Meeting Your Needs while Leading Your Revolution with Gieselle Allen | Episode 31
Are you a leader of color who wants to lead and empower in revolutionary ways? Then you need Gieselle Allen...Gieselle works with revolutionary leaders of color to support them in expanding their businesses, team, and leadership, while also ensuring their needs are met in the process. In her mindset-first approach, she combines mindset, trauma healing and intuition to help her clients create and expand their businesses and revolutionary leadership practices.
If discovering the confidence that comes with: decolonizing your thoughts, owning your identity, and building a thriving life that reflects your values and resonates with your core sounds like a vibe, you don’t want to miss this conversation. This episode we explore
* What having a revolutionary business entails
* The role that safety plays in learning and healing
* Getting comfortable with having more than enough
* Overcoming fear to answer a call to liberatory work
Episode Resources
https://www.instagram.com/gieselleallen/
Hello and welcome to another episode of Body Liberation for All. I am so excited about today's guest. If you are a leader of color who wants to lead and empower in revolutionary ways you need Gieselle Allen, I was in Gieselle’s coaching program now almost a year plus ago. And the changes that I experienced in the program were enough to sell me on it, but the way it served as a catalyst for growth throughout 2020 was just beyond amazing. Gieselle works with revolutionary leaders of color to support them in expanding their businesses, their teams, and their leadership while making sure all of their needs are met in the process. And this is something that unfortunately, a lot of us have never had the opportunity to experience.
So, the ways in which your socialization has affected the way you approach business, the way you approach speaking up, the way you approach really leaning into your identities and feeling safe is something that a lot of us haven't visited before.
Having a coach that will specifically address the ways in which your socialization as a person of color has set up barriers that you can step around and circumvent, once you're aware of them its absolutely life changing because this is not the type of instruction or care we're used to.
Sometimes it's hard to even know how much of a difference it would make to have somebody tailor an educational program, a coaching program specifically to you and to address the challenges the other people for so long have been pretending don't even exist.
I love this conversation with Gieselle. Let's jump right in
Body Liberation for All Theme
Yeah. They might try to put you in a box, tell them that you don't accept when the world is tripping out tell them that you love yourself. Hey, Hey, smile on them live your life just like you like it is.
It’s your party negativity is not invited. For my queer folks, for my trans, people of color, let your voice be heard. Look in the mirror and say that it's time to put me first. You born to win. Head up high with confidence. This show is for everyone. So, I thank you for tuning in. Let's go.
Dalia: I am so excited to have you here.
Gieselle: I'm really excited to be here. I'm thrilled. I've been like, I was, I've been like eyeing your podcast for forever. And I was like, when am I, when am I gonna be on this podcast? Like a baby. So, I'm really glad it's working out and that we're here.
Dalia: This is awesome.
Dalia: I'm glad you asked because as you know, for people who haven't already listened to the episode that I was on with someone else who was in the same coaching group as me, when I worked with you, Gieselle basically is out here changing lives and liberating people in ways that you don't even see it coming.
Dalia: So, you think you're just stuck in your business and really, that's not the problem. The problem is mindset, and how we've been socialized is behind it. But I'd gotten a ton of coaching from containers that weren't made for me. and they really didn't get to the root of my problem. So maybe they got to the root of like Becky's issue and like, oh, why don't I feel comfortable?
Dalia: Cuz my Lululemon’s are too tight or whatever, and worked on her visibility problems, but didn't get to me being socialized to not take up space don't challenge authority, and don't you dare do anything culturally distinct because we will. Beat you for it, we'll punish you for it. So being in your container was life changing.
Dalia: And Sarah came on the show and discussed how much the changes ripple out as time goes by. But even though I feel like I've grown so much since the container, I still would've thought Gieselle doesn't wanna be on my podcast. like Gieselle's too big, and too busy, doesn't have time.
Gieselle: Well, you know, what's funny is I feel like I'm just moving into a season where I have the capacity to like be out and, in the world, and on people's podcasts there, it's not about me being too big.
Gieselle: I'm still really small and like the grand scheme, I'm small, I'm intimate. I'm exclusive.
Dalia: I love that. Take on it. Yes.
Gieselle: Yeah. I'm exclusive. I, and I wanna be exclusive, like, that's my whole thing. I'm the kind of person where like when white folks follow me on Instagram, I delete 'em and like, I'm not gonna respond to your you' like random comment on my stuff.
Gieselle: Like, I'm not gonna engage with you if you're white, like I'm very much like I'm for I'm for who I'm for. And if it's not you then like, I'm cool with it. There's enough people in the world. And I don't need that many to be in my community.
Dalia: Wow. I mean, even that, how, what had to change for you to be able to get to a point that it feels safe to say that and that you don't feel compelled to explain this doesn't mean I don't like white people. It means my business is not for white people.
Gieselle: Yeah. That's a really great question. What had to change? I think what had to change is that scarcity that we've all been sold and the devaluing of folks of color that we've all been sold. Right. Where people, you know, I remember when I was gonna make this change and like a big thing I was scared of and a big thing that like, people still, mostly just my dad at this point, but like people still say to me is like, oh, like how much more money could you make if you are working with white folks?
Like we're missing out on those white dollars?
Dalia: Those spend better apparently
Gieselle: Apparently, but here's the truth about like, you know, focusing exclusively on BIPOC folks in business and in anything is that BIPOC folks and I know this because I used to work in TV back in the day. And so like, I understand how, I understand all the things we are, the most loyal people ever.
We support our people like tirelessly, especially Black folks. Like it's like what, you're a Black person, you're doing a thing I'm gonna, I'm gonna work with you. You know? And so, recognizing that, recognizing how loyal we are recognizing that we are the people of global majority in this world, there are more than enough of us was really huge for me.
But I think, I think the thing that it really took for me transparently was recognizing that I'm enough and that like, I was the right kind of Black person to do this work because that was honestly my biggest hurdle. And I think that's the biggest hurdle for a lot of us in being in communities of color, is that we've, we ex exclude we've like inherited these toxic traits in our communities that make us, that make us exclude each other.
Gieselle: And we've systemically been ripped from each other through the prison system, slavery, we can even talk about like immigration and the American dream. Like we've been ripped apart from our communities and culture. And so, it doesn't feel, we don't feel like we fit in with them because we're all kind of this like weird h…
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