Coach Ajit (01:40):
I was really finding it hard to find my leadership style. I was not comfortable with myself and I definitely did not love myself where this woman came in. And I really showed me as a coach, how to love myself, how to be a better leader, how to be a better person overall. And that is why a lot of my transformations credited to her. Now, fortunately, we were able to lean out of the coaching relationship and be into a romantic partnership after several months of being coached by her. Now this woman is bringing her genius to the world on a weekly basis with her new and wonderful podcast, the brave table. But before you go to the brave table and devour all those amazing episodes that have already put out, let's hear it from Dr. Neeta Bhushan on how you and I, and all of us coaches can lean into our full power. Thank you so much for joining in today. Neeta.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (02:36):
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me love.

Coach Ajit (02:39):
It's always exciting to bring you back to Master Coaching with Ajit podcast. And I'm so excited that I get to bring you today because of two main things. Firstly, we are just over a launch period of our certified life coach. We've enrolled hundreds of thousands of people into the program. Oh my gosh. And one of the key things that I wanna talk about is what really makes a successful coach and which are some of those characteristics that get us to fail. And also I wanna announce to all of my listeners, something that I'm so happy, excited, and proud of that is coming out right now, which is The Brave Table with Dr. Neeta, which I think is gonna be new favorite podcast, especially for coaches because the kind of conversations that you're bringing on that podcast, but more on that later. But first talk about, I have been working with new coaches and you've been working with new coaches for a long time and seasoned coaches for a long time.

Coach Ajit (03:31):
And the reason why I wanted to bring you on this podcast is because the newer coaches tend to struggle with certain challenges that consistently come back in their lives. They constantly kind of go into the cycle of wanting to start their business and then not being able to start the business and then starting the business. And then then taking, it's like almost taking two steps forward, one step back. And that tends to keep repeating. Yes, it tends to keep happening again and again. Totally. And I wanted to discuss four key ideas that I know are important that we have found we pre discussed before this conversation started, which would be important takeaways for our listeners today. And I wanna start our conversation with the first idea of being able to get started. And that is a lot about courage.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (04:16):
Mm yes. You've hit the nail on the head. I mean, with so many of the new coaches with so many of, you know, people who are just so excited and ready to share their gifts in the world, but the one thing that keeps them from starting is courage. They second guess themselves, they don't think they're ready. They it's kind of like they, they fall flat. Right. And you and I have seen this when we've been training coaches, even just around the business elements. Well, how do you get clients? Okay, well try, you know, going online and doing live for the first time, right? I'm just gonna take a very tiny, small tool that you can use. And so they're like, wait, what ha how do you even ha wait, I'm, I'm supposed to be showing up on a camera, showing my face and that's supposed to get me like clients.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (05:09):
I'm sharing this as an example, because it's silly. It's funny, but it's also true, right? We, we, we fall kind of flat on our face and a lot of times with new coaches we then go into, okay, because I don't have courage, I'm gonna go and try to get another certification and another training and another training. And we don't take action. And that tends to hold us back because each of you, as you're listening to this, each of, you know, you became a coach because of your vision to help others. You had a really strong view that you wanted to shift behavior or transform somebody else's life in some manner. And so the idea that our ego gets in front of our ability to start, because no, you're not gonna be good at it right away. So, and that's what I wanna remind coaches. You're not gonna be the greats.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (06:09):
You're not gonna be, you know, like you a and even, I, I think we've had similar discussions in many ways of how, you know, you're so great on camera and you've, and you're like Neeta, but I've been doing this every single day almost for like, you know, five to 10 years. And we forget that there is some sweat equity that is to be taken into account. There is that, yeah. That challenge, uh, who, who was it with that said, was it Malcolm Gladwell that said the 10,000 hours that we put into a craft. Right? In his book, I think it was Outliers, but you guys 10,000 hours, that means, yeah. For those first 10 hours, you might suck a little bit. So I, I kind of say embrace the suck, embrace the suck, and yeah. Have the courage to take action. And, and I think when we embrace the fact that we're not gonna be that great when we embrace the fact that, you know, we might mess up, we might stutter when we are having our first conversation or enrollment conversation or, you know, pressing play or record on, on a live, because we're trying to get new clients, or we're just putting ourselves out there, sharing our beliefs about something that's taking action.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (07:29):
If you have to, and I'll give you a tool, let's just say you are going to go live and, uh, perhaps on, on social media and you want to share your thoughts about something. The idea is if you are not feeling courageous, Hey, you can take out a notebook, take out a journal and write down five things that you are passionate about, that you can talk about all day long, all day long. Actually do it right now. You can pause this and go ahead, take a stab at it. Now, if you didn't come up with anything, okay, perhaps then prepare because taking courageous action, it doesn't have to be perfect, right? We are simply just moving one foot in front of the other so that we can actually have more ability to lean into that fear. Because if it's the fear of being seen, if it's the fear that I'm gonna let people down, if it's the fear that, oh my gosh, people are gonna say no to me.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (08:28):
If I share my offer, well, we have to go back to our why. And if your why of becoming a coach is not strong, is not printed out. Another tool that we can give is write down your why, who are you helping? Who is that person on the other end receiving your texts? And if not texts, hopefully they're not receiving your texts, but your posts, your, your articles, your just your essence, your emails, who is that person, describe who they are. We have a whole exercise. I believe. I think I've perhaps done, you know, something with you on that just to, to literally describe who is the recipient of this work, your avatar. And I know you have a whole guideline on that as well, but I think start there because we get so caught up in our own ego and our own, oh my gosh, what if I mess up?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (09:21):
What if I mess up actually, who is not benefiting from you, sharing your story, who is not benefiting from you, sharing how you can help them many times, we're the quietest ones in the room. And I've seen this at networking events. And I've seen this when, you know, you get a bunch of different kinds of people together, random networking events and the person that probably has the most knowledge, or has so much value that they can give to somebody else. But they dim their light. They play small because they're afraid. What will people think they're afraid? Oh yeah, I'm just a new coach. Oh, I just started this. I might not be as good as somebody else. Well, actually, what if you led with listening to the other person, what if you led with seeing how you can add value and it doesn't have to be over the top.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (10:12):
It can just be, Hey, I might have a suggestion for you, or I might have a solution for you because I know I've helped many of my friends, my clients. And I'm so passionate about this topic as a coach, remember what got you to this place? Remember that passion? Like I remember becoming a coach because I was so convicted in helping other people. And it sounds so cliche, but I was that friend that everybody came to, I was that friend. And even that, that person in my family, that everyone was always coming to for advice and support. And so naturally it was like my, you know, kind of like my, my, um, helper tendency is that, that martyr teacher archetype. And I don't say it in, in, in martyr in a bad way here, but really the ability to help so much. So yeah, that it was to my detriment that many times I put myself last and that's a different story, but anyways. That you'll have to hear.

Coach Ajit (11:09):
That's true. And that is such a archetype of, of coaches in some ways where coaches tend to be individuals that have, that are being called upon by friends. They're being called upon by their family members. They're being called bound by colleagues for some kind of support, some kind of intelligence, some kind of awareness that they bring to the conversation that otherwise is not available. I loved how you, how you kinda alluded to the fact that courage has elements of opportunity and its elements of preparation. It's, uh, I think it is Steven Cutler's book. That is The Rise of the Superman, where he talks about very courageous men and women that do extreme sports. And, uh, and he talks about how while from the outside in, it looks like, oh my God, these guys are crazy. They are completely nuts because they're just doing these crazy 10 foot, uh, 2010 foot waves and whatever hell.

Coach Ajit (12:06):
And it looks unreasonable from outside in, but to them, the people who are doing it, it's all about preparing. They know exactly what they're doing. They've done smaller waves before that. And then they go in to wait for that perfect opportunity to realize that calculated risk, uh, or that preparation, if I may, more than calculated risk to do this crazy adventure, that otherwise seems impossible. So it's kind of what, what I'm understanding is one of, one of the justs that you're suggesting is that go ahead, take those small ways through that practice that you had talked about, and then also kind of prepare, prepare yourself to be ready for that opportunity when it strikes well.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (12:48):
And I wanna bring everybody to the word courage. If we look back at the Latin word for courage, cour means heart. Courage is from the heart. So if we go back to the reasons why we started something in the first place, it started, because we were passionate about it. We were, this is really, you know, hitting home for us in some way. It's really resonating for you in some way. It's really connecting with you. So connecting back to your, why is so undoubtedly powerful if we don't have it written down somewhere, if we don't have it, you know, kind of like either a vision board or, um, something as, as little as even writing it on a notebook of like, who am I serving and why am I doing this again? Because in those tough moments, when I get 10 rejections or 10 nos, or, you know, bad comments on a social media post or something like that, my why, my "cour"-age will, will, will literally be that reminding factor of, of why I should keep going when times are challenging and tough.

Coach Ajit (13:56):
Amazing, amazing, which brings me to the next key thing that, that I know you are amazing at, and you teach really well. And it's very important for our coaches. And that is confidence. That is one skill that I feel that we all can use more of.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (14:14):
Oh yes. I love it. I love, and I kind of alluded to it, you know, with courage as well, because courage and confidence go hand in hand. And when I talk about confidence, I talk about being unapologetically confident. Um, and I love the word unapologetic to describe confidence because so many times, again, we're stuck in our head. We're stuck in our head of why something is not going right. We're stuck in our head that it has to be a certain way that we have to be perfect, that everything has to be 100% ready. And the truth of it is when you are a coach and a small business, we have to sometimes start before we're ready. You're not ever gonna be ready. Like, I'm a mama of two. Now we have two kids. Right. And, and, you know, we had these conversations side note, but had conversations of, oh, okay.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (15:06):
How, how would we do this whole thing? Being coaches, training coaches, and then having two babies three and under, but it's, we start before we're ready. And you know, to the new coach out there, your baby is your business. You have just birthed out that baby, which is your new business. So you kind of are starting before you're ready and you will never be 100%. The beauty of this is, you know, in this day and age, our startups are, are beautiful. We get to start up a company that comes from our passion, that comes from our purpose to deliver value, to change people's lives, to be the conduit for their shifts. Now, one of the things that you can actually use, that's super effective as a new coach right now is to make a list, especially this is especially, especially helpful. If you are like, how do I take somebody through a coaching session?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (16:00):
How do I keep somebody engaged in that first, you know, in, in, in that hour of our coaching session, what questions do I ask? How do I know that I'm actually giving them value? How do I know that I'm actually changing their life? You know, a lot of times we think that, oh, there needs to be some sort of amazing light bulb moment and aha moment from a client. And most of the time, they're not going to say, oh my gosh, you really changed my life. Oh my gosh, you know, they're not gonna say, oh my goodness. You're like, you're the best thing that happened to me. It's gonna be those quiet moments where you're not gonna hear from them. Even during the call. You're not gonna hear from them. Even after the call. You're not gonna hear anything from them. They'll be silent or they'll just nod their head or they'll, they'll probably make you even think that you're not doing a good job.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (16:54):
I know this because I've been there, but you know what? You will hear two weeks later, three weeks later, a month later years later, they'll say, wow, you were the best coach that I had. Wow. Thank you so much for taking me through that time. Because you, as the coach, it is not your responsibility to fix or change them. You are their guide. So what you are responsible for is being confident in opening up the container where they feel safe, where they feel like you can actually hold them accountable for what they are coming to you for. And how do you do that? Well, prepare your coaching session. Perhaps write down the top four or five questions that you wanna ask them, create the ambiance, set the tone. The more prepared that we are that gives us the confidence. I had a mentor for me go through some of the things that really made them feel confident.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (17:54):
And I'm gonna share this because it's, it's one of the things that I think is so beneficial as a new coach and I've actually taken on when I go out and I do keynote speeches and, you know, you get that nervous tinge, literally. And now I kind of transmuted and call it like, you know, my energy preparation, like I wanna be on like fully, fully, top vibe energy. And I'm super excited about giving those talks now, but before I be terrified right before, and literally just transmuting the energy from, you know, that nervousness to, wow, this is like such great excitement. That's like running through my veins and I'm so excited. But what I would do is I would practice in the mirror and I would practice and I would see, how am I coming across? What's my intonation. Like, how is my body language?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (18:45):
First of all, because as a coach, and of course, as a speaker on stage, if some of you are, you know, interested in doing that, or even sharing your thoughts on, on, on any of the social platforms or even on zoom, it is your presence. It's your persona. It's the way you carry yourself. And a lot of it, as, you know, 70% of it is body language. So why wouldn't you practice that? If you are lacking confidence, confidence is just literally lack of preparation. Again, it goes back to that 10,000 hours, really, because you're not going to be the best at something. You know, I'm seeing this with our daughter now. Who's like, she's gonna be eight months, but she's like trying already to stand and walk because she sees somebody else. She sees her brother walking and it's such a metaphor for us because a lot of times we think we have to be, you know, taking only a few steps before we start literally running, but we don't remember.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (19:43):
It took those small steps to gain the confidence. And now she's standing up on things. And soon in your coaching practice, you will too. Once you have the first building block of, okay, how am I gonna set up my session? Well, let's pull the curtains back. How will you set up the first five minutes? How will you create an inviting space for somebody to feel safe in your presence? I would start there. I would start by breaking all of those steps down so that you know that every time let's just say your sessions are one hour or maybe they're an hour and a half, or maybe heck they're two hours. However you work with your clients, but really map out your client journey in a way where then you feel safe to take somebody through your, either virtual space, because you're holding them as their coach. That is what will give you the confidence. And secondly, practice in the mirror. How do you look? How do you sound when you are just, you know, staring and, and many of us don't really have the best poker face. Some of us have like resting bitch face and that's okay, but for your client, you wanna, you know, give that incredible energy that you've got them, no matter what they are sharing. I hope that's helpful.

Coach Ajit (21:02):
That's super helpful. That's super helpful. And I know all of us can use those momentary moments of confidence. Uh, doesn't matter how much you've coached before. It doesn't matter how many times you may have been able to happen to that confidence, but momentary confidence moments, like you said, to look yourself in the mirror, see, watch your annotations, watch your body language. I think these are all very important skills, especially right before a coaching session. Like you translated that for when you're about to get on stage. This could be very, very powerful when somebody's just about to go into a coaching session because your body language is so important in a coaching conversation.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (21:39):
It's so powerful. I mean, especially if you are going to have your human moments outside of your coaching practice, you're gonna get a phone call when you're at least expecting. And it might be in between coaching sessions. So you have to be able to emotionally regulate yourself to go, oh, back online, back to coaching my client. And I, I have to be there 100% for them, no matter what is happening and actually have the courage to say no or reschedule. If life is actually really happening outside the coaching walls.

Coach Ajit (22:10):
There's a, there's a very important piece that I think somewhat is related to confidence. And this is one of the topics I wanted to cover today because you, again, teach really well on this. And I think it's really important for this is a conversation that comes up frequently with, uh, with coaches. And that is about imposter syndrome or feeling not good enough as a, as a coach. What do you recommend to newer coaches that may be struggling with this right now?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (22:40):
Oh yes. Imposter syndrome. The thought that you are an imposter, that nothing that you do will ever be good enough, nothing that you do will ever make you ready enough. Nothing that you do, uh, is, is attributed to you, your, your essence, your actual success, your badassery it's because of something or someone else, and it's not in your control. So I definitely wanna honor you because I totally have been there before. And we support many coaches who are imposters and quite honestly, you and I have obviously had many conversations around this. I, I think that for us, it's so important to remember all of the things that we talked about because in order to slash our imposter, we have to remember our courage in our confidence, a really cool tip and trick for you that I've shared with many of our students is make a list of all of the things that make you incredible.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (23:44):
That let's just say you are known for that. You've accomplished up till today, because it may not be that you've had 20 clients or a hundred clients, or, you know, 50 raving fans. Maybe you've just coached a few. Maybe you're just starting out and, or maybe you've been doing this for a couple of years on and off, but you haven't necessarily put two feet in the door. You've got one foot in and one foot out, one foot in and one foot out. This is for you. I'm talking about you because we gotta remember how amazing you are, what you've already done to get here. Many of you might say, well, I just started coaching. I'm not that great. What did you do before coaching? Were you a student? Were you in a corporate setting? What was your life before you entered coaching? Many times people think, oh yeah, I'm not, I, I, I'm not accredited or I haven't done this, or I haven't done a hundred hours yet.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (24:37):
Whatever the excuse may be to validate this imposter syndrome, that you're not enough, or you have to do more and more in order to be enough, you did something before this. I want you to write out. And I want you to celebrate all of the things that you did literally create a celebratory resume of all of the things, big and small, all of the small wins and all of the big wins that you've done. And I want you to share it with three people. It could be your friends. It could be mentors, coaches that you admire. It could be heck students in, in the coaching mastery program. I want you to share, and I want you to share unapologetically. This will be you bragging about you. And yes, go ham because in order to, and some of you in different parts of the world might be like, oh my gosh, why? No, we don't talk about ourselves in that way. Or we don't, it's not customary to celebrate who we are. Well, I'm giving you the permission to make that list and then celebrate it with somebody who actually cares and who will probably hold space. So it could be one of the coaching students in coaching mastery could be, some of your friends could be your parents. It could be somebody that you love. I need you to share it with three people, because three other people need to know and remember how brilliant you are.

Coach Ajit (25:56):
Thank you for that. I think that's a great practice. Like you said, reflecting with somebody and practicing with somebody could be a great practice to get past your own imposter syndrome. Lastly, in interest of time. And again, you can listen to a lot more from Neeta with her amazing friends and some amazing conversations that I think will change the way you look at life as well at The Brave Table. It's a new podcast. It just launched fresh off the toaster. I don't know, no fresh off the oven. Uh, it's just totally fresh and just launched, absolutely find the links to the podcast below this episode. So go ahead and check it out. I think you're gonna love it. Uh, but before we talk more about The Brave Table Podcast, why don't we talk about the last thing that I really wanted to discuss today? Because you're a champion at this and I want our audience, our listeners to learn how to do this better as well. And that is personal boundaries.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (26:50):
Oh yes. Boundaries. My favorite topic. I talk about this a lot at the brave table. Um, yes. So one of the things that coaches make the mistake about, and, and there's quite a few, I'm gonna go over just a couple to start, but in boundary setting with clients, especially in the beginning, now we have to train our clients on how we wish to be treated. And I'm gonna say that again, we have to train our clients how we wish to be treated, because if we are not setting down those boundaries, the perimeters of what is allowable, and what's not allowable, you are gonna have red flag clients. You are gonna have those red flag clients. And what I mean by red flag clients is those red flag clients who will call you in the middle of the night, who will text you in the middle of the night.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (27:46):
And, um, maybe it's not your time zone, but they have no regard for whatever you're doing or not doing because they think the world revolves around them and you need to be part of everything. And you might be thinking, well, you know, it's only my first or second client and I just don't wanna rock the boat. I really need, you know, whether it's I need the money, I need the experience I need the hours. I just, maybe I can fix them. So don't go into the fixing, you know, white Knight syndrome. And if those of you don't look, you know, know what that is, go ahead and look it up. But don't go into like the fixing martyr, uh, where I need to fix everything or, or, or, you know, that is not gonna help. It's so important to have your non-negotiables of what you are going to tolerate and not tolerate.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (28:36):
And if you don't know how to do this, here's a way for you to get started. And I want you to write this down. So first make a list of all of the things that you aren't going to tolerate. Now, these are going to be things that later on, you will put in your coaching agreement with your clients. For example, one of the things that was such a big pet pet peeve of mine, and maybe because I would do this to other people too, and my coaches was when clients were late, they were late to the calls and they would be sometimes 15 minutes late and 20 minutes late and even 30 minutes late. And sometimes I would do back-to-back... Note to self: don't try to do back-to-back coaching sessions. Uh, there was a time where I used to coach for, you know, 90 minutes and I would structure them back to back and I wouldn't time it per se, right?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (29:24):
It would sometimes be an hour, sometimes be 45 minutes, but I would have that cushion of time. Now, if we're having a really deep and flow session and somebody came in super late, how are we going to, you know, get through that? And honestly, it's not really a good respect of my time, right? I, I valued it as a disrespect because I really honored my time in that way. And there was a point in my coaching career where I really wanted to go deeper with my clients. And so that's why I booked those times end to end. Now, going back to that, I would probably do things differently. I'd add, add an additional buffer if, but I would just have an agreement that if you are late, more than 15 minutes, we will have to reschedule another time because my time is valuable. So that was my first non-negotiable second is nohow.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (30:16):
How are you going to process nohow somebody that doesn't even cancel when they're sick? And yeah, I know life happens. Trust me, I'm the person that totally gets it. I have so much empathy for you, but how are you going to process when somebody cancels or no shows? Most importantly, when they've booked time with you, because that is your hour of time, just like you would, you know, get a credit card to hold their appointment. Now I'm not saying anybody to do this, but there is something that we can learn from the spot industry, right? They hold your appointment with a credit card. And if you don't show up, they do charge some sort of fee. I am not saying at all, I don't want anybody to get triggered here. I'm not saying that all that you have to do that, but that is an example of a boundary.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (31:00):
What are you willing to tolerate and not tolerate? What are you willing to put in your agreement about your no-shows? Maybe you'll allow one no-show because we get that moms have things that happen, or you have a schedule that kind of gets fluctuated and something big happens. I get it. What are those non-negotiables? So make a list of all of those and I'll just share, you know, the last thing is at the end of every single session, I would love to know what their takeaways are. And I would love to know, was there some sort of valuable nugget that they gained? Why? Because for you new coaches, this is a tip as well. For me, it's just training the client to also see the value in a coaching session and to be able to articulate that versus being able to noodle on it after the session is over.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (31:52):
And here's what it does. It not only trains them to select and kind of plant a seed of what went well during the session. But it also gives me feedback now as a new coach, I love that even as an existing coach, I still love that. I still love getting feedback. I love it. And I make that a non-negotiable for me as a question, as a boundary for me to make sure I ask every client. Now I don't do them as much anymore, but when I did and now I I'm teaching all of you guys. So, uh, that's such a great one to know. And also the, the biggest thing is, is when will you turn your computer down? When will you, you know, what time of day are you going to be coaching clients up until, are there certain days that you are more available than others?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (32:38):
These are all terms and conditions and boundaries that you create with your clients. When to know if a client is not suitable for you when to know when to refer a client, these are all examples of boundaries. And if you know that somebody is not gonna be in alignment with you, perhaps you already know they're a red flag, they're already asking questions about their personal life, or, you know, they want you as a BFF, a friend, literally more than just your professional capacity as a coach, is that a red flag, perhaps you wanna have a conversation and say, Hey, you know what? I really think you're amazing. And I have this other coach who I think would be perfect for you to work with here's their information. Or if you find that, you know, somebody is getting out of the realm of the comfort level, that you can coach, that you feel confident in coaching, that you can get them through a result. I would definitely, those are grounds for referring them to perhaps a medical professional or a trauma specialist, a healer, uh, that definitely has confidence and knowledge in taking them through that. And to be able to know where your limits are, because as helpers, as the coaching archetype, we want to help, we want to fix, we want to heal. We wanna transform many times. We won't say no, because we wanna be able to do that. So I would challenge you and say, you know, what is this client gonna be best held by somebody else?

Coach Ajit (34:05):
Thank you so much. That's like a mini masterclass for everybody. That's listening in on boundaries. So many notes, so many notes that one must refer to and come back to which, which is what I would highly recommend for this podcast. Episode is come back, listen to it with your notebook. If you're listening to it in the car right now, while you're doing something else, awesome, you've taken the information really well, but at the same point in time to really make these action steps, action steps for your life. I invite you to, to this episode market and then, and come back to it and write down those notes. So you know how you can be better at setting boundaries, how you can revisit courage or confidence, how you can revisit the imposter syndrome that you might be experiencing using these tools that we've talked about today.

Coach Ajit (34:50):
Now, before I let you go, Neeta, I know you took a courageous step by starting The Brave Table. Tell us a little bit about the brave table. I know I, I say that because what you're creating with The Brave Table is so different than what we are used to here in the coaching industry and the way the conversations are being held, the quality of conversations that are being held, how it is leaning into education, but without leaning into education, it's kind of like, it's very interesting and very different. How did you find that courage within yourself to start something that different?

Dr Neeta Bhushan (35:23):
Well, I think it started at our brave table at our house. You know, in the midst of the pandemic, when most of the keynotes were basically cut off. So many of the events were canceled. Actually, all of the events that I was speaking at for those like four months were completely canceled and shows were canceled that we were part of and teaching and speaking at. And so a lot of those conversations started in our home. We had to get, you know, a little bit juicy and we had to get a little bit, I think, edgy and, and having a brave table in our home when we literally weren't really seeing many people, we had our quarantine buddies and that was pretty much it. And so the idea of, and we were at a dinner table, actually our own dinner table, and the idea that we could have these brave, somewhat edgy conversations.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (36:17):
But I think in a way where it's not like in your face, kind of, you know, teaching and coaching, I love that, you know, this is a container for that, and it's amazing, but I wanted to be brave. And I think that having a place where we can navigate some of the rawest human emotions and the full spectrum of those emotions, I mean, we got pregnant, you know, last year during the height of us moving as well as raising, you know, a two year old. So there was a lot of impetus behind so many human emotions that I was experiencing as a mom and transitioning. And I think that for many of the listeners, you all had some sort of pivotal internal shifts happening, whether it was at home taking care of family, reshifting your life to accommodate family. And I think that the monotony of that probably got a little bit tough for a lot of people, which is where the brave table comes in, because now I get to have these conversations and these life lessons in a way where, yeah, we are kind of pushing the envelope and we're inviting people to think of and perhaps maybe embrace different perspectives.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (37:36):
Because I think in this whole climate of shifts, we've forgotten what it means to be brave in the sense that we're afraid to share our truest opinions for fear of being rejected, for fear of being canceled, for fear of being, oh, you're one side over the other. And just a lot of this political jargon has kind of infused the way even we share truthfully and, you know, without trying to stir up any sort of controversy. And that's not, our show is not about controversy. It's more about connecting in a time where I think, you know, there's such humanity and humanness, especially as coaches to be able to share. Sometimes the things that don't get raised in every day conversation, we don't get to go as deep, but I think if we've learned anything in the last few years, it's well, tis the season to be brave, tis the season to be unapologetic, tis the season to shine your greatest light because you, you don't know what may or may not happen.

Dr Neeta Bhushan (38:38):
So, so that is the, the goal. And I'm so excited for you guys to tune in. I think one of the first, uh, episodes Ajit and I do like a little behind the scenes. So you get to see the differences in our personality. And, you know, we talk about our kids and we talk about just like the human feels of being two parents and being co-pilots and co-partners, and also how it can relate to the realness and the rawness of your life and what you may or may not be going through internally. So I invite you over to The Brave Table. We'll have some fun.

Coach Ajit (39:16):
We invite you over to The Brave Table. This is gonna be one episode where like Neeta said, rightly mentioned where it's not only about hairs, step one through five it's about real lives, uh, of individuals that you might be looking up to and then really vulnerably you and them really well, notably sharing as to what is it that is really happening for them and how are they using the tools that they have sometimes. And sometimes they're not able to use the tools that they have to be able to navigate life. So it gets as real as it gets, invite you over to the break table. Again, the link to the show is below this episode is available in all platforms where you listen to us to coaching with other podcasts. All of those platforms has the brave table available. It's new and fresh it just launch.

Coach Ajit (39:57):
So go ahead, head over right after this episode, go ahead, check out the brave table. That was an amazing conversation. I surely learned a lot and I'm sure you did too. And after all those amazing insights that you have had, wouldn't you want more insights on pretty much weekly basis from this gem of a woman, if your answer is yes. Well, The Brave Table is the podcast to go to, so go over to the podcasting platform that you're listening this on type in The Brave Table. And go ahead and listen to all those amazing episodes that are already available to you. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Coach Ajit and you're listening to Master Coaching with Ajit.