Yeah. I personally believe you can never be too much. Right? God did not put you on this earth to dim your light. In fact, when you shine your light, you amplify it so others can ignite theirs, so others can see what's possible for them.
You know, for a long time, when I was in corporate and I worked side by side with this woman who didn't like me because we worked together for a very long time, I tried to dim my light at one point, and and that was an epic fail. And I learned by doing it the wrong way, and so I advocate for this for everyone.
People will come to me and say, thank god you wrote your book. It changed my life. Thank you for doing this or that. I don't know, Heather. I don't know if I can do it. I I don't know. And I'll say, why? Why can you not do that? I don't I don't wanna be too much. I don't I know people are gonna come and the haters are gonna come. And I say, hit the brakes. What if I hadn't written my book? And they're like, no. You had to write yours. Wait a minute. But what person are you gonna reach that you don't even realize yet? Stop making it about yourself and start making about the other people you can help.
And suddenly, it's a lot easier to take that risk and move forward because we all know Sarah Blakely helped me by launching Sphinx and becoming a huge success. She planted a seed in my mind that it was possible for me. Right? So she was willing to do that. I need to be willing to do that for the people coming after me. We all need to if we wanna make the world a better place. Right? So that's one thing that I would say about being too much.
I was also just reading a book recently that was saying men and and individuals want to be around the strongest woman that they can that still treats them with respect, that still wants help from them. And I thought that was interesting because for a long time when I was in corporate, was in a very toxic environment with a lot of more feminine men and two extremely strong female personalities, myself and and one other woman, the woman that ended up firing me.
And when I look back at at that environment, I never asked my guys for help. I never you know, I will always get it done because I wanted to show how talented our whole team was and how listen. If this is how I'm leading, you better be running right beside me doing the same things. What I was doing was disempowering them and, honestly, like, short selling myself because I'm gonna be better the more people I have with me helping me, you know, helping me grow, filling in for for my gaps where I'm no one's perfect in everything. Right? Like, you could be great maybe at presenting, but maybe my technical skills putting the decks together wasn't as good. I should have been tapping other people to say, I really need you. I need raising my hand. I need your help. I learned this when I got fired.
So so I would say that oftentimes, it's looking at the environment and, again, at yourself in the mirror and saying, how can I get better in this situation? What can I do differently? Am I being vulnerable and letting people know that I do need help?
Sarah Blakely had a meeting every Friday at Spanx, and it was her oops meeting. And she would lead the meeting each week and say, here's where I failed this week. Here's what chance I took that didn't work out. And then everybody else had to do the same. They created a culture that was innovative, moved fast, and changed and, you know, revolutionized an industry because they celebrated failing. And so often, the company I worked at, it was not that way. It was always don't surprise us, and everything's gotta be perfect.
So the more you start moving away from that idea that perfection even exists, because it doesn't, the more you move towards, I can't do it all on my own. I'll be a heck of a lot better if we work together. Can you help me? And start sharing your shortcomings. The more people trust you, the more they strengthen and tether their bond to you, the more they want you to win, and the stronger leader you become as a result.
And then finally, to your question, you also need to have boundaries in place. Right? So let's talk about friends. You know, when everyone's at work and you get your work situation going well, and that's great. But then when you're in your personal life, you're feeling drained, then it's to say you gotta pump the brakes again and say, wait a minute. Am I doing the things that I wanna be doing outside of work? Number one. Number two, who am I spending time with? And how do I feel before I engage with them? And then how do I feel after I lead them?
And when I started doing that analysis, I saw there were some frenemies out there that, you know, would always say to me, oh, gosh. Why are you still still single? You know, this is all you, and, you know, you should be doing this, and you should be doing basically saying, you should be me. Like, you should and and I'm not them. Right? And I started thinking, these people aren't speaking life into me. They're draining my energy. And, again, they're not bad people. They wanted wealth. They wanted me to have their life. But I realized at the end of the day, I didn't want their life.
I didn't like the way that they spoke to me, and I suddenly created space and distance. I the first thing I would do would they'd say, like, come over for dinner Friday night, and I'd say, oh, I'm fully booked with plans this weekend, but thanks so much for thinking of me. And the more you start doing that in a kind way, the more you just create a little bit of space, you start feeling better, you start realizing, wait. I feel like I have way more energy now on the weekends since I haven't been around them. And then it became easier, you know, moving forward to to say, that's not how I wanna spend my weekends any longer.