Shades & Layers
Shades and Layers is a podcast focused on black women entrepreneurs from across the globe. It is a platform for exploring issues and challenges around business ownership, representation and holistic discussions about the meaning of sustainability in an increasingly complex global context. Conversations are wide- ranging and serve not only as a Masterclass in Entrepreneurship but also provide wisdom and tools for Successful Living. It is a space for meaningful conversation, a place for black and other women of color to be fully human and openly share their quirks and vulnerabilities.
Guests include prominent figurers in the beauty, fashion and wellness industries both in the Northern Hemisphere and the Global South.
Dr. Theo Mothoa-Frendo of USO Skincare discusses her journey from being product junkie to creating an African science-based skincare range. Taryn Gill of The Perfect Hair is a brand development whizz who discusses supply chain and distribution of her haircare brands. Katonya Breux discusses melanin and sunscreen and how she addresses the needs of a range of skin tones with her Unsun Cosmetics products.
We discuss inclusion in the wellness industry with Helen Rose Skincare and Yoga and Nectarines Founder , Day Bibb. Abiola Akani emphasizes non-performance in yoga with her IYA Wellness brand and Anesu Mbizho shares her journey to yoga and the ecosystem she's created through her business The Nest Space.
Fashion is all about handmade, custom made and circular production with featured guests like fashion designer Maria McCloy of Maria McCloy Accessories; Founder and textile/homeware designer Nkuli Mlangeni Berg of The Ninevites as well as Candice Lawrence, founder of the lighting design company Modern Gesture. These are just a few the conversations on the podcast over the past three years.
Shades & Layers
The BASE Framework: How to Achieve Your Dreams with Brandi Hudson (S9,E7)
One of the most effective ways to succeed in entrepreneurship is mindset. To help you get in the right frame of mind for your new or existing venture, The SAL Podcast gets you a coach to answer some challenging questions on your journey to success. This time we have Performance Coach and Happiness Expert, Brandi Hudson. In this episode, she breaks down her B.A.S.E. framework that she uses to help her corporate, entrepreneurial and individual clients to reach the next level.
Here are the main topics we covered during our conversation:
-Shifting Her Own Mindset
-Moving from personal to business success
-How she works with entrepreneurial clients
-The problem with the notion of manifestation
-Agency
-Navigating systemic barriers to success
-Honoring your heritage
-The power of intuition
MORE ABOUT BRANDI HUDSON
Performance Coach and Happiness Expert, Brandi Hudson is passionate about helping women embody their own magic and step into a life of purpose through the power of performance and happiness. As an intuitive with extensive executive experience and a strong educational background, she brings a powerful combination of spiritual insight and real-world savvy to her work. “My unique blend of spiritual wisdom and practical wisdom helps women tap into the quantum field and align with the laws of the universe, making the pursuit of their dreams feel effortless and fulfilling”
LINKS AND MENTIONS
Power Versus Force by David Hawkins
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with others. You can also compliment this session with coach Neketa Thigpen, who believes that one should be Intentionally Selfish to change their narrative.
NEWSLETTER, stay in the loop and subscribe to our newsletter
SUPPORT this work so that we can keep it free. Become a MONTHLY SUPPORTER
LISTEN ON Apple and Spotify
FOLLOW US ON Instagram and Facebook
There was definitely a younger version of me who believed that I had to show up in a very specific way in order to be accepted and in order to advance my career, and no matter how many people you know kind of like me now, like older people, told me just bring your whole self to work. I'm like they ain't talking to me. I can't bring my whole self to work, self to work. I'm like they ain't talking to me. I can't bring my whole self to work. And the work of this lifetime is to hold on to the wisdom of what happened to you and let go of those dense emotions that are associated with it.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Hello and welcome to Shades and Layers. I'm your host, Kutloano Skosana Ricci . Today, we present your coach for the season, Brandi Hudson, performance coach, happiness expert and speaker, who's dedicated to empowering women to live the life of their dreams. She does this through her very own framework, which she calls BASE, and she walks us through it during today's episode. Also, in today's conversation, we get into Brandy's entrepreneurial journey and explore how she leverages 20 years of corporate experience and combines that with spiritual and practical wisdom to help women to fulfill their potential. She says what you dream of is already meant for you. Her job is to help you get to a place of unwavering belief in the idea that you can have it.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Brandy was looking for professional childcare help when she realized that she needed a mindset shift. While rereading the job description, she realized that she herself did not embody some of the specific qualities she was looking for in a childminder. What did she do next? Well, that's where our conversation begins, and so, without further ado, here is your coach for this season. What kind of work did you start doing to get yourself to where you felt like you could?
Brandi Hudson:you are the best version of those things that you wanted to be yes, I mean I will have to say that over the years I've really tried everything right.
Brandi Hudson:So I've done a lot of mindfulness work, I've done a lot of energy work, I've done a lot of, obviously, prayer and meditation and journaling, and so I really was exploring all the ways that what I know now I don't think I called it this then, but like how I could really heal my nervous system and be like in just a much more peaceful state of being overall. And I think that journey has been, you know, up and down, but I've learned so much through it. But I think the biggest impact is like having time every day to reflect on what I believe, what I want to be true setting intentions about how the day will look, how it will go. That has had the biggest impact. And then, you know, having other people hold space for me over time has also been helpful. But I think those daily commitments to ourself, to our own improvement and up leveling has had the greatest impact on my life Right.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:So that's on the personal side. And then you formalized it and you created a business. Tell me about that journey, how it started and where you're finding yourself right now.
Brandi Hudson:Yes, well, I love that question as well. I started really just, you know, organically People started to see a shift in me and they were reaching out to me. And as I, if I look back over my career, when I was kind of leading teams at really big companies I ran ERGs, employee resource groups, and so I always spent time kind of mentoring and guiding and I loved kind of leading teams and people to reach their own goals. So that's always been at the core of who I am. And as I started focusing more and more on myself, as I mentioned, people organically started coming to me asking me for help.
Brandi Hudson:It took time kind of for me to really settle into like where do I have the best fit, like where can I help people? And I think what I, where I've landed now is my background as an athlete, like as someone who can like be super disciplined and reach these goals. That shifted it away from being more like executive coaching coaching to really performance coaching, like how do we get people to perform at their highest level in all aspects of their lives, right? And I think that mindset work and then like how our emotions guide us and so I do that work, that performance coaching work with a high emphasis on how our emotions guide us. And so I do that work, that performance coaching work with a high emphasis on how our emotions impact our journey. I do that mostly with tech companies, with investment firms. I have a special place in my heart for women and people of color and like how they specifically think about, like navigating their journey, mostly professionally, but also in other aspects of their lives.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Right. How do you work with entrepreneurs? You know how do you guide them on their journeys to build whatever it is that they desire to build.
Brandi Hudson:Well, I have a framework that I've created. I'd love to walk you through it if I met yes.
Brandi Hudson:Okay, well, I call it base, because I think it's foundational to building the life that you desire, and so there's four aspects to it. So the B in base is really about your beliefs. So I want to help people to really understand, like, what are their beliefs. So, if you're an entrepreneur, like, do you think that? Like, are you looking at all the data on the percent chance of your company being successful and then, like, storing that in your brain and constantly using that as a rubric, that's probably not very helpful, right? Like? We know that most startups like actually aren't going to make it right, so you have to have this level of like, unfettered belief that you're going to get there, right? So, really starting by helping people to explore, like, what are your beliefs about? What's even possible in this world? Like, if we're thinking about money, are you thinking like money doesn't grow on trees, when in fact, it does grow on trees Cause it's paper? Right, like, so literally, literally does Right. So we like help people really like explore what's in their brains and how that may not be in service to their goals.
Brandi Hudson:The A is about alignment, right, and I know people have heard this before, but really we need to feel the experience. We need to feel like we would when we reach our end goal right. So, if you are looking to take a company public, or if you are looking to take a company public, or if you are looking to close a new round, or if you're an investment firm and you want more assets under management, like you actually have to like feel as though you are already there. You have to have a knowing that it has already happened, because you want to be resonant with it. You want it to feel like oh, I'm already on that same plane, I'm already in alignment with the person who has the outcome that I'm seeking, and we also. I also remind people that if you have a desire in your heart, it's already meant for you, it is already occurring. You just have to collapse that timeline right. And so I help people like have that resonance, because so often in America what we're doing is we are, we have this idea of like this is the thing that I want, and we think of it as like in the future, up into the right. And this is where I am. And oftentimes we think the way we're going to get up into the right is like by worrying about it, having anxiety is it actually going to happen, having fear that something may happen external to us, us that's going to shut it all down, and none of that is like very helpful. It's like pushing a boulder up a mountain. And so what I help people to realize is like if you can feel in advance of it happening, as though it already has, you can really close that timeline.
Brandi Hudson:And then the S is about self-awareness.
Brandi Hudson:I think it's actually the most important of the four steps because it gives you insight on the other three, like do you actually have self-awareness about how you are contributing to where you are in this lifetime?
Brandi Hudson:And then the E is emotional resilience, right? So over the course of our lives, no matter how big or small, we're all going to have either stressful incidents or we might actually have traumatic incidents that happen to us, right, and the work of this lifetime is to hold on to the wisdom of what happened to you and let go of those dense emotions that are associated with it. Because what we know for sure is like if we're still holding on to the emotion of shame or anger or fear that that incident created in us, it's actually drawing us back to the past and we're more likely to be on repeat for those incidents to happen again, and that's where people start to see these patterns in their lives, that they resemble each other. So I take people through that four step process about whatever goals that they have to help them get to the other side, and then that's a process that they can really like, embody and use on their own as they look to achieve other goals in their lives.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Right, you know, there's also this whole idea of manifestation. You know, there's also this whole idea of manifestation? Yes, right, yes. How do you guide people through the difference, you know, between putting something into action and bringing it to being, and this whole ephemeral idea of manifestation?
Brandi Hudson:Yes, Well, I don't love the word manifestation in many ways, because I think it's like I think you're right If I hear you correctly. I think it's like I think you're right if I hear you correctly. I think it's like this idea that people will like think something and then it just appears right. And then there's like right. It just feels like, oh, I just like I wish it to be true and suddenly it's true. But I do think that it is very empowering to believe that you are the co creator of the entirety of your life. I believe that if we go through life thinking that someone else has the power to create our lives for us, then that's like a very disempowering way to navigate life. So if you believe that you are the co-creator, of your life, then you will, at every moment, creator of your life.
Brandi Hudson:Then you will, at every moment, back to the S and base, have an awareness about the things that you can do differently only you. So you don't need to call your mom and ask her to be different, you don't need your boss to be different, you don't need your colleague to be different, but you, in every moment, can think about how you can shift in order to align with the life that you want. And I think that's so critically important. And I choose to believe that, whatever you want to call it manifestation, co-creating that you are manifesting the entirety of your life. Because, also, the thing about manifestation people want to take all the credit for manifesting the good things, right, like, oh, I manifested the house, right. But then something bad happens to them and that's somebody else's fault, entirely right. Like, oh, I manifested the house, right, but then something bad happens to them and that's somebody else's fault, entirely right.
Brandi Hudson:And so I tell people that, as we co-create our lives, it is important I should say that we have this sharpness of idea in our head that we're moving towards right, which is how people talk about manifestation, that we have an emotional connection to that outcome. But, however, the most important step is that we're taking inspired action. It is only through action that we get the life that we want. Like it is not going to fall into your lap, like maybe sometimes you'll think it does and that's great. Like if every once in a while, while something special shows up for you, I love that. You know why not have a look at the luck in life.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:But I think, by and large, we get the life that we want through inspired action sure, this is shades and layers and this is your coaching session with performance coach and happiness expert, brandy Hudson. Up next, we discuss navigating systemic barriers to success, what it means to be truly happy and how to approach failure. And yes, we have agency, but there are things that are hard to ignore which are also systemic. How do you help your clients to kind of, you know, navigate around those thoughts, because you don't catch a break if you read news or you know, just exist in the real world. You know these things are very obvious and they are daily reminders of you know the systemic issues that are going stumbling blocks.
Brandi Hudson:Yes, so a couple of things.
Brandi Hudson:One I'm actually writing a book about this, so because I think it's, I think it's so critically important, and so, and I, and in the book we're going to talk a little bit about, like these, this idea of unpopular belief, so I'm going to leave it my unpopular belief is actually that there are bad actors in the world and there are systemic issues, and I want to like put a pin in that and make sure that everyone hears that loudly and clearly, because it has impacted the trajectory especially of marginalized communities in the United States of America and we can at times be so beholden to that past that we can't even think about like how to forge a future right.
Brandi Hudson:So I really say to people you can watch the news and you can be like these are all the things happening to people like me, but what I know for sure, all those things aren't actually happening to you.
Brandi Hudson:But when you're focused on all the bad that is happening in the world, you're actually putting yourself into this state of fight or flight. And what in the world you're actually putting yourself into this state of fight or flight and what do we know? When you're in fight or flight, you don't have any available energy to actually create, because your body's like I just got to keep her safe right now Like I can't. I can't give her energy to do anything else, so she just has to keep safe. And so I really invite people to just take on what is actually yours. Like you can't take on all of it right, like this doom scrolling or this watching the news. All of these things aren't in service to your highest good, and we can't actually change as a people if we're spending all of our energy in fight or flight because we can't help each other from that play.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yep, it's just panic.
Brandi Hudson:It's just like panic, and I I'm not the first one to say this, but the system isn't broken. It was built this way right Like so. If I, if, if you as a person in power, can keep all the rest of the people in this perpetual state of chaos, then you never lose your power. And the way we take our power back is extricating ourselves from the chaos, saying I'm actually not going to let you take me down this rabbit hole where I am focused on all that is bad in the world.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, that is really great. That is really great. And I also wanted to find out about your definition of happiness. Yes, what is happiness?
Brandi Hudson:Yeah, you know, and I think that is such a great question and I try not to define it for other people, right? Like I think happiness has nothing to do with anything external to you, right? So if you believe you'll be happy because you'll have something or get something or achieve something, that really isn't it. It's like this inward state that you exist in, where you feel worthy, where you love yourself deeply and where you feel as though you are moving kind of in lockstep towards your dreams. It's like a place of peace, it's a place of joy, Like it's just. It's just where you can be and you don't define yourself by anything external to you.
Brandi Hudson:And so many people have like official definitions of happiness. But I really help people to think about how it feels for them. How does it feel to be happy? Because so often people will say they're happy, but then when you're talking to them, you're like well, that doesn't sound so much like you're happy, right? So I don't want people to like define it in words as much as I want them to feel this sense of I can just be. There's no friction, there is no wanting, there's no proving like, it's just this place that we are in.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, yeah, the peaceful place. The peaceful place, yeah. So when I uh speak to people about you know happiness, I often get uh pushback, or sometimes I get pushback on you know you're on this toxic positivity. It's just a term that's being bandied around. How do you distinguish two people that you? Know there's a difference between what that is toxic positivity and genuine happiness no.
Brandi Hudson:I love that. The only way that we can be happy is to feel all the emotions. The only and I want to, I want to say that twice the only way that we can ever be happy is to feel every single emotion. So if I lose a friend, you know there's no value in like bypassing that real feeling of loss. Or if I lose a family member, right Like, the value is to like experience the sadness first of that loss and then to transition, hopefully to this place of like remembering all of the great things about that relationship and how you can like move that forward. Right, but sometimes we just bypass right from like well, you know, I lost my job, but it's okay because, and then dot, dot, dot, right, like, and people just don't want to actually sit with that feeling of like, no, it's not probably okay, you don't feel great.
Brandi Hudson:I actually just hung up with someone right before this and they were telling me how they're working on a project which I won't name specifically, but they're working on a big project and how there were all these hurdles in the project and they were making all of these you know rationales for why the hurdles were happening. And then I, you know, I just said, like I'm going to be direct with you. It feels like you're very, very sad right now. And then they just burst out crying Right but like, but they were looking to really like, explain why. Like well, this is happening. But it's okay to be sad. We actually want to be sad.
Brandi Hudson:We stay in a perpetual state of sadness when we don't feel the emotion, or perpetual state of fear, anxiety.
Brandi Hudson:But when we really feel the emotion like oh, I'm worried that this won't happen and what does it feel like to be worried, and just in that emotion, that's the only way we can get to the other side is to feel it deeply.
Brandi Hudson:And the opposite is toxic positivity, to just act like it's not a big deal or that, or act like we shouldn't be sad about it. And I think there's value if you're always angry, if you're always feeling triggered, right To feel it like, to feel the anger. And then, once you're to the other side of it, you can say to yourself, like why am I always triggered when my kid doesn't listen? Why am I always triggered when my boss sends an email? Like if there's things that are triggering to you, you do want to explore them and navigate them so that maybe you don't always have to deal with them, right? You want to ask yourself, like why does this feel so heavy for me that my husband doesn't put the dishes in the dishwasher? Right? But the first step is to actually just be like I am angry, I wanted him to do the dishes, and then, once you feel it, then you explore it and not doing that is the toxic positivity, and I don't invite anyone there because that's not healthy.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:No, absolutely, which ties into the whole idea of shame to feel your feels and also failure and startups. Nine out of 10 times I just not going to make it. And I know you want people to be aligned and you know act as if, but you know failure sometimes does come. So, how do they, how in the world do you navigate that and be fine and try again.
Brandi Hudson:I mean, this is what I say to people If you have a big dream and you don't pursue it, you fail. And if you have a big dream and you do pursue it and it doesn't work out, you've also failed. But you have tried and you have learned in one version of those events and then the other you are sitting at home ruminating about why you haven't followed your dreams, and so I invite people to actually not call it failure, right? I think that as we move through life, everything, every single thing that happens to us, either moves us closer to our dreams or it gives us information that actually also moves us closer to our dreams, right. And so I think even the term failure feels so heavy for people.
Brandi Hudson:But you're just learning, you're just exploring, you're just getting information, right, and we are human, and what is true about the arc of the human experience, regardless of your color or your creed or your age or your experiences, is that it is filled with imperfections, and it has to be.
Brandi Hudson:That's what makes us human, right. So the more we can actually have grace with ourselves and not think about it as failure, right, so the more we can actually have grace with ourselves and not think about it as failure. We actually like not only experience the when things don't go our way, we actually experience it from a better place. But the data supports that we actually minimize the number of quote unquote failures we have when we're in that place. If you're desperately trying to avoid failure, if you're desperately trying to avoid these learning experiences, you're holding on so tightly that you're actually more so inviting them to you. But when you can just like hold on to life gently and have grace with yourself and just walk through it, you're going to have far fewer of those experiences and you're also just going to like be in a place where it just feels better to live your life.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:We're nearing the end of our conversation Brandi Hudson Hudson, but first we find out what she means about using your intuition to achieve success in business, honoring your heritage and leveraging your cultural background in a professional setting. And, of course, as we usually do around this time, we get into the shades and layers rapid fire. Something else that I've heard you talk about, and that's intuition when you're in an entrepreneurial venture, just using that to your advantage. You know, intuition and business are two things you would never see together. I mean, this is data, hard facts, etc. So how do you work with clients in that from that perspective?
Brandi Hudson:Yes, well. So I think that we should navigate the totality of our life in a similar way. So I wouldn't say like, oh, we navigate our business this way and then the rest of our life this way. So I deeply believe that we should be following our intuition and we should be following our knowing. I, we should be following our knowing.
Brandi Hudson:I'm actually working with a large company right now and it was interesting because I was saying to the CEO of the company like, oh well, your team seems to really be data driven, right, it's an investment company, so that makes sense. And the CEO was like oh, that's so interesting because I, like, always follow my gut in the end. Right, like, so it's not. Like, oh, that's so interesting because I, like, always follow my gut in the end, right, like, so it's not. Like, oh, we don't do the work. We do the work right, we get the information and as we synthesize all the data, like, that final step is like, does our knowing say that we're on the right track and how do we trust that? Right, and that will never fail us. However, we have to build that muscle right, and that will never fail us. However, we have to build that muscle right, like so we build this muscle of trusting ourselves, of knowing that our intuition is guiding us right, but it goes back to like the manifestation. It's not like I just wake up today and I'm like, okay, like what are the lottery numbers? Someone send them to me and I'm like okay, three, seven, 45, you know, it's not like that. It's like I've done the work and all the information I now have at my fingertips and I'm like okay, this is the next right step, right.
Brandi Hudson:And I, if I ask anyone, my husband's a venture capitalist and so he invests in startups. And if a startup, oftentimes when a startup doesn't work out, which they will, I say to him I'm like, oh, did you know? Upfront, like, did you have? I always ask him, like, do you have a spy, decents? And he can always reframe for me, like what happened in these early meetings with the founders, where he had a level of doubt but really wanted them to work.
Brandi Hudson:And so and I think that's what we oftentimes do we have something that tells us like, go this way, go left instead of right, like pick the A instead of B, but then we rationalize ourselves out of that knowing and always looking back. If you really do this kind of postmortem. You had something that told you. I knew it. It's 100% of the time. I've never had someone say like no, I really thought that was going to work out and I never once doubted it. And now I don't know why it did. Everyone always says but we have to trust that knowing going forward, not just looking back.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Right, right. One more thing I wanted to chat to you about in coaching people was the achieving success while honoring heritage. So we know about code switching in professional environments. You know you're there, you're trying to sell an idea or a project and you are one way. Then you're in the coffee room with your other colleagues who are from the same cultural background and suddenly your accent changes and your lexicon changes. So how does this tie into success, like the cultural authenticity?
Brandi Hudson:Yes, I love this question so much because there was definitely a younger version of me who believed that I had to show up in a very specific way in order to be accepted and in order to advance my career. And no matter how many people you know kind of like me now, like older people told me just be, bring your whole self to work. I'm like they ain't talking to me. I can't bring my whole self to work and now fast forward. I know it to be true in the depths of my soul, right? And I think we have to look through this lens from the perspective of we cannot fully be an acceptance of ourselves if we don't believe that the most authentic version of ourselves is the most successful version of ourselves. And if we are not fully accepting of ourselves, then we just can't flourish. Because how can someone else accept you, how can someone else honor your ideas and your thoughts, if you haven't done that for yourself, right? So we want to start from this baseline of like I know that I'm worthy, I accept myself fully and I love myself fully. And from that baseline, the only way to show up is as our most authentic version of ourselves. And when we show up as the most authentic version, knowing that, whatever you believe whether you believe in God or a creator, just like your highest self you have to think, oh, these unique aspects of myself are what I actually bring to the world and it's all that the world can resonate with. It's all that the world can align to, world can resonate with. It's all that the world can align to. The world can't align to a second version of you know, mark Zuckerberg, or a second version of Serena Williams or whomever you respect as, like a leader. If you're just trying to emulate who they are, that space is already taken. But the authentic version of yourself that says, like your unpopular opinions, like I said earlier, just like, shows up exactly as you are. That version of you, that authentic version of you, is who the world needs. It's what the world is looking for and that's all that people resonate with.
Brandi Hudson:I said, like, when people tell me how? Oh, well, I said this and they didn't, they didn't react very well to what I said and I'm like oh, but what did you mean? Well, I was angry with them, but I didn't say that. What I said was X, y, z. Well, they knew you were being inauthentic, like, even though you think, like people always want to tell me the words that they said and they're like I don't understand why they didn't accept the words Right, but it's like, oh no, they didn't hear your words. They felt something, your energy. They knew that that's not what she means, that's not what, like, who she is, and they may not have been able to put the finger on it, but that didn't resonate for them. But when you are just who you are, that always resonates with all people, across all heritages, across all ages, demographics, because it's who you were meant to be.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, absolutely.
Brandi Hudson:What have you?
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:been called to do.
Brandi Hudson:You know this work. I feel like many, many years ago I was meditating in my living room, by my fireplace. Many, many years ago I was like meditating in my living room, by my fireplace. I was really called to help people many, many people, but specifically people that look like me to align with the life that they deserve right, and help people to see that there are no limitations to who we get to be in this lifetime and that, like, our soul has chosen this time, this space, this body, and that our desires are meant for us. And I think if I do that for one person, I will feel like I've won, but my goal is to do it for many, many people over this life?
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, and who are your mentors? Who would you credit with this energy that you have and your inclinations to help others?
Brandi Hudson:The person who had the biggest impact on my life is my grandmother. She's passed away, but at a very young age she taught me kind of like this holistic outlook on life. She taught me to be there and in service to others and she's one of my best friends and I'm very grateful to her and for her, and I've had many people along the way that have helped me in numerous ways. But I we think about those most formative years and she had a tremendous impact on me and I'm very grateful for that.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, and books. What's been the most influential book in your life? Do you think yes.
Brandi Hudson:Yeah, the most influential book in my life is Power Versus Force by David Hawking. I think it's really like what taught me to like make this shift away from. I used to really think that I had to force, push through, right, you know, like be strong black woman who pushed for what she wanted. And then I realized actually I got a new administrative partner recently because someone else in my team moved to a different role and she was like high arcing everything and she's like well, is this more important than this? And these were very great questions and I finally said to her I said, oh, you know, I really am at a place in my life where everything will actually work out and she's like what, when you're in this place of peace, is this place of knowing.
Brandi Hudson:Then it starts to work out for you. That book, it took me actually a while to read it. I had it and I kept going back to it and going back to it and when I finally, when it was my time to read it, I was like oh, it was just so impactful. I recommend it so highly.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Great, and you're writing your own.
Brandi Hudson:Yes, I am, I'm working on that. The placeholder is no one's coming to save you, and it is this idea about how we we really we have so much power, and it's just a practical approach to how to live your very best life. And how to live your very best life and how to think through this practical lens and this spiritual lens and to really realize that we have so much sovereignty in this lifetime.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Absolutely, and what I like to ask my guests is if they had to write a memoir what would you call it and why.
Brandi Hudson:Oh, I love that question. I've never been asked, if I had to write a memoir, what would I call it and why? Oh, I love that question. I've never been asked, if I had to write a memoir, what would I call it and why? I think I would call it favor. I feel as though I've been highly favored in this lifetime and I've done my best to take advantage of all the opportunities that God saw fit to give me, and I think that's what we're all called to do. Yeah, Great.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yeah, and if you had to turn it into a film, who would you choose for the lead actress?
Brandi Hudson:Maybe Kerry Washington.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Yes, I can see that. Yes, and if you had to host a dinner tomorrow night, which famous black woman would you invite, living or dead?
Brandi Hudson:Michelle.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:Obama.
Brandi Hudson:Hello, hello night. Which famous black woman would you invite, living or dead? Michelle obama, hello, hello. Are you free, michelle? I I've got some a great menu set for us yeah, I would love to sit with her and have have a conversation lady grace. I call her oh, I love that name for her. Yeah, she was very graceful and some really persnickety moments, so yeah, yeah.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:So if people want to work with you, give you money, where can they find you?
Brandi Hudson:You can find us at Brandi B Hudson, so Brandy with an I, that's the only unique part, and then Hudson, like the river. So we're brandibhudson. com and that's where we are on YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn, and I would absolutely love to connect with people in all the ways. And I do have a sub stack that is every Monday we publish and it's just Hi, brandy is our sub stack.
Kutloano Skosana Ricci:And that is all from me this time around. Thanks to performance coach Brandi Hudson for giving us tips on how to succeed in career and entrepreneurship, and thanks to her also for sharing her story. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone else who might find it useful. As always, I thank you for listening and for your ongoing Kutloano Skosana Ricci. I'm , and until next time, please do take good care.
