So my first guest is myself. 

Hi! I'm Sara Stanizai. I'm a therapist, a business coach, a speaker, and a facilitator. My work focuses on the  African diaspora and particularly the queer and trans community. More broadly, I love working with children of displaced people across the board. People who really feel like they have imposter syndrome. And I love reminding people that impostor syndrome is actually not a syndrome. It’s a reasonable reaction to a world created without you in mind. We're not supposed to fit in. So we're not monsters. They are. 

I named my podcast You Did That! because I want to celebrate people doing things.

And what I want to celebrate today is that I started my own business back in 2018 and specifically that it has allowed me to really return to my own community in such a beautiful and just amazing way. So I consider the starting of my business, technically, I consider it January 8, 2018, and I chose that because that is the day that I got Prospect Therapy’s tax id number. And I was like, it's official. So it's no longer me working for someone else. I have my own company to work for it. And I knew very early on who I wanted to work with. 

My favorite thing that I've learned about myself as a result of this process is that I can do difficult things.

I can play the long game. I have often felt very impatient and impulsive and I lose interest in things. And if it gets hard, I just kind of put it down and I'm like, I don't like it anymore. And this work has been so important to me and it's something that I have literally created out of my own blood, sweat, and tears, late nights, and problem-solving, and paying lots of people to like help me and coach me through this. You know, every time I had a new idea, I just kept plugging away at it. And I think my favorite thing that I've learned about myself as a result of this is that I actually don't give up that easily and I work really hard. And I really love the type of leader that I have become.

I think what has surprised me the most honestly is how much my specific personality, my own brand of weirdness, that is what helped me be successful.

I used to think that you had to blend in, and you had to be corporate, and you had to wear a really nice suit. And you had to look, and dress, and speak, and act a certain way and there are only certain limits of parameters that you can work within. And I find that I’m most successful when I do things in a way that only I can do them. And that has been really pleasantly surprising.

What would my younger self think if they saw me now?

I think that she would think that I was the coolest person ever. And she would really like my hair. She would be glad that I like the same music for the last 25 years. And she would be really excited and she would have no idea how we ended up here. And she will be like, “Wow! You didn’t become like an Elementary School teacher,” which by the way I’ll be terrible at that. I think she will really be surprised at the turn my life has taken. She would have never thought in a million years that  I would be my own boss. Not along the box of other people. And she would see that I’m still helping people because that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, that I’ve always been a problem solver. And in my own way, I guess I am teaching certain things too. That I’m cheerleading other people into their own greatness. She would think that’s pretty cool.

Thanks for listening and stay tuned for our next episode with a guest who is ever cooler than I am. If you have any questions you know where to reach me.