Coaching Outta Corporate

In 2020, I was robbed at midnight - 50 feet from my front door, the night before I started a new job.

And by morning the memory was so faint, it felt like the robbery had happened months before.

I walked past the exact spot where it happened for days afterwards and felt nothing.

I waited for a breakdown...but it never came.

That wasn't luck or so called "strength".

That was the result of training my nervous system to move things through instead of storing them away.

In this episode - part two of last week's conversation about grief and burnout - I'm diving deeper into why it takes so long for us to recover from burnout, fatigue, and exhaustion.

And why talking about it, as important as that is, will never be enough on its own.

In this episode I share:

• Why the west has over-indexed on the head and under-indexed on the body
• Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's seven types of rest - and the 5 most of us skip entirely
• What TRE taught me about releasing trauma from the body overnight
• Why you can understand your trauma completely and still be triggered by it
• The progression of my own practices from Thailand to a pandemic robbery to sciatica to burnout to grief
• Why knowing WHY you're empty doesn't actually fill your cup

🎧 Mentioned in this episode:

• Sacred Rest by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
• Choose Yourself Weekend — June 19-21 — register at [https://natishawillis.com/chooseyou]

If this episode resonates share it with a coach, helper or high achieving woman who's been doing the work and wondering why she still feels stuck.

What I Ordered From Amazon the Night Before My Father's Funeral

The night before my father's viewing, I found myself on Amazon ordering a red light lamp, magnesium lotion, exfoliating mitts, and sauna supplies. Not because I was falling apart but because I knew exactly what my body would need to process grief when I got back home.

And somewhere between adding ish to the shopping cart and the checkout page, I realized something:

The way I'm preparing to move through grief was almost identical to how I recovered from burnout last year.

Both require us to slow down.Both require us to listen to our bodies.Both require us to feel what we've been trained to ignore.

And eventually, both force us to change the way we've been living - not temporarily, but for good.

In this episode I share:

• The surprising connection between grief and burnout recovery
• How healing sciatica helped me recognize burnout in myself
• The corporate coaching job that almost cost me my health
• What 6 weeks of FMLA taught me about rest, capacity and actually filling your own cup
• Why so many high-achieving Black women are double dutching between grief and burnout without realizing it
• The lesson Iyanla Vanzant taught me about cups, saucers, and overflow
• Why this next phase of our careers requires us to Sankofa ourselves — go back and get what we left behind

This isn't really an episode about grief.

It's an episode about recovery.

Because whether you're recovering from burnout, loss, disappointment, chronic stress, or years of putting yourself last - your body eventually asks for the same thing:

Attention. Care. And the courage to do something different.

🎧 Mentioned in this episode:

• Sacred Rest by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
• Sankofa philosophy and the importance of reclaiming what we left
• Freedom Weekend — Juneteenth Weekend — details coming soon

If this episode resonates, share it with another coach, helper, healer, or high-achieving woman who needs the reminder that recovery IS productive.

Most people aren't struggling to find opportunities because of their "qualifications"...

They're struggling because every time life falls apart…
they have to start from scratch all over again.

After my father passed away this week, I found myself thinking about relationships differently.

About community. About consistency. About how my father spent decades showing up at the flea market every Saturday - not because he needed something, but because those were his people.

And it made me realize how transactional a lot of us have become.

We wait until we:
• need a job
• need support
• need a referral
• need help

…before we reach out to people.

In this episode, I talk about the difference between networking and actual relationships, why hustle culture makes so many coaches isolated without realizing it and how every major opportunity in my career came through nurtured relationships - not cold applications.

I also unpack:
• why moving to Mexico didn’t magically make me feel free
• the identity shift that changed how I approach work
• what I learned watching 100 coaches apply for corporate coaching roles
• why only 10 got hired
• and why coaching is really a leadership skill more than anything else

If you’re trying to build meaningful work, transition into corporate coaching or stop feeling like you have to do everything alone…

this episode is for you.

🎧 Plus, I share why relationships are not emergency exits - and why the people who move differently in their careers usually build relationships differently too.

RESOURCE: Grab the resources from this episode at www.natishawillis.com/mayguide

CONNECT WITH TISH:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachtish/

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/coachtish

Subscribe and leave a review if this episode helped you.

What happens when running a business doesn’t save you the way you thought it would?

In this comeback episode, Coach Tish shares how moving abroad, getting laid off and one conversation with her therapist completely changed the direction of her career.

What started as a search for freedom through being a biz owner eventually led to something unexpected:

corporate coaching.

Now, after years of trying to build fulfilling work on her own terms, she’s sharing why corporate coaching became the thing that funded the freedom she’d been chasing all along.

Grab your free Corporate Coaching Starter Guide here: https://natishawillis.com/mayguide

Coaching Outta Corporate is a podcast for Black women over 40 who are tired of just surviving work instead of living their actual lives.

Hosted by Coach Tish - corporate coach, former DEI leader, expat, and recovering overworker - this show is about what happens when smart, capable Black women stop tying their worth to exhaustion.

Over the years - a lot of us didn’t just build careers.

We built survival identities.

And even after changing jobs, starting businesses or moving abroad, we still carry those same overworking, overperforming, people-pleasing patterns with us.

This podcast is where we unpack THAT.

We talk about:

• coaching inside corporate

• career pivots
• visibility and leadership

• meaningful work

• relationship-based community building (networking)

• money without self-abandonment

• and building freedom your nervous system can actually hold onto

You’ll also learn how to position your existing experience for coaching roles, consulting opportunities, leadership development, employee wellbeing and other people-centered careers without starting over from scratch.

Your next phase isn’t just about quitting your job.

It’s about becoming the kind of woman who no longer believes she has to disregard herself to succeed.

New episodes weekly.

For more details, visit natishawillis.com/mayguide.