You've spent your career becoming extraordinarily capable.
Now let's talk about what the capability is worth.
You've spent your career becoming extraordinarily capable.
Now let's talk about what the capability is worth.
Lemme give it to you straight.
I believe too many dangerously capable women learned early that their value lay in what they could do for others. And they've been building inside that belief ever since.
I'm Sarah Khan, TEDx speaker, strategic advisor, author, and host of the Business Blasphemy podcast.
I work with dangerously capable women who have spent years being valued for what they can do and are ready to be valued for what they think.
Because you and I both know there's a trap that comes with being very, very good at things.
People start relying on you.
Then they reward you for being reliable.
Then they define your value by how much you can handle.
And eventually, without anyone else ever deciding this out loud, your usefulness becomes your identity.
I mean, if anyone can figure out the thing, you can.
You can fix it, lead it, deliver it, make the impossible possible, and then boom. You're indispensable.
Then you wonder why you're exhausted, under-leveraged, and weirdly dissatisfied with a success you worked very hard to create.
I lived it.
For 25 years I worked in business strategy and operations. I taught at business school for 14 years. I spent time inside two of the "Big 4" firms. And I've been an entrepreneur for 16 years.
I've coached executives, built businesses from behind the scenes, and I've solved problems for a living.
In other words: I got very good at being useful.
And by every conventional measure, it worked.
Credentials, results, recognition, responsibility. Success up to my brown eyeballs. All in service of other people's visions and goals.
Exactly the way I had been taught success was supposed to look.
But I hadn't yet figured out how to build from what I knew rather than simply using what I knew to build for everyone else.
THEN CAME THE TEDx TALK.
I had an idea for a TEDx talk long before I ever got one.
I pitched it. No bueno. I pitched again, and again. Still nada. So I kept paying coaches to help me figure out what these judges and audiences wanted to hear. How could I make this more acceptable? How could I make the idea fit the room, the theme, the brand I'd built?
How could I make myself easier to say "yes" to?
Eventually I stopped trying, in a fit of rage, and submissted the talk I actually wanted to give instead of the one I kept being told would be approved of.
And it was accepted. By the second largest TEDx event in Canada.
That's when I realized I had spent years using my intelligence, experience, and capability to become exceptionally good at delivering what other people valued while barely asking myself:
What do I actually have to say? What do I actually know to be true?
Those questions changed everything.
Because the difference between having expertise and owning a point of view is where authority begins.
"The timing, the process, everything has been very transformative, partially in verbalizing and bringing out what’s been stuck up there, but also identifying it for me."
Nikki Vance
That's the work I do now.
I work with accomplished women who have already proven they can succeed but are ready for the market to value them differently.
I don't think you need to reinvent yourself, you just need to recognize what your experience has already made you exceptionally good at seeing.
You don't need to be someone else, you just need to finally recognize the full value of who you've already become.
Favourite animal (don’t tell me they’re not real):
a dragon
Go to Coffee:
Nespresso Intenso with Vanilla Cold Foam
Unusual talent:
I can wiggle my ridiculously small ears
Favorite comfort snack:
buttery, salty popcorn
How I Spend My Free Time:
I binge watch the streamers and drink coffee
(and sometimes art, reading fantasy thrillers, and doomscrolling funny reels with my kids to dissociate)
