on that stage, right?

Angie Colee: 7:37

And then I happened to, over here at the bar, one of the speakers talking about getting hit with a lawsuit while losing their biggest client, not sure, like devastated, don't know what he's going to do. And then you and I were at a mastermind last week where somebody talked about something similar. Here's a picture of me on stage presenting in front of like 200 people and you don't know what's happening in the background which is, you know, and that's not my story to share, that's his story to share. But he basically talked about a devastating personal experience that was happening at the same time and, like you don't know what's happening in those stories, but if you can hear it at the barstool, like these conversations, the reality of what's happening it gives you a little hope. It gives you a little bit more hope. We're humans in business. We're not perfect robots in business.

Adela Hussain: 8:19

Yes, yes, 100%. And this is when I say to so many people about pitching into the media you don't need to be. You know, typically I hear, I hear from so many talented experts oh, I'm not ready for the media, I need to be a lot bigger for the media or I need to need to have my perfect business for the media and that's when I will pitch the media and actually and it's conversation to have all the time with people as up Journalists and editors they're not looking for perfect people to put into their publication. They actually want real, relatable stories, ordinary humans. So, you know, anyone that's going on a hero's journey is always of interest to any journalist or any editor or any TV producer, Because that's what makes you a relatable expert. Right, you know it's boring to look at perfect people and it's almost. You know, we can end up being a little bit slightly cynical towards them. Yes, if someone's gone through the challenges and the difficulties, that hero's journey, that's when we, that's what we can relate to them.

Angie Colee: 9:32

So glad that you said that because I've encountered that a couple of times with people who have. They've at least said in conversation to me oh, I want to come on your podcast but I'm not ready yet. I need to hit X level. My own mom said that to me right after right before telling me a story about so she's got a baking business and she goes to local festivals as a cottage baker and sells her goods. And somebody who was in the game for six months to my mom's three years came up and asked her for advice. Like how are you doing this? And my mom is spouting off ideas, right, she doesn't have a multi-million dollar business, but she was able to help somebody at the six month level with her three years of experience.

Angie Colee: 10:11

So that's one like I always tell people where you're at is where you're at and your experience is valid and you have enough experience to help somebody, Right, yes, and then the other part of that is one of my mentors told me there's such a thing as an accidental expert.

Angie Colee: 10:25

You don't necessarily have to climb 20 years through the corporate ladder and then you know, go out on your own or anything like that to be an expert. The example that he used hit home for me too, because, like, say, you have a particularly nasty, bitter divorce, that happens right, and now somebody else who's going through the same thing knows that you went through this experience and says I don't, I'm lost, I don't know what to do. Do you have any advice for me Now? You're their expert. You didn't set out to carve a career out of being, you know, the person that is the Sherpa for brutal divorces or anything like that. But some of these things just happen and you become the person that people know. So, like, let's just set on fire this notion that you have to have credentials, out to Wazoo and be climbing a line in 25 years of experience and all these awards and accolades before you get to tell your story.

Adela Hussain: 11:12

It's bullshit 100 percent Angie, and it's interesting I love this phrase accidental expert, because I think actually I fall into that category. You know I was. If you look at part of my CV I look like, well, I was a deep expert in. I come from a very corporate background. I used to work at Accenture on four hundred and sixty nine million dollar mergers and acquisitions and was for 17 years in a very deep corporate space with very prestigious clients and traveling around the world. But then I quit that to become a fashion entrepreneur. So my background is I come from a fashion background and I always wanted to have my own business. I set up a fashion business, but what was so interesting was that when I would walk into places with journalist editors, I was deeply intimidated because, well, frankly, I didn't see any journalist editors who looked like me. They were all white-blonde Samantha Jones types. I just couldn't relate to them.

Adela Hussain: 12:16

I kept hiring publicists who weren't very good at telling my story. I thought why am I spending all this money on someone else telling my story when I could tell my story better than them? As soon as I started telling my story, I got into 14 publications in 12 months. He started to get awards and I was in Cosmopolitan as one of the top 10 female founders of the year. All these things started to happen.

Adela Hussain: 12:45

I really noticed just the power of media on my business and what impact that had and how relationships would shift. Initially, people are ignoring me and then they would start ending up in my DMs when I get these big features. When I ended that business and I was wondering what to do entrepreneurs in the online coaching space it you were so good at getting in the media, you should teach other people how to do it without hiring an expensive publicist. I love the fact that you mentioned accidental expert, because I am an accidental expert. Now the interesting thing is I'm getting my clients faster media results than a publicist would. The publicists are like how are you doing it?

Angie Colee: 13:35

I've cracked the code. You've solved the problem that you experienced when you were first trying to get media. I love the fact that you were doing the traditional things, the prescribed things, the should, which my best friend and I are fond of saying don't should on yourself, stop it. That's not to denigrate anything that publicists are immediately. You're all doing your jobs and appreciation. If you don't click with the person that you're trying to pitch, then you're missing the most special, most interesting stories.

Angie Colee: 14:12

To tie all of this back together, what you were talking about was I did the traditional PR route. I hired the publicists and it wasn't happening for me. They didn't look like me, they didn't understand where I'm coming from. But then I start telling my story and suddenly the energy shifted and people are coming back around to me where they were ignoring me before. I guess what I'm trying to say in all of that is, if you are doing everything that you quote unquote should be doing and you're not getting the results, maybe you're a little bit in your head and being more complicated than you need to be. You should just lean into being yourself, because you are the secret sauce in your business.

Adela Hussain: 14:49

A hundred percent, and I think people can often feel intimidated when they're meeting someone who can help amplify their work. They feel that they're in this power dynamic of oh, I've got to impress this top expert, this podcaster or this journalist or editor. I just never forget the day where I walked into Hearst in London and just walked into this room. I just felt so intimidated and this is coming from me, a woman who was so used to dealing with some of the most high profile CEOs in very aggressive investment banks. I never had a problem dealing with white men in quite hostile environments, but put me in a room of Samantha Jones and I started to crumble. This is where anyone who feels like networking with anyone is a bit icky, just completely.

Adela Hussain: 15:49

When I developed my model for how to help experts getting the media out of sight, I'm just going to give you the 24 journalists on the platter over a year. You go into the safe space of a Zoom call. You don't have to hold your elbows out to get time to speak to someone in a room. You have a dedicated hot seat and that is your hot seat and no one else can come into it. All those things I found as an expert pitching in 3D in real time. All that intimidation. That was why we used to develop this second business. I think that's what's so interesting is that if you're feeling like something's not working, ask yourself how can I fix it, how can I make it better for other people?

Angie Colee: 16:37

Could this be easier? The answer is not always more better, different new skills. Sometimes it's scaling back all of the noise and the complexity. I think that ties back perfectly to what we were talking about earlier. You mentioned you got to impress the hosts. When you're sitting there in a vacuum trying to come up with topics, like you're trying to be impressive and you're trying to get attention, whereas when you're just being yourself, that's actually what gets attention.

Angie Colee: 17:04

I mean, people don't see the behind the scenes of me producing this show, but there's a lot of conversations, a lot of dialogue that happens between me and potential guests beforehand, the ones that lay down the thud of all of their accomplishments. They don't get on the show. Guys, I'm not interested in talking about all of your awards and all of your accolades and your accomplishments. I mean I am, but also I want to hear about how you got there, because I'm sick and tired of the hockey stick growth story that we are all spoon fed from everybody out there. That's not the overnight success story. It doesn't happen. I mean there are overnight viral sensations that are accidental experts in this, but for the most of us it's going to be several years of a steady slog before we get our first big break, and I'm not interested in hearing the magic. I want to hear about you.

Adela Hussain: 18:01

Exactly, and this is the same for the media right. People think they need to have some glossy story and actually the stories that do really well in the media, the ones where someone really has worked through something and discovered a way to improve their life, or the learning from going through a really traumatic situation. There's always some goal there for someone else to learn from, to apply to their own life. So don't feel that. I mean, one of my journalists was so direct and am I allowed to swear on this podcast?

Adela Hussain: 18:48

Absolutely, absolutely, because she said no one gives a shit about your business. So anyone and this is what I'm seeing, right, Any expert who is putting their business out there as part of the pitch will never, ever, get that featured in the media, what journalists and editors are looking for, particularly the prestigious ones they're looking for. You know what's the story right now, right, what's happening in the world right now and how can you help, you know, contribute to that story. How can you help people working through whatever's happening in the world right now and how can you move that story on to the next conversation and the next conversation? Absolutely, guys, and tap into the solution.

Angie Colee: 19:32

How often do you remember all of the steps and X ways to Y or Z, five ways to improve your like? Nobody remembers that shit. I'm just like I have to go look it up to remember what the hell you were talking about. And that's not to say it's not useful information, but it doesn't stick. The same way. You say, all right, this was the top thing that like messed up my site in Google searches for years and I really wish I had known this before. Like you tell me that story and I go oh right, that person said that I needed to fix this, like this particular keyword thing, and that's all I'm going to retain your story and that one tip like so don't make it more complicated than it is.

Adela Hussain: 20:09

I always like to say it's the elephant in the room conversation right.

Angie Colee: 20:12

Yes.

Adela Hussain: 20:14

What is the elephant in the room right now? What are people wanting to talk about? But they're a little bit frightened to talk about. What's the, what's the? And I call it the unsaid story. I'll give you a good example of this, right yeah, in one of our brainstorming sessions last year, my medium asked my Jennifer I love celebrity hooks, right and Jennifer Aniston, two days earlier had released a story in a publication called the cut, you know a New York publication. It was a big, in depth interview about her time as an actress and in one paragraph she talked about how she was so sick and tired as a, a woman, a child free woman, being harassed by the media, interestingly, and her fans too about being harassed on when is she going to have a child with Brad Pitt? When is she going to have a child with Brad Pitt? And then there was one line in that paragraph which said we were trying through fertility and it was an incredibly lonely situation that we couldn't talk about.

Adela Hussain: 21:25

And when we were brains I had a fertility coach inside my program at that time and two days later we were brainstorming with a wellness, a very prestigious wellness journalist, ideas for her business and how he can get her business, her fertility work in the media, and I remembered reading that article two days prior and I said, hang on a minute. Why don't we talk about, why don't you? We talk about how lonely like Jennifer Aniston said, it was really lonely being on a fertility journey. Why don't we talk about ways that you can alleviate that loneliness? Because that's you know, meg, that's what you do as fertility coach. You have your program, you have circles you set up for women going through the same journey. And as soon as I said that, the journalist eyes it up and said, yeah, I want that story.

Adela Hussain: 22:12

That is an example of how you move a story on a celebrity and this is a celebrity. This is called newsjacking. A celebrity has said something, there's a hook in there, but no one's talking about that little problem, right? So many women are going through fertility. Everyone knows that there is a challenge for some women to have children and it's a very lonely journey. So immediately we got Meg in the media. So the brainstorming happened on Thursday and actually the journalist and her ended up. They had their interview on the Saturday and it came out the following Tuesday in the UK. She was an American expert, but it came out in the British media on the Tuesday, in the Metro, which is the widest newspaper that's in free circulation, so it's not even a pay.

Adela Hussain: 23:04

It's online, but it's available to everyone, you know, online and in print, and the distribution is huge and it was an amazing article and it was all about it was actually it ended up being a quite a profile piece on her as an expert and what she and how she helps women in their fertility journey, so it was about her business, but the hook was Jennifer Aniston and the article actually featured a picture of Jennifer Aniston. So that's an example of how you move the story on and how you help people in the world. Does that make sense?

Angie Colee: 23:37

Absolutely. And I learned a new term there newsjacking. I'm going to, I'm going to find a way to use that. It's definitely going in the show notes and there was something that you mentioned there too, like the elephant in the room. That's one thing that I work on with a lot of my earlier stage coaching clients who have it.

Angie Colee: 23:53

We're all kind of raised to sweep unpleasantness, nastiness, discomfort, anxiety under the rug. Let's just pretend that it's not here. And I told people I don't like to do that because to me that's like let's picture there's an actual, literal elephant in the room with us. Is somebody going to be comforted by me just pretending like it's not there? No, they're going to start wondering am I crazy? Is Angie crazy? Like what is happening? That nobody is talking about this elephant there's? There's an elephant, right, I'm not seeing, I'm not smelling things. Am I having a stroke? Like people start to second guess themselves if you are ignoring all of that unpleasant stuff.

Angie Colee: 24:31

So I tell, like what came up and what I wrote down when you said that was like it's time to make friends with the elephant in the room and be like, oh yeah, that guy, don't worry about that guy. I mean, he's friendly, he's over there in the corner with the. Hey, I'm going to find a way. I don't know how he got in here. We'll find a way to get him out here later. Let's have the conversation over here. Oh, you want to like pet the elephant? Cool, that's cool too, like. Let's talk about that.

Adela Hussain: 24:52

I love that you say that. And she made friends with the elephant in the room because that's actually where the hidden story is and that's where that's how you kind of prick the ears of a journalist or an editor in uncovering the stories that their readers really want to hear. That's the bolster conversation. That's the locker room conversation.

Angie Colee: 25:11

That's what initially got us talking and deciding to record this podcast episode too, because we were talking about our respective elephants. So we're in a mastermind together a different one from Adela's media masterminds and we were talking about kind of the head trash that comes around business failures and particularly when you are dealing with partnerships. Right, we talked about business grief and stuff like that, and that was the stuff that I wanted to keep hidden for a long time because I'm proud of my accomplishments. I'm not proud of the fact that I had a failed partnership. Nobody likes breaking up Like period. Even if it's the most amicable split under the sun, it's still uncomfortable and awkward and makes you feel like all of the dirty feelings.

Adela Hussain: 25:53

Yes, yes, 100%, and I think I really like this thing, this discussion, like this topic about business breakups, because I feel like the story and my head always goes into media and editor TV shows. Tv shows and headlines is how my brain thinks right, and I think TV shows and headlines we always read about or watch films on romantic breakups, or even these Netflix documentaries around banned breakups right, we love to hear about seeing musical band and then suddenly they break up. Why did they break up? What happened? No one ever talks about business breakups.

Angie Colee: 26:37

I know that you were telling me a fascinating story about it. I don't know if you want to share this one or not, so feel free to re-divert there, but you were telling me about somebody basically coming to live with you in your house. Yes, to work on your business.

Adela Hussain: 26:52

That's fantastic.

Angie Colee: 26:53

I mean it's not fantastic, but I'm fascinated.

Adela Hussain: 26:57

Yeah, so this is classic Della right. So, as I mentioned earlier, my first business was a fashion business, so I'd quit the corporate world and I had. I traveled through Asia. I was a bit of a wanted to be Lara Croft and go through Vietnam, cambodia and Laos and I purposely, at month four, ended up in Bali where I knew there was a beautiful co-working space. It was actually the world's first co-working space. It was in 2016, where there was this term like the digital nomad term was kind of blowing up and lots of, lots of entrepreneurs and experts and coaches wanted to be location independent. So I was in this beautiful hub building quite a complicated fashion tech business. It's really inspiring American Nady, and we just clicked so well, like we had a beautiful friendship.

Adela Hussain: 27:53

I said to her you know as my trip was, you know, because I was living in Bali, kind of like a Lexpack, for three and a half to four months and I kind of month three. I said, look, you know where are you traveling to next and she said, oh, I'm not sure. And I said, hey, well, look, if you want to earn money and you know, work on your copyright. She was actually a copyright. I get on very well, copywriters. She was a copywriter. She says if you want to continue copywriting work, why don't you come to London with me, join me in London and do copywriting work on my business? Because, you know, at the time I had no idea about copywriting, I didn't even know what the term meant, but I knew I had to somehow write emails to my customers and I said why don't you come and move in with me? I have a house in you know a nice part of London and I have a spare room and you can, I'll pay you, but you don't need to pay me any rent. You can live in London on no rent and still get paid for your work. And it was a really good deal. And she was like, yeah, yeah, like I live in an expensive city and get paid. So she moved in with me and started to work in my company. And you know, at the time I had got some you know investment and I had had a loan on the business. I suddenly started hiring people and it was just it was still laugh.

Adela Hussain: 29:19

It was a bit of a disaster. I shouldn't have hired a really good friend to work with me. She was living in my attic, so it was a bit stressful because she was living and working with me. I had converted my living room you know where we watched TV into a co-working space with five desks, so there's nowhere for us to relax. At the end of the night we were just like working, working, working and it killed the friendship. It killed the friendship and you know, I would never hire a friend again. I actually, I actually didn't learn my lesson. I ended up hiring my sister, which was even more of a disaster. Oh my goodness, I just didn't learn. I didn't learn from the first time. She stopped talking to me for a while.

Angie Colee: 30:01

Your sister or the friend, oh goodness, oh dear baby. Oh no, that happened with my former partner too. We started out as great friends and then we were like talking one day about I was struggling with selling high ticket packages and she was struggling with client management, and like I'm great at client management and she's great at sales, so this just seems like ooh, what's serendipitous, what fortuitous timing, and what I wish I had done back then was talk a little bit more before getting all up in the excitement about what the expectations were, things like that. And none of this is to say that it was bad or anything like that. I love her, she's a brilliant woman and we just had incompatible working styles and different goals that we didn't articulate upfront.

Angie Colee: 30:48

So after a while we decided this is just not working the way that we wanted it to. Can we just go back to being friends and that's what I mean by like even going back to the way it was before. You still got all this additional context of trying to build something together that didn't work, and now it's like really uncomfortable and awkward and I don't, I just want to pretend there's no elephant in here. Can we please just I'll pretend it never happened and it doesn't work that way. We were able to go back to being friends Was that possible, Okay, okay, that's great.

Adela Hussain: 31:16

Yeah, that's really good Cause I think for me it was challenging to be friends. I don't think I've spoken to her, since we still follow each other on Facebook. I've spoken to my sister, Kayleigh. We're blood right, so united by blood, but with this friend we didn't. We still follow each other on Facebook and there were a few emails exchanged, but and she lives in a different country, but yeah, the friendship never really went back to what it was and and it's.

Adela Hussain: 31:47

It did feel like I was grieving that for a while, because when she left I went through a process of grief for that friendship for probably about six weeks. I would say so it's six to eight weeks. You know, she was a really, she had really inspired me to do lots of things. I have a fear of, not a fear I can swim and I can swim very well, but I the idea of scuba diving sort of scares me a little bit. And she was just gone home and loved scuba diving and told me let's go scuba diving. And so we organized all these trips in Bali and then, before you knew it, I got my Paddy master, my kind of, you know, scuba diving qualification, and then I progressed to the advanced and she helped me get on a scooter. She inspired my life in so many ways. So to take more risks, and so I did grieve that, that business-specity breakup, oh, yeah.

Adela Hussain: 32:43

And I don't think we talk about this enough in the online industry. Oh, absolutely.

Angie Colee: 32:47

I mean, I agree with you in that sense that I think something in the relationship shifted, but it was very much a similar thing where she pushed me out of my comfort zone in the best possible way. I was deeply uncomfortable with self-promotion, with talking about my expertise. I always had this head trash around being a braggart and like making other people uncomfortable, and that's bullshit, guys. I mean we all know who the braggart is in the room and that is the most insecure person who needs everybody to know I'm important, pay attention to me. Most of the time when you're talking about your accomplishments, people are going oh, wow, oh, that's cool, like talk to me more about that.

Angie Colee: 33:24

So she challenged me in that way and we like we made a lot of sales very fast together and then after we you know, there was the awkwardness Like I'm not gonna pretend like it was sunshine and roses, but we didn't talk for a while and the relationship dynamic definitely changed. But she's a wonderful person, like I said, and oh God showed me so much about what I can do and what my business potential could be. So I don't know. It's one of those steps along the journey that I think was necessary for my growth, and I don't necessarily believe in everything happens for a reason, because that seems kind of shitty to me. But I think everything happens with some sort of meaning attached and it's designed to jumpstart you or get you moving in a new or adjusted direction. So I'm still grateful for the experience, even though it didn't go down the way that I had hoped.

Adela Hussain: 34:12

Yes, I love that you've come out the other end with that sort of almost very wise philosophical perspective of the friendship shifting and the learning and the growth Cause I think sometimes-.

Angie Colee: 34:24

It didn't feel very wise at the time.

Adela Hussain: 34:26

Yeah, exactly when we're in the thick of it and we're crying our eyes out and wondering you know, why did we do this? Why did I convince someone to move in with me from Bali, and what a silly idea that was. You know, when now I've lost a good friend, you know when we're sort of mourning the loss of a good friendship, yeah, it can be really hard to sort of look, you know, when we're in it, right. So being able to just reflect back, and I think that Tick also, angie, that strikes me of what you said is about understanding that it's not just about our personal growth but our business growth. Right, business is organic. It's a growth journey.

Adela Hussain: 35:05

You're not meant to have a perfect business from day one. That doesn't exist, that's just unattainable. As you grow on a personal level, your business is growing too. So people and relationships, the energy is going to shift, everything is going to shift. Your business is an almost organic being and it's going to evolve and people are going to jump on the bus to join on the journey and then jump off the bus when it's not right for them, and we have to accept that. That's part of it.

Angie Colee: 35:36

That's such a beautiful analogy. Right there, nobody gets on the bus to ride the bus forever. Everybody's got a different stop and if we stop taking it as personally as we tend to, especially personality businesses like I have a coaching and expertise-based business. I know you do too, so sometimes it's really easy to get in your head if somebody goes, hmm, I'm done working with you, or this is not right for me, or something like that. Well, do you hate me? Why don't you want to work with me? Especially if business gets slow Gosh. I know so many people who have been in that it's hard not to take it personally. But it's not personal. They're just getting off at their stop. Cool, I'm going to drop you off there. Maybe I'll swing back around and you'll get back on. It's cool, yeah, and the reason?

Adela Hussain: 36:18

for them, getting off at a stop might be nothing to do with your business, but might be something happening on in their personal life. You know, their husband or their partner may have lost their jobs and suddenly they need to earn a more regular salary and therefore they've got to jump the bus and that's OK. So I think sometimes, as entrepreneurs or an expert, we can end up being a bit too attached to thinking in a very rigid way rather than thinking in a very critical thinking way and being sort of open and realizing that our business is organic, it's growing along with us and we've got to learn and we've got to acknowledge that and accept that.

Angie Colee: 37:00

Well, and I think sometimes, especially like in this hyper capitalist society that we've got, it's really tempting to think OK, I'm running into obstacles, double down, persist, muscle through. Sometimes resistance is being thrown up because that's not the path and there's something easier for you, and that kind of goes back to ties together so beautifully what we're talking about with overthinking media pitches at the beginning and thinking you've got to be the expert up here. Sometimes, if you just let it be easy and let that bus circle back around and let people get on and get off as they see fit, you keep doing your work, you keep focusing on your business and your personal growth. Everything Well, I'm not going to say everything will work out the way you want it to, but everything will work out the way that it needs to.

Adela Hussain: 37:44

Yes, yes, 100 percent and I think the most. It's funny because you talk you mentioned to Angie about. You know, sometimes there's almost. I think you may have been alluding to this. It's kind of bro marketing of come on more, more, more.

Angie Colee: 37:58

I call it doosprow marketing. Doosprow marketing when you look at doosprow, not doosh.

Adela Hussain: 38:04

But you look at like world famous, you know business leaders and entrepreneurs. We often think they are like more, more, more. But actually when you, when you end up meeting people and you end up really analyzing what they're like as characters, so it will take a classic male entrepreneur, right, richard Branson. He's actually very interesting in that he leads with curiosity and inquisitiveness and he's always trying to learn. And I think if there's one thing people take away today is just to always see yourself as a student, right, because if you always see yourself as a student, you're open to new ideas, you're open to curiosity and learning and that actually ends up improving your knowledge base, because you're going to surround yourself with people who can teach you. But you yourself, you know, even if you're at the expert level, when you talk to experts, they will always say actually I'm working on this or I'm learning this.

Adela Hussain: 39:09

And it's never about an ego. It's never leading with their ego. They lead in with what can I?

Adela Hussain: 39:15

learn now, what can I do better, how can I improve? And I think there's something in that about leading with curiosity, oh, absolutely Willingness to learn and be open. And I think if you come with that value, you'll end up being more resilient to your business, throwing you those lessons when the bus hits the blockade or the bus is overturned and everyone's going to work out, you know, sort themselves out in that moment, that disastrous moment, you know what a wonderful well, not the bus accident, but a wonderful high note to end on that, like, resilience is key.

Angie Colee: 39:53

Beware of the person who pretends, or truly believes, that they know everything. Growth is the name of the game and you are the magic. That's what people want to hear from you your clients, journalists, the media. We want to hear your story, even if it's an awkward elephant in the room. Whoo, we've come full circle about like five times, but I love it. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and your insight with us. Please tell us a little bit more about how we can learn about you and your business and the masterminds. Thank you so much, angie.

Adela Hussain: 40:25

What a beautiful conversation. I loved it. I love how we've come full circle. So, yes, if you are listening today, you're thinking, actually, you know what I do want to play bigger. How do I get started with media? Is it as intimidating as people make it out to be? Firstly, no, it isn't. I have a little free gift for you. You can go to pitchdepresscom and download a free little gift called 10 steps to get into the media, and it's the 10 steps I used to pitch myself into the media With a lot of success, including Harvard Business Review. So feel free to go and download that lovely gift, pitchdepresscom. You can also follow me on Instagram. I always love getting DMs and I would absolutely love if you've been listening today and you're keen and you're thinking, actually, you know what I've really took something away from this. Tell me what your aha moment was and send me a DM. My Instagram is Adella, double underscore, so it's Adella double underscore. I couldn't get Adella dot Hasein.

Adela Hussain: 41:37

That's why it's Adella, double underscore, hasein, which makes it more complicated, but I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what your aha moment was from this beautiful recording today. Thank you.

Angie Colee: 41:49

Well, good news is I'm going to make it easy with clickable links in the show notes so that they can just click and talk directly to Adella. I love it. Thank you so much again for being an amazing guest, for being an amazing friend and Mastermind compatriot helping me grow my own business, and we're going to have to do a follow up at some points.

Adela Hussain: 42:08

Yes, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a real pleasure.

Angie Colee: 42:15

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.