Gianna Diggs 0:05
You are listening to the mompreneur mindset podcast, a space where we empower you to build an aligned business. So you can spend less time on the things you think you should be doing in your business, and more time with the people you love. I am your host, Gianna Diggs. Let's get into it
Welcome back to the show. So in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to be a lifelong learner with my guest, Dr. Chemi Popoola. So a little bit about Dr. Chemi. She is a wife, mom and recovering educator of 20 years, who loves learning about who she is in this season in her life. She is becoming someone who loves and enjoys growing her influence in the beauty and wellness industry. Not only is she a real estate agent for Keller Williams, but also is a Travel Advisor and beauty influencer for Tori Bell cosmetics. So without further ado, let's get into the interview. Hi, Dr. Cami Welcome to the show.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 1:07
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Gianna Diggs 1:11
Okay, so I'm really excited about our topic today. So we're gonna be talking about being a lifelong learner. Right. And I know, there's a lot of people out there who they finished high school finished college. And they're just like, that's it, right? They don't ever want to go back and sit in someone's classroom or learn from someone ever again, right? So I want to know what kind of what sparked your love for learning?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 1:44
Well, as a kid, I've always been excited about learning, you would find me in a corner somewhere sitting with a book. So in this day, if my mom said, when I was younger, if she was looking for me, she would find me in my room with a book. And I just, I just really love to learn about new things, and be excited about the world around me. And so I'm quick to grab a book. Now it's quick to go on Google and Google search and then go down, and you just go down the rabbit hole of learning, and then go oh, I didn't know that could happen. Oh, I didn't know I could do that. And it's just the excitement of just learning something new at almost 50. So that's the thing for me.
Gianna Diggs 2:32
Okay, so what would you say? I guess in your words, like the definition of a lifelong learner?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 2:39
A lifelong learner is somebody who's always seeking information, be it in a book, be it your own Google, be it on I call it the University of Google and YouTube College, be it whatever it is that sparks your interest, go for it. Start learning. That's for me what a lifelong learner is. So people think that learning has to always happen in a classroom, not necessarily learning happens, wherever the interest is sparked for you. So you don't necessarily have to be in a classroom. I mean, I have a doctorate. Yes. But that's because I wanted to just keep going in a traditional educational setting. But learning per se does not have to happen in a classroom. The whole world is a classroom for for those of us who are lifelong learners.
Gianna Diggs 3:31
Oh, yeah. I love that. Because, um, I think that at times, you know, some people don't look at like, oh, you know, we just have this easy, we can just go Google something and, or we can go on YouTube, but we don't realize that that's still a form of learning. Like, we don't have to be in a traditional classroom to actually be learning some type of information from somewhere.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 3:56
Absolutely. Iagree.
Gianna Diggs 3:58
So, is there any, I guess, if someone was like, you know, I kind of maybe want to be a lifelong learner, but I'm just not sure. Is there any? Like, how would How would someone become that if they if it's not innate in their nature?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 4:12
Always be open. Always be willing to search for information? Because what I've come across as I've, as I've become older, is people who say, I don't know how to do that. And so my question is, are you willing to learn, be open to that learning, be open to trying out stuff, that's another thing, because how do you know you've learned something? You try it? Or you're able to teach it to somebody else? Right. I'm the mom of a nine year old. So I will give you an example. He came back from school yesterday. I picked him up and the conversation I always have with him when I pick him up is how was school And I don't want a one word answer. So he always says, oh, school was great. And then I go, what makes what made today? Great. So the conversation we had yesterday was about how he had attended a virtual career day. Oh, that's cool. So I said, oh, so what did you learn from the guest that attended your virtual career day? So then he started to tell me about all the different types of law. And that, you know, I think he met somebody from Google, who worked at Google. And so he said, now he wants to work at Google. Why? Because they have nap pods. I said, You see, I didn't even know that. Right, right. I didn't know they had nap pods. But now I do know that they have an app. That's part of that learning. So just be open and be curious curiosity. Is that that is the key for me. Because I'm always curious.
Gianna Diggs 5:55
Y es. Oh, I love that. So how has Lifelong Learning led you down the path to entrepreneurship?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 6:03
Girl, how much time do we have?
Gianna Diggs 6:06
as much as you need.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 6:10
So when, when I first started thinking about becoming a full time entrepreneur, I knew that I needed to fill up my own bucket with skills that I did not at that time possessed, right. So I got in touch with the people who knew. And then I said, Listen, how much is your time worth? I know, I can truly pay you what your time is worth, however, do you coach people? I'll pay you to coach me. Right? So that's step number one. And then if you join a program, I joined a program where you're, we were given free social media training. Oh, okay. So guess who was on Tik Tok? Learning to tick tock, Mimi. And then I found a training somebody who said, You know what, for so many dollars, I'll teach you how to tick tock and what you needed what you need to do in order to promote your business, legally on tick tock. So I did that training. So I'm constantly constantly in somebody's classroom, whether virtual or sitting in front of them, I moved into real estate by happenstance. So I went ahead, got my training got licensed all within the space of five weeks. Wow. By now, they don't really teach you how to real estate in that training. They just teach you how to pass a test. So now, as a real estate agent, the whole world is where my classroom. So every day when I wake up, I'm going online. And I'm going okay, what am I doing today? Because literally, you will now I now have to learn how to run a business. Right? And not think that because I no longer have to clock in somewhere. I can just willy nilly do whatever I have to do. Because remember, real estate is often somebody's biggest purchase, right? You cannot mess that up. Right? So I'm constantly when I tell you, I'm constantly learning, I joined a team of other real estate agents. And I'm just learning from them. Because remember what I said learning don't have to be traditional. Right? It can, it can be you learning from other people, and aligning yourself with the right team of people that can help you grow. Right one thing about being a lifelong learner and I forgot to mention that is you have to have a growth mindset. Just because you are not perfect at it right now does not mean you cannot get perfect at it. You just want you need to practice on to you reach perfection. So that's the thing for me. I just continue to practice. It may look bad at the beginning, but guess what? Give me time to get to master it.
Gianna Diggs 9:26
Right I love that you said and my pregnancy brain is kicking in right now. But I love that. I love that you said about the about the world being your classroom. Right? It's just like there's in a world where there's always a lot of fake news, right? Where we where we have to discern what's real and what's not. It always irks me when someone is just like believes just something just because it's like posted online and it's just like, Google is free. Right? It's like all these different things are free. Yet. You choose to believe Eve craziness, right? But in reference to being a lifelong learner, I love the fact that it's just like, Okay, well, you know, this course that I took just gave me how, you know, okay, the steps, but it didn't really teach me nothing. So I'm gonna go out there and learn it. And I think a lot of times some people just don't want to do that they, they like to stay in their ignorance, I guess like ignorance is bliss. And it's just like, Okay, well, I don't know how to do it. And I think a lot of times, especially for moms like it, oh, you know, oh, I don't know how to do it. It's like, okay, that stops them from saying, Okay, there's this thing, there's this, this business, I want to start, but I don't know how to do it. And so we get stuck in that I don't want to do it. Because we don't think that we don't have that like, Okay, I may not be able to afford a coach right now. But I can still figure it out by finding whatever content and then maybe I get a little started maybe freelancing. And then once I get a little bit of money, boom, now I can afford a coach to kind of help me move forward. So I love the fact that like, being a lifelong learner is kind of like helps with that, if that makes sense. Absolutely. So you kind of referenced how you learn social media before, but I will say like, there's a lot of people resisting especially Tik Tok, right. That's, that's a platform that a lot of if you're not a Gen Z, you know, under 25, a lot of people are like, resistant to that platform. And some other platforms. So it's just like, it's too hard. It's overwhelming. I don't I don't want to create content. So I find that you found some success in that. And it's, and I want to know, you know, how has been being a lifelong learner helped you to kind of create content for different platforms, because I see you everywhere. So how was it? How has that helped you?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 11:55
S o let me let me address one thing that you mentioned about the fact that people just don't want to try stuff out. I will say this, especially for us moms, as you said, sometimes it's just that the fear of if I do it any day and right. And then people are gonna laugh at me. Right? It's just that fear that sits in the pit of your stomach, then that tells you you're not good enough, where even though you know, you're good enough, right? But then it sits there. And then there's the imposter syndrome, that tells you you're not worth it. Hmm. So why should you? Why should you even try? I know that a tick tock as a 48 year old. And so, to answer your question, what I have done with trying to create content was Remember, I told you, I paid somebody to teach me, right? And so the person taught me about the trends, and how to search for trends on Tik Tok and jumping on the bandwagon. Because I was one of those people that was like, well, if a million people are doing it, why am I doing it? What makes it different, but there, she helped me to understand. That's because it's tremendous is. So jump on it. And so part of my learning is I devote about 15 minutes to just going through tick tock videos, and then liking the ones and saving the the ones that I would like to attempt to do. Okay. And then I find a day when I'm like, okay, you know what, today, I'm going to try to create some content, whether it will be it for my lash business, or for my real estate business, or just creating content just so that I can put my face out there. So that's part of my learning. For me, I remember that when Instagram came out, my niece told me she said, Auntie Instagram is for young people. You owe us Facebook. Oh, that's so for a long time, even though I had an Instagram account, because of what she said. I didn't even do Instagram because as i Okay, maybe it's for the young people. But guess what, aren't you doing everything? I'm doing Facebook, Instagram, I'm out here tick tock, and like, I'm 25 years old. And I'm just really truly if I'm being honest, just truly enjoying life, and enjoying the space that I am in right now.
Gianna Diggs 14:28
Yeah, I love that. I love that you said that you enjoy it. Because I think that too, like I know some people I've had people in my family who talked about like, you know, the struggle sometimes that they experienced with learning things. And the fact that you found a way to love just learning even though it may feel hard at first. I think that's like the the missing key is like finding the joy in the learning, right finding the joy in life. I'm just experimenting a lot of times because we live in an instant gratification society. If we're not if we trying something and it's not working, and I'm guilty of this, I'm speaking from experience, right? Like, it's like, oh, I guess it didn't work, right. You know, like, oh, I guess it didn't work, I'm gonna move on. But finding that joy of like, you know, even making it a game of like, I'm just gonna sit and find this and find the most fun thing that I can I can create and go from there. I think that's super powerful.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 15:29
Absolutely. I will say this when I first became a lash boss. And the challenge was, I had to go live on Facebook. Oh, yeah, I could, I could take pictures and post pictures all day long. I could record a video and post a video all day long. And my mentor said, Kevin, you have to attend to go live. Girl, I was so scared. I didn't know what to do with myself. As I do what? Talk to people? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's for those of you who are mastered this, just like me just try it. And so I went live one day. And then I said, Okay, this is not bad. And then another week I went live. And now it takes me absolutely nothing to turn on my camera and go live. I say all of that to say consistency is key to mastering anything in this world. Just be consistent. Because then eventually it becomes natural to you. That's the same thing we're learning out of TiC tock. At first, I was like, I'm not doing that. But then I'm like, oh, and then I started to enjoy it. I get no views. At least I enjoyed making my tic tock video.
Gianna Diggs 16:47
Right. Right. So yeah, finding that joy
Dr. Kemi Popoola 16:51
is super important for me. But once again, I'm in a different space, and a different frame of mind. So just finding that joy in everything every day brings me joy does this so?
Gianna Diggs 17:11
Yeah. And that's and that's, that's what it is. Right? Like, I've been there with, you know, it's like, I gotta create content, and then it just feels so taxing the yellow? I don't want to do it. Right. And so that's, that's powerful for me to hear. Because I'm trying to find that space of like, what can I find that? How can I make this fun for me so that it gets done, because when it's not fun, it's not gonna get done. So I love that you're just in a space that, you know, that is joyful for you in and, you know, actually, the question that just came to me I was even going to ask you was like, how did you get there? How did you get to that joy
Dr. Kemi Popoola 17:58
I got to my joy, and it's a work in progress. It is a work in progress, that I've been working on finding joy, peace, gratitude, and staying grounded for about two years. And, and I find that when I live in gratitude every day, that's what you have to start off with. Living in gratitude every day. Finding something to be thankful for every day is a way for you to start getting to that joy. Just finding something, anything. You know what today I went to Walmart, and there was no lie to ya, you get what I'm saying? Yeah. And then the more you practice it then it becomes innate. And then of course, I quit my job. So that in and of itself, let allow me to release a lot of stress. And just continue to live in the moment and just now doing something that I truly, truly, truly enjoy. I will always be an educator. However, now I'm educating people on making their biggest purchases, right, which is a home or whatever type of real estate they would like to purchase. So therefore and that brings me joy. That brings me joy because my love language is doing for other people access services. So if I'm able to help you with anything, anything at all, like literally anything at all. That brings me joy, and that's part of me finding that part of me that just loves life.
Gianna Diggs 20:01
That's powerful. I love that. And I love how, you know, just even if you if you're still struggling to find that joy, right, like, being a lifelong learner can still help you because it's little things of like, oh, you know, it's like, oh, well, I don't know how to meditate. Let me figure out how to meditate. Right? I don't know how to journal. Let me figure out how to journal,
Dr. Kemi Popoola 20:25
University of Google and YouTube college. I promise you, it's so much you can learn.
Gianna Diggs 20:31
Right? I love that. All right. So we talked on the positive? What if there's that person who is like, I hear you, but I don't got time for that. Right? Like, they're just they're, they're resistant to wanting to learn, like, what piece of advice would you give them?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 20:47
If you're resistant to learn it? If you're resistant to learn and you can't grow? Hmm, point blank, right. Just point blank. And so as I've talked to people in what, well, that's for you, that's because you have time. Give five minutes, can you devote five minutes to learn something new?
Gianna Diggs 21:10
Right, set a timer, set a timer
Dr. Kemi Popoola 21:14
to learn something new. I was talking to my friend the other day, and I was telling her how I time block. Because and then I started creating, I went back to creating my lists. You know how I don't know how it was for you, when you when you became a full time entrepreneur? When I was just like, oh, and then I can do this. And then I could do this. And then I could find that all of the time is gone. And you have accomplished nothing. Oh, yeah. But you've been busy all day. Right? So I went online. And I said, How do serial entrepreneurs, how do they manage time, then time blocking and list creation came up? I said I could do those too. So if you're resistant to learning, says I don't know what I can tell you. You're not gonna grow, you just gonna stay in the same place. And who wants to do that? Who wants to stay in the same spot? And then complain about the fact that the spot that that I'm in is not right. But then I don't want to learn so I can grow.
Gianna Diggs 22:27
All right. Right. Like what do you tell them? But you know, some people I have didn't school, I've done school. I'm done doing school? And it's just like no. School, right?
Dr. Kemi Popoola 22:39
Traditional school? Yes. But learning learning You're never done. Right? You're never ever done doing school. That's so
Gianna Diggs 22:49
powerful. All right. So before we wrap up, but tell the people where they can find you online.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 22:56
You can find me at on my website, and that is ww.dr Cami ebola.com. And that will take you to all of my handles and social media. It's on my website.
Gianna Diggs 23:10
All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Kami for being here.
Dr. Kemi Popoola 23:14
You are so welcome. I've enjoyed my time with you.
Gianna Diggs 23:17
Thank you. Thank you for listening to the mompreneur mindset podcast. I hope you found today's episode valuable. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, I would love it if you could subscribe rate or review the show your support, it really means the world to me. Also, if you want to join in on a discussion about today's topic, and seek guidance, assistance and advice from fellow mompreneurs I invite you to join the mompreneur mindset community. You'll find a warm and supportive group of women who are eager to help you achieve your business goals. So head to www dot Gianna diggs.com backslash community for more information
Transcribed by https://otter.ai