35. Breaking Workplace Taboos: For Migrant and Asian Women with Sharn Khaira and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And then some of the episodes from myself as well. Get ready. Sean is the head honjo of Asian Female Entrepreneur Collective. Sean is also an ex-mega global wedding planner for Asian weddings. Sean is now focused on helping Asian entrepreneurial women to succeed in their side hustle or their main gig, essentially. Sean, welcome. Today I really want to talk to you about a topic that's close to my heart. And I'm going to title this Breaking Workplace Taboos for Asian slash migrant women.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

First off, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so, so excited for this conversation. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Sean, to kick off, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your migrant story, please?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, sure. So I'm based in the UK and I predominantly at the moment coach Asian female entrepreneurs on mindset and business. As you said, like before I had a pretty successful luxury Asian wedding planning company. So that's where my business experience came from because I think nowadays a lot of you know, a lot of time like people just go into kind of like business coaching. So for me, it was really important to have a successful business before being part of this pyramid scheme of coaches, coaching coaches, coaching coaches. So that's like my background in terms of what I do. And my migrant story really is one that has been quite painful, I would say, from childhood. So I was born in the UK. My parents were a very strict British Punjabi family. So they were born in India, and basically they couldn't speak that much English. So predominantly they had like factory jobs, like manual skilled jobs. And when I was little, we didn't have that much. I actually grew up on the roughest streets of my hometown, surrounded by drugs and prostitutes. And we didn't move out of that house until I was like 14. And as a young child, like so many of us, we grew up really fast, especially for me. You know, my brother had like learning difficulties. So I almost became the father of the family from a really young age. I was interpreting for my parents, I think I remember like my first memories at the age of five. And I had a lot of responsibility from a really young age, you know. I remember like completing like my parents' mortgage applications at the age of 11 or 12. So when we moved, I helped them with that process. I was going to like the meetings with like my mum. So when I was growing up, because obviously I looked very different, my full name was Gulshan. So when you go to like the secondary school I went to here in the UK was predominantly all white. So I just felt very different. And I just didn't like my name was different. I had like really curly hair back then. I just didn't think I was like very pretty. All of my school was practically white. I think I was there's two girls in my year, including myself, who were Asian. I remember like looking back at that time, and I just think, oh, life wasn't that great back then.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, yeah. And I have a very similar story to you in that my parents are from Kenya or for Gujarati back now. I was born in Kenya as well. So a second generation Kenyan, and then we moved to the UK, and moving to a whole new country as a child, or parents who are not very familiar with it, and as a kid, you have to grow up fast as well. I resonate with a lot of the stuff that you said in terms of helping your parents, and you just have to grow the hell up and just assimilate and do the best that you can for yourself at school and then for your parents and for your siblings as well. I also love the fact going back to your AFEC business, I'm gonna call it AFEC, and I'll put a link. I'll put a link to all of your wonderful contact details in the show notes, also. But going back to your business, I love the fact that you have that lived business experience as well. So you're not just talking as like here I am, just pulling stuff out of the air. You've been there, you've been burned, you've had the failures, you've had the successes, you've had the good, bad, and ugly. And now you're sharing that from a place of truth.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Absolutely, yeah. Because I was very adamant, like I didn't want to launch my mentoring and coaching business until my wedding planning business was bringing in a certain amount of income, until it was exceeding my corporate income. So I was like very, very adamant about that. Because at the moment, in the coaching space, like it's not a regulated industry. So, especially business coaches, I feel like there's a lot of people that are just teaching that, oh, well, I've got a successful business currently, but you know, this is how you do it. But the thing is, you know, having your own successful business and then inspiring coaching, motivating other women to have their own and having strategies that specifically work for them is a completely different ball game. So that's what I was like, really it was really important to me.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

I might be picking up on, I don't know if it's a generalization, but I might be picking on a bit of a migrant thread here in that you seem very driven, you had a goal, you wanted to achieve this, and then you wanted to go to your business. I have a similar story again, in that I wanted to achieve all that I wanted to in corporate life, and then I wanted to become a consultant, and which is what I've done now. So I think from a migrant perspective, there's always that drive, the internal drive, and it could be our parents that have built it into us, tiger parenting or whatever you want to call it, or just the fact that you've come from a place which was there, and now you can see all of the opportunities available to you. And I know that you help many women. So I want to understand why you have chosen to focus on Asian slash migrant women as your cohort.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, so even with my um Asian wedding planning business, I focused on the Asian needs. But when I started doing coaching and mentoring, I held my first workshop in London in like 2017, and those workshops look completely different to what um what they do now. It's actually five years today, so I'll be posting something on Instagram about that. Um I just felt like as Asian women, we go through so many blocks and barriers and cultural conditioning, especially when it comes to your business. When you start and grow and scale your business, it's like the biggest personal development and spiritual journey you'll ever go on because you have to face those parts of yourself that you've never had to face. So, like, for example, when you're in corporate, you've got, yeah, obviously you can be doing like great work, but you'll always be supported, you'll always have a salary. If you need to get a promotion, like you can get support in the workplace, or certain people can support you, whether it's your bosses or colleagues. But I think when I went on such a big journey, and like Prina, like literally, like I've, you know, my parents didn't have much money. Like I we've literally come from nothing, like so many of us. And I think that like my journey has been so transformational to a point where when I first started my business, I just used to think to myself, you know what? I just want to earn like a thousand pounds a month. I was like, I'll just be happy with a thousand pounds a month, and that means that I'll never ever have to go back to corporate. And I was really, that was just my goal. And then I started seeing slowly, like, actually, you could make like 2,000 or 5,000. And I remember like with Disney by Dreams, like we had like one month that was like 8,400 or something. And I was thinking in my head, like, if I can do this one month, I can do it, if I could do it every month, that would equal the six for the business. And especially in the UK, and even really like globally, I would say, there is so much that I've been through in terms of like my own healing, my own personal development, my own spiritual journey. And I just felt like it was so silly for just for me to keep it just to myself. And when I was did my first workshop in London five years ago, I just did that workshop as like a kind of, I never thought of it as a business. I was just doing it because I had so much marketing, because my background is marketing from corporate days. And the fulfillment and everything that I got from that workshop, like when people are like, oh my God, like it was amazing. I launched my business after this, or my business grew like X amount after this. It was just something special about connecting with Asian women. And I know there's that Asian woman wound there where a lot of us are conditioned to like not trust Asian women, or you know, it's very competitive and it's like, you know, dog eat dog type thing. But I've never found that with my clients, and I've never found that in my mastermind group. So I know that I've like created something really special. And to be honest, yes, it's more challenging being in an Asian niche because collectively we all have more blocks. Would I have a bigger business if I was operating in a non-Asian niche? Probably. But at the same time, I feel like I've been put on this planet to do this work, like it's really important to me to like dissolve, help people dissolve their blocks and help people cut through cultural conditioning. So that's why I wanted to really coach and mentor Asian women.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yes. So let's talk about our internal common barriers. Now, some of them might be general, and some of them our audience will completely think, oh my gosh, I relate. So, internal common barriers. Do you have any suggestions or ideas of things that your past clients or current clients come across from an internal common barrier perspective?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah, I think internally we go through a lot, especially for those of us that were kind of born probably like the 60s onwards in the 90s, we're conditioned to not um take up too much space, to not actually put ourselves first, put everyone else's needs first, like be a good girl, don't bring too much attention to yourself. And obviously, that's completely different when you're in like a workplace or starting a business because you almost want the opposite. So, in terms of what my clients have been through, I would say that is like a really big one. Those kind of conflicts that you get from a younger age conflicting with now. Yes, I think it's just about normalizing and owning that we live in a different world now, and that also having compassion towards our parents because they were just doing and saying what they've learned. Yes, and they didn't know any better. It's like us 20, 30, 40 years time when we might have children, and there they try and change our views around a certain thing. Yeah, we might be not as open as they might be. So if you think about it, that's not just Asian culture, that that can be across different cultures. It's just about knowing and owning that you get to create your own story now, yeah, and you get to create your own boundaries and really step into that version rather than keep thinking about what's gonna bring you down or what's going on in external kind of factors. I think that's really important.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Beautiful. And I love the fact that you talk to your past self as well, you know, the young Shan, the young preena, we were different people then, and we still carry that child with us, and it's talking to the child in a more compassionate manner now, and allowing the child to be free in this new world. So the kind of internal barriers um, you know, you've already spoken to is things like I'm not good enough, or our conditioned roles that you definitely spoke to there. And then there's stuff like I want to, but there's always that but initially, that scary aspect, and then there's our relationship with money, and again, this could be across cultures also, and migrant cultures, there's a different relationship with money, especially if you come from poverty, as you do, and as I have as well. You've seen the other side of life, yeah, and that's a reality, and money does matter, so there's all of those internal barriers that we have. Nasham, external barriers. Tell me about some of them from your perspective, from your clients and the people that you've helped.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah, I think with external barriers, it's it's a lot of the external forces, such as parents, and I think husbands and partners is a big one. Because often we go on a journey, especially when you're starting a business or you're progressing your career. And sometimes in that process, in the past, you might not have put your own needs first. For example, you might not have invested in a course or might not have gone away on retreats with other business friends that are outside of your normal network of friends. And I think there's a lot of conflict that comes from, especially partners that I see and husbands. And it's this whole thing around, I think ultimately it's wrapped up in fear and control. Because when I think Asian women start behaving differently, putting their needs first, honoring their boundaries, honoring themselves, it really jars with the people closest to us, especially if we've got partners and husbands, and they're not used to seeing that side of us. You know, I've got some clients at the moment, and their partners either manifest as like they're not very supportive, or they can get jealous, or they can just not understand what's going on. And when you're trying to grow a business in this day and age, personal development and business go hand in hand. You cannot grow an online business that in 2022 or beyond without going on that journey of you know, growth, or as much as like personal development growth and and all spirituality and healing. So that is a really, really big one for Asian women, like especially if they're married, the husband just sees a completely different side to them, and then that can cause obviously conflict in the marriage or arguments. So that can be really tough, I think.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

That is a real tough one. Um, absolutely so. Yeah, we have these assigned roles if you're in a traditional kind of relationship.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, that as well. And I think so many times, like I see with a lot of my clients, they struggle with all of the roles that they have to do, especially if you're married into a bit of more of a traditional family. And say, for example, like I don't know, like your husband's like the only son of the family, that puts a lot of pressure on the woman, and they're trying to juggle their business, juggle their children, juggle their marriage, sometimes juggle their full-time job. And it's almost like, and I found this, and I don't even have children. Like in the past, I found that we end up taking a lot of responsibility for everything. So I have these conversations regularly with my clients where they feel like their husbands or partners, they're almost not everyone, obviously, we don't want to generalize all man bash. A lot of Asian men were the way their condition is their mums did everything for them. Yes. The cooking, the cleaning, the ironing. So that almost gets passed on to like the daughter-in-law. And if you're running a business, like I don't even I obviously run this business full-time, I just wouldn't have, I just don't have time for all these other things. I just don't, because I think when you're running a business, you have to go all in and it can be all consuming. Yeah, and I think what they really struggle with is a those basically like on a physical level, all of that workload from different areas, but also like asking for help. We're so used to things being hard, yeah. You know, hard we're hardwired to think, oh, things always have to be hard, we have to do it, we have to be the savior, and we just don't ask for help. And unfortunately, then you end up with a situation like burnout or you just break down, really.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Asking for help, that is a massive lesson, isn't it? Just other external barriers I was thinking of when I was preparing for our conversation. You've alluded to a lot of it, the whole work-life balance, and then being questioning by your family. And if you've got a close-knit family, as many migrant and Asian families have, but why are you doing this? Yeah, will you still learn that much? You know, will you still learn blah blah blah? The money talk and the the purpose, the why talk as well, it's very demoralizing.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah, it is. Those kind of traditional structures don't work now because we're we're living in 2022 where you can just make money like from the internet, right? From Instagram or Facebook. And it's really difficult for them to understand that concept, especially if you come from a family where it's deemed to, you know, the only good job that you have is a doctor, accountant, a teacher, like you know, obviously I'm stereotyping, but a lot of Asian families do think that. And it's almost like they don't understand that concept that you can earn money from like online faces, but also I think what they also don't understand is it's a process. So, like when you start your business, I think a lot of them maybe have expectations like, oh, you're just gonna post once and like the clients are gonna come flooding in. And it just doesn't work like that. So if you went for a job, like you would start at X amount salary, that it doesn't work like that in the business space. Like, you know, when I started my business, like I had a few good few zero income pound months because it takes time to build up your business. So I think that's something that they don't understand either, especially like a lot of creators and influencers now, they're quitting their big corporate jobs to go full-time in their business because ultimately, like, your income is only capped by your mind and your imagination, and they they don't understand that, they don't get it yet, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Um, so do you have any words of wisdom for people in this position or people who are just torn as well? You know, there's that internal conflict that happens because of everything that we've spoken about. Any words of wisdom from you, Sean?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I think that you have to have a vision and a mission. And it starts with always starts with that. If you don't have a vision or a mission, or you don't know what you're working towards, yeah, it's really hard to like get motivated, you know, very, very difficult. So even if you're in your like job at the moment, have a vision for where you want to be at the end of this year, have a vision of where you want to be this time next year. And I would almost, and you can do this, like, you know, for example, I love having a physical vision board. Like I always suggest to all of my clients, like create one, but also write down some specific goals for the end of the year. And they might not be monetary goals, it might be things like I want to launch my Instagram and have my first 500 followers or whatever is important to you, but really connect in with what you want your life to look like and with that feeling as well. So, for example, when I was in corporate, I just hated corporate towards the end. Like I hated the control dynamics, yeah, and I just didn't want to work for anyone else. So I'd like literally dream up like my ideal day. So I got very specific on like what would my ideal day look like? So I'd like to wake up, I'd have like coffee for my husband, and wouldn't be stressed, I wouldn't be anxiety induced, I'd like do my morning mindset routine, and literally like that felt like another world away so many years ago, but that's exactly the life that I'm living now. But I think it's really important to be really clear on what your vision is, but also the feelings behind it, because a lot of people don't really put much emphasis on what they want. To feel and feeling is really important. So for me, like this year for us, like it's been more around feeling calm, feeling more easeful, feeling more chilled rather than this panic, like hard work energy all the time. Obviously, we're working hard, but we want to bring in a different energy into the brand because before we've done like massive hustle, which is amazing, obviously. And I think the other thing I would say that has like really served me well is and my clients as well, actually, is if your family and friends and partner are open to speaking about business and supporting you, great, chat to them. But I think that you have to keep your goals private and just work on them because as soon as you start getting outside energy into your and thoughts into your business, it really demoralizes you and it can really mess you up. So I think getting into like groups, obviously, I've got a free group, which we'll send you the link for as well, which hopefully you can um link it in the show notes. But getting around communities like hanging around with people that are on the same path. This is one of the reasons why I run group programs. Obviously, I do one-to-one as well, but the power of groups is really incredible. So I think like just go for it. You just have to go for it because, in terms of building a business, it does take time, it's not overnight. So the sooner you can start, the better, really.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Oh my god, go for it, find your tribe, do it, but don't show off too much initially. Sean, you were talking to Pasprina, I swear. I side hustled for years. I held on to a corporate job like it was a frigging security blanket. Yeah. I quit during the pandemic and I haven't looked back so far. So can be done. I I wish I'd spoken to you then. That would have been amazing. But I'm speaking to you now, and I'm really glad I am. Shant, you also talked about that have a vision, have a mission. And generalizing, but uh speaking as a migrant and with your story and listening about you and the way that you think and the way that you work, also, migrants tend to be driven. Therefore, you can easily create your vision, your mission, the feelings that you talk to as well. What do you want to feel? That's an aha moment for me there as well. I'm gonna add that. That's my homework from this podcast, may it be yours also, listeners. There's so much that we can do right now to get us to where we need to. And with that comes a lot of hard work, also. It's not just gonna happen overnight. You've got to put the hard yards in as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Find your tribe, find the people who are gonna support you, and find the people who are true to you and your dreams. So big, big lessons there. Thank you, Sean. I have one final big question for you, Sean. If I was to hand you a magic wand, what is one way that you would change the way of the workplace?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I think it's really important that even the workplace and business as well. And this has really come to light after, you know, especially the Black Lives Matter movement, like a couple of years ago, yeah, that obviously there wasn't representation. And I think that really needs to be played out in the workplace. So I would love, love like for workplaces to be more inclusive, but also like really look at like people's backgrounds and where they've come from, especially when they're from marginalized backgrounds, because we have our own different cultural blocks, we have our different confidence blockers, we're completely wired differently. Yeah, um, and a lot of my clients, the reason why they work with me is because they've worked with, and obviously I love some of my best friends are like white coaches. So it's this isn't like white coach bashing, but when they've been in a group program, it's not as simple as like, oh, just the coach says, just go live, just do an Instagram live. And it's not as easy as that because we've got our own blocks around visibility in our own internal conflicts. So I really I'd love like if that could be catered for, you know, like different specific cultural conditioning blocks and how to overcome that in the workplace.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yes, yes. I talked about a thing called empathy mapping and really getting to the persona of people and understanding who they are, where they come from, what they do, yeah, what influences them, what their pain points are, because we're all so different. And talking about different Sean, I mean, you're brown, I'm brown, we're both Asian, but you're Punjabi and I'm Gujarati. So there's intersectionality within us, also, you know, like brown is brown. There's just so much there that I think the world race yet needs to evolve with. And thank you so much for that last note. I will end it on that. I feel like I could talk to you forever, Sean. Um, maybe another podcast in the making in the future. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Prina, for having me. If you want to meet great thinkers who stand against crappy workplace cultures, lousy leaders, and toxic teams, then you need to join the Ways to Change Your Workplace Facebook group, which is linked in today's show notes. I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now.