What I Make Up About That

Bri Niemic spent 19 years at one company. That was half her life. She traveled with those people, celebrated with them, and had planned to help a colleague take his daughter to college. When her position was eliminated, almost all of them went quiet.

A year and a half later, she walked into a major industry conference in a new role with real buying power. Suddenly, the same people were thrilled to see her.

In this episode, Bri and I talk about a story so many of us carry: that proximity means real friendship. We get into the grief of letting that story go, the surprise of who did check in, and why she refuses to stop giving. We also talk about reciprocity, small deposits of connection, and a subway analogy that changed how I think about the people who come and go.

Bri still wants everyone to eat. She just gets to decide who sits at her table.

Find Bri at Underlying Method, her women’s health and hormone practice. Follow her on Instagram @underlyingmethod

This week it's just me. First, a quick update on the show. We slowed down in September so we could line up a slate of interviews I'm excited for you to hear. New episodes start the first week of October and drop every other Sunday on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.

Then I want to talk about the messy middle, the part of change we tend to skip. We talk about who we were before and who we became after, but rarely about the stretch in between.

A year into building my own business, someone asked me what I do. I heard myself answer with the title I left behind and a list of things I could produce. I had walked away from that story on purpose, and I was sliding right back into it. I didn't catch it until a friend handed me a piece of paper and asked which version I wanted.

Knowing the new story didn't change my behavior. Under pressure, I kept making the familiar choice. So I stopped trying to force my way into it. I'm practicing new choices in low-stakes moments: how I dress, how I spend my mornings, how I walk into a room. And I'm letting those choices carry over into the moments that matter more. The messy middle isn't a detour. It's where the change happens.

Dawn Ledet is a business coach, and the host of The Self Trust Solution podcast. She helps entrepreneurs close the identity gaps that keep them stuck between almost there and the next big move.

For years, Dawn believed she had to force every decision. She sold her car so she had to walk two miles to work and two miles home. She thought it was a smart way to control her hours and move her body. Then on one of those walks, a question stopped her: why are you having to force yourself to do this?

That question showed her a pattern she had ignored for twenty years. She built a successful career in hospitality, but she built it on achievement, not self trust. When the achievements slowed, everything felt shaky. She used noise, TV, radio, podcasts, to avoid hearing her own voice.

In this episode, Dawn and I talk about where that story started, what it cost her, and how she rebuilt her decision making. She explains her consumption fast, the year she spent relearning to trust herself, and the belief she lives by now: all of me is for me.

She still doesn't own a car. This time, that's her choice.

Connect with Dawn at https://www.theselftrustcoach.com/

Instagram: @theselftrustcoach

This week I'm sitting down with someone who feels like home to me. Kaanji Irby is an employee experience and inclusion advocate, a former attorney, a 90s R&B co-conspirator, and one of my all-time favorite conversation partners. She also happens to be my co-host on our other podcast, Motherhood in Black and White, which means our audience already knows she doesn't hold back.

Kaanji came into this conversation carrying a story her mother gave her early: you have to be twice as good to deserve a seat at the table. As a Black woman, an attorney, and a mom, she spent decades doing exactly that. Overscheduling. Over-performing. Running at red line. Sacrificing her own well being for everyone around her.

In this episode, we talk about what changed. We get into the identity work she did during the pandemic, the career pivot she made from law into employee experience and inclusion, the parenting shift she made with her son Roman, and what she's saying to him now that's different from what she was told. She's not erasing the story. She's healing it.

Her advice to anyone still running on that story: rest. You have permission to pause. Do your best and be your best. That's enough.

You can find Kaanji and our shared podcast on Instagram at @blackandwhitemomcast and on all listening platforms.

This week it's just me. I've been unwinding an old story, and I wanted to bring you along.

The story is this: if I don't need anything from anyone, I can't get hurt. I learned that as a kid. I was the oldest of two, and asking for anything felt like a burden. So I became self-sufficient. I learned to take care of myself and my brother early. People praised me for it. I built a lot of success on it.

I thought I'd worked through this story two years ago. I found the piece underneath it, that being quiet and small felt like the price of being loved. Naming that changed my life. Friendships, my marriage, my career identity, a lot of it fell away because it no longer fit.

Then this week, feelings I couldn't name showed up. A friend helped me find the soft spot underneath them. I realized knowing the truth about a story and healing from it are two different things. I still had to sit with the parts of me that are scared, and tell them they're not wrong for feeling that way.

If you've built a life on trying to not be a burden to others, I hope this episode tells you something you need to hear. There's another version of that story, and it's worth finding.

Latoya Johnson runs a 20-year nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness. She has an MBA. She's a dedicated mom. For most of her life, none of that felt like enough.

Latoya grew up believing she had to prove herself. It started in a big family that measured love through achievement. It followed her into corporate America, where she was often the youngest person in the room, or the only woman. She learned to lead with accomplishments because accomplishments got her love and respect.

Then a friend told her something simple. You don't have to prove anything. It took her over a year to actually believe it.

In this episode, we talk about where that story started, what it cost her, and how she finally put it down. We also talk about the one place it still shows up: her love life. And about the night her daughter said something that stopped Latoya cold and showed her exactly how far this story can travel.

I'm joined by Shan Bates Bundick, marketing strategist, storyteller, and proud dog mom who spent 17 years building a global career, from summits in the UAE to presentations in Thailand, before telling herself the one story that nearly stopped her cold: that she wasn't someone who could start her own business.

Ten years in, she has. And the story she's unlearning now is even more interesting.

We talk about the inner voice that shows up right when you hang your own shingle, why surrounding yourself with good people is a strategy and not just advice, and what it actually costs to wait. Shan also gets into what she'd say to the version of herself who was chickening out, and why the scariest thing she could do next is still something she hasn't named yet.

This one's for anyone who's been really, really good at building something for someone else and hasn't quite let themselves believe they can do it for themselves.

For a long time, I had a clear picture of what success looked like. Power suits. Executive titles. A commanding presence. I spent my career building toward that image.

Then I got there. And it didn't feel the way I expected.

In this trailer episode, I share the story I told myself for decades, the moment it started to fall apart, and the question that opened everything up: "If everything is on the table, what would you choose today?"

What I Make Up About That is a podcast about the stories we tell ourselves. About success, identity, and what we think we deserve. Every two weeks, I sit down with guests who are in the middle of questioning those stories, or who've already come out the other side.

New episodes drop every two weeks. Subscribe so you don't miss the first guest episode.