Rise Up for You: Unleashing the Power of Soft Skills

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Nada Lena Nasserdeen and she is with Rise Up for You. Welcome.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Hello. Thank you so much. Great job with the pronunciation of my name, by the way.

Lee Kantor: I practiced. That helps. So, before we get too far into things, tell us about Rise Up For You. How are you serving folks?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Yeah. Thank you, Lee. So, Rise Up For You is a global learning and development company. We work with organizations and leaders around the world to enhance leadership, company culture, and, really, the team performance through soft skills. So, we’re going into organizations, we’re working with leaders teaching emotional intelligence, leadership, how to manage communication, how to manage conflict. Really, all the human skills that oftentimes we don’t spend a lot of time cultivating, but they actually make up about 75 percent of a company and individual success.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Oh. All right, Lee, you ready?

Lee Kantor: Ready.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Do you want the short or the long? Well, I’ll give you right in the middle. So, before I started the company, Rise Up For You, my first career, I was a performer. I used to tour internationally around the world and do musical theater and sing and dance, and I loved it. And I realized through that process that what I really like actually is just empowering people and developing both myself and people that are around me.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And so, after performing, I hung up the microphone and I went on to explore a career in executive and educational leadership. So, I became an executive of an education corporation when I was about 27, I had a couple hundred people under me. And in the evening, I was teaching at a community college, freshmen and sophomores that were coming into the college. And the biggest challenges, Lee, that I was seeing both on the professional level as an executive and at the college level as a professor were people skills. Those were the biggest challenges I was dealing with.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, as an executive, a lot of team members that had PhDs, master’s degrees, they were struggling with emotional intelligence, how to communicate, how to manage stress, self-confidence, managing and leading teams and working through conflict. And then, at the college level, a lot of the students were struggling with even just standing up and saying their name or raising their hand if they had a question. They would rather take an F than raise their hand and look stupid.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And so, I started to identify that there’s some big gaps that are happening across the board both in the workplace and at a college level, and those were the soft skills, the human skills that every single year I saw were getting worse and worse and worse. So, that’s really where this idea came into my mind about building these skills and helping empower students and professionals with them. But I never thought about building a company. It was just a thought.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And then, a couple years after being an executive, I decided to resign from the company because I got married and I moved out of the country. And four weeks after I got married, my ex-husband now said that he wanted a divorce on the first day of our honeymoon. So, I basically lost everything in a matter of weeks. I went from a six figure executive, brand new luxury cars, boat, house on the lake, you name it, to $100 in my account, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of heartbreak, stress, and really had no idea what was going on.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: I came back to California, got on a plane, and I just started crying and bawling. And I was crying so hard that I fell asleep. And in my dream, my father came to me. My father passed away when I was 27 years old. He passed away before I even became an executive, before I built the company. And he came to me in my dream and he said, “Nada, everything you need is already inside of you. You just have to rise up for you.” And sure enough, Lee, that’s what I did.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: I came back to California and within weeks I just started building the company, Rise Up For You. I really had no idea what it was going to be. I had no idea how to build a company. I didn’t know anything about business or entrepreneurship at the time, but I just started researching and I started building. And I was at the lowest I’ve ever been in my life, but I just started. I just started to take action. How do you build a company? What do people need?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: About three months later, my second parent, my mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer and she passed away nine months later. So, really, lots of challenges both personally and professionally that really catapulted the company, and I just doubled down. I doubled down, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but that’s how the company was created. And now, five years later, we’re in over 50 countries with our messaging and our programing, and we serve clients all over the world, and we have an amazing team.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you were going through all of that chaos and turmoil and it was at the beginning of founding the company, how were you able to kind of compartmentalize, I would guess, in some manner, all of the grief that you were feeling, and then also all the energy that starting a business or any enterprise takes? Can you share a little bit of advice for someone who is going through – I’m sure that amount of chaos seems unusual – the normal amount of chaos that a person is going through when they are going to take the big leap that you did at that time? Can you share any strategies or advice?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Yeah. I mean, I would say that the biggest thing that helped me, and I talk about it, you know, in my book and I talk about it quite often on stage, and even with professionals and companies that we work with, is, you have to have an unwavering self-confidence in yourself because times were very uncertain. Like I said, I only had $100. Both of my parents passed away. They were humble people, so there was no money or anything of that sort left to us, to my brothers and I. So, you have to have an unwavering belief in yourself that you can do it and that you can figure it out.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, even when I had no job, I didn’t have a degree in business, I had no money, I was heartbroken from losing both my parents, and going through this loss of love, I had an unwavering belief that I would be able to pick myself back up and that I would do it and I would figure out how to do it.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And I think that’s the biggest challenge, honestly, Lee, that we see today with women business owners, and even just women in general and men, is the lack of self-confidence is, really, I say, one of the greatest tragedies of human potential is a lack of self-confidence. Because my team and I, we ask every year thousands of professionals what their number one challenge is, and 83 percent say self-confidence. And that’s the one thing that I would say saved me.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: The second thing that saved me is my ability to coach myself in moments of uncertainty and in moments of trauma and sad moments that we all deal with, is that I had a conversation with myself and I said, “Okay. I have two options here. Either I’m going to take this pain that I’m going through and I’m going to feel sorry for myself, and I’m going to sit and cry and be miserable and make excuses why I can’t do something, or I’m going to take this pain and I’m going to use it as fuel for growth.”

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And I just ultimately made the decision that I didn’t want the pain of my parents loss and death to go to waste. And so, all the pain that I felt and all the suffering that I went through at the time, I made a commitment that I was going to use that pain for a greater good. And I would say that was a strong catapult to continue to keep going, to continue to grow the business, to continue to make an impact, because I wanted to leave a legacy behind that also involved my parents.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: If you ever see me on stage, Lee, or if anyone is listening to this podcast and they’ve seen me on stage, you will know that I always talk about my parents. My best selling book that I wrote, I have pictures of my parents. Everything that I do with the company, there is a trail of my parents in there. And I made that commitment when they passed away.

Lee Kantor: Now, early on you mentioned the importance of soft skills, and I know growing up that wasn’t an emphasis in traditional schooling or it’s not a class you take in soft skills, like that was all things you kind of had to figure out on your own, how do you help your clients and the leadership teams that you work with, first of all, just kind of have more of a respect for soft skills? Because a lot of the times those are the type of skills that aren’t easily measurable, and so a lot of times organizations tend not to value them because they can’t really count them or measure them.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: That’s a really great question. So, I have a couple of answers for you. You’re right in the sense that a lot of times you can’t measure the success of soft skills, and I debunked that early on in building the company. Because when I first started building this company and I would have conversations with CEOs and executives, that was one of the number one pushbacks I would get, “Well, how do we know it’s going to work? How do we know that emotional intelligence is actually going to make an impact with our ROI, and the bottom line, and the growth of our company?”

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And so, in particular at Rise Up For You, we have built multiple assessments and data benchmarks to ensure that we can actually show both the quantitative and qualitative results of building soft skills. And in fact, research does show that when you invest in emotional and social intelligence, the performance of a company can increase sometimes by eight times your investment. You know, research shows that when you invest in social and emotional intelligence, that it increases team performance four times – you know, four times over. So, there’s a lot of research to show that soft skills actually does make a huge impact when it comes to the bottom line and team performance, and, ultimately, the ROI that a CEO or an executive is looking for.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And so, we made sure really early on in the company that we had tools and assessments that are proprietary to Rise Up For You that we built to show that and to demonstrate that. And I’m proud to say today, Lee, that 95 percent of the companies that we work with are repeat clients. They come back and they sign multiple scopes of work, because we are able to show that on a quantitative level, 91 percent of our clients that we coach reach their goals and hit their benchmarks that we plan early on. So, we’re able to show that data, which is really, really, again, very critical.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: The way that we serve companies is everything from one-to-one coaching for team members, team training that is prolonged, you know, it can last for one year, two years, three years, so longer leadership succession planning, for example. We can also do smaller scopes of work such as leadership retreats, corporate keynotes. So that we’re able to support in the way that we need to, because we understand that every industry is different and every industry has a different cadence of how they can utilize these resources.

Lee Kantor: Now, earlier you mentioned self-confidence and confidence being an issue, is there any advice you can give to maybe a young person that’s listening to how to improve that area if they are lacking in confidence? Is there some low hanging fruit you can share that can help a person feel confident, at least, until they truly are confident?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Yeah. I’ll give you three steps. I’ll give you 3Cs. And by the way, Lee, I just want to preface by saying that this isn’t only for younger individuals. My team and I, we ask, again, thousands of people every year what their number one challenge is, 83 percent say self-confidence. We also have a confidence assessment that thousands of our clients take every single year. The average score for confidence is at 69 percent, which isn’t great by the way. That’s a D in our school system, which I know you’re familiar with, Lee.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: But the 69 percent is the average score, 57 percent of the participants that take that assessment are C-suite executives. And I say that to, again, allude to the fact that this isn’t a younger professional problem, this isn’t an entry level problem. This is across the board we are seeing, whether you’re a C-suite executive or entry level challenges when it comes to self-confidence.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Now, self-confidence, for example, is perfectionist mindset, not feeling enough, not able to set healthy boundaries, struggling with imposter syndrome, lacking a growth mindset, taking risk in your career, being afraid to speak up, being hesitant to take action because you’re afraid you’re going to get reprimanded. All of those things are part of the self-confidence model and blueprint.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, let me give you three things right now if you’re listening that you can do to take action that will help you. The first one is the hardest, and it’s the one that I would recommend that you do over and over and over and over again because it’s a great tool that you can use for your entire life, and it’s called Crush Limiting Beliefs. So, all of us have self-doubt. We all do, including myself. And we all have limiting beliefs that hinder our success.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, for example, have you ever been in a meeting and maybe you want to raise your hand and say something, but then at the last minute, something in your mind is like they might think that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and so then you pull back and you don’t say it. Or maybe, you know, as an entrepreneur and a business owner, because I know that’s the audience obviously here, you have a new client and there’s a certain price point that you established for your product, but you’re afraid that your client is going to say no because maybe it’s too high. And so then, you sabotage your pricing and your product just so that you can make the sale. And then, it ends up hindering your success and ability to move forward.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, there’s a lot of beliefs that we have. So, the first step is I want you to identify what the limiting belief is. We have a lot. Just find one. What’s one limiting belief that you have that’s getting in the way of your success?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: The second step to that is that I want you to try to break down the back story. Where does that belief come from? Where is that belief rooted from? Do you have that limiting belief from childhood? Is it something that came about when you were in a relationship? Did you come from a workplace or have a leader that put you down a lot, and so now you have this limiting belief that you’re not enough and you’re never going to be able to produce anything of quality or quantity? So, I want you to understand the back story of it.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: The third part of this step is what’s the behavior that it’s causing in you? Because I can tell you right now someone’s belief system based off of how they behave, because your beliefs drive behaviors. So, understanding your limiting belief, understanding the back story of the belief, and being able to pinpoint what’s the behavior that it causes in you. Does it cause you not to have cold calling because you’re afraid? Is there a belief? Does it cause you not to stand up and make the sale? Does it cause you to procrastinate? Does it cause you not to speak your mind or communicate effectively, even though there’s something you want to say? So, again, we all have behaviors and we need to identify how this belief is impacting the behavior.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And then, the last step to this process, so the first one, is now understanding how to break it. Now, this is different for everybody. It’s not cookie cutter. So, some of us are able to break it once we do the exercise. Once we identify where it comes from, that can be a very empowering tool, and then we’re able to say, “You know what? I’m tired of this limiting belief that came from Johnny when I was ten years old hindering my success,” and you’re able to move past it. For some of us, it’s deeper rooted. It might need a little bit more therapy, for example, so this is where we need to understand ourselves and how we can break it.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: That’s the first step, it’s called Crush Limiting Beliefs. Identify the belief, identify the backstory, identify the behavior, and then identify how to break it.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Step number two that I would tell your audience is you need to Clarify What You Want In Life. Because when you’re not clear on what you want, it’s actually a huge confidence crusher, because a lack of clarity means that you’re constantly chasing and doing things that might not be in alignment with you.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: You know, Gallup has a study that says that 76 percent of the workforce are disengaged. And there’s also another study that says 70 percent of it is because of poor leadership. But I challenge that. The reason why I challenge that is because there’s a good amount of professionals, and we see this every day when we work with companies, that don’t know what they want, and so they end up putting themselves in a job or in a workforce or in a workplace that’s not in alignment with who they really are, and that creates disengagement, that creates a lack of fulfillment, and ultimately that impacts how you feel about yourself.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: So, it’s really important to Clarify What You Want as a person. And I always say the first thing to do is ask yourself, what are your top three values in life? Top three values. Integrity, kindness, ownership, those are my values. And what are the top three things that are the most important to you? For me, it’s God, myself, and my family.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Now, I want you to ask yourself if you have your values and you have the top three things that are most important to you, are you living those values and things of importance every single day with integrity? Are you putting energy towards them? Are you honoring them? And if you’re not, every day you’re slowly crushing your confidence and you’re crushing the inner fulfillment and the light that you have inside, the spirit that you have slowly gets crushed.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And the last step that I’m going to provide – so just to recap, we had Crush Limiting Beliefs, Clarify What You Want, the last step that I’m going to give you is Create A Council Around You. You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you have people that you’re surrounding yourself with that are cutting you up, that are putting you down, that are not making you feel positive, that don’t believe in who you are, that are constantly gossiping, that have toxic energy, you will become that. That is what you will create and that is what you will manifest. You need to be able to surround yourself around people that are better than you.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: I have, like, just a generic value that I will not spend a lot of time with people that I don’t admire. Most of the people that are in my circle, I look at them with admiration. I’m like, “Wow. You are amazing. I respect you. I look up to you.” And I think that’s really important if you want to get to the next step and you want to build confidence, you need to surround yourself with people that are doing great things that make positive impact and that believe in who you are.

Lee Kantor: And speaking of a community like that, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Well, I’ll tell you that ever since I started the business, we’ve always had a lot of women in leadership initiatives. A lot of what we do, a lot of what we have done, has been in order to support women. Every year, we do a huge Women in Leadership Conference. It’s completely free. We usually have 3 to 5,000 people that sign up from around the world, and it’s totally free just to help women elevate themselves.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: You know, obviously I’m a woman, I’m also a minority female that was born in this country, and so I’ve been able to see some of the challenges that women unfortunately struggle with that are different than our male counterparts. And sometimes there’s challenges that women deal with that we have to break through that have to do with how we’re showing up in our mind. And so, it’s always been really important for us to provide value and to be a part of that landscape. And so, that’s part of the reason why we decided to to join WBENC, and we love it, and we’re now going on a little over three years.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: And so, we want to be able to support as much as we can. We want to be able to add value. And we believe in what we’re doing and the impact of what we’re doing. And we believe that every organization, whether it’s small or a large enterprise, needs these soft skills that are going to help build team performance and, of course, individual success.

Lee Kantor: Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, is there a website?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Yeah, absolutely. You can go to riseupforyou.com. And we have a link there that says Informative Call, simply click on the Informative Call and then somebody from our team, maybe it’ll be me, maybe it won’t be, will hop on a call with you and share more about how we can support you and your team. But we also have a lot of free stuff on there, too, Lee. So, we have a ton of articles that I wrote and my team have written about soft skills and company culture. We have a confidence quiz. We have emotional intelligence quiz. We have free masterclasses on emotional intelligence and confidence in leadership. We have a podcast as well. So, a lot of free resources that you can gain from the website as well.

Lee Kantor: And then, your book, can they get that there?

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: They can, yeah. You can order Rise Up For You, you can go to our website, riseupforyou.com. Or you can simply go to Amazon. It’s on Amazon as well and you can order it from there.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Nada Lena Nasserdeen: Thank you, Lee, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me today.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.