Power Women: Nikki Trott Of Conscious Accelerator On How To Successfully Navigate Work, Love and Life As A Powerful Woman

An Interview With Ming Zhao

Success: define what success means to you, and work towards that. Success means something different to all of us and is individual and unique. Don’t work towards what other people tell you successful is — focus on yours.
I was brought up to think that success meant power, fame and money. I was working towards someone else’s idea of success. Now I realize that success to me is about freedom, impact and fulfillment. This does include financial success too, absolutely, but this comes from being in flow with my values and having freedom in my working life and schedule. Since I started working towards my own success, I feel so much lightness, ease, and, success!

How does a successful, strong, and powerful woman navigate work, employee relationships, love, and life in a world that still feels uncomfortable with strong women? In this interview series, called “Power Women” we are talking to accomplished women leaders who share their stories and experiences navigating work, love and life as a powerful woman.

As a part of this series I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Nikki Trott.

Nikki Trott empowers entrepreneurs to thrive, profit, and impact with purpose as the Founder/CEO of Conscious Accelerator. Her podcast, Going Conscious, explores transformations to freedom and impact with visionary entrepreneurs, listened to in over 30 countries.

Nikki is proving that the future of business is driven by purpose and that together we can transform our lives and the world through conscious entrepreneurship.

Conscious Accelerator

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood “backstory”? Can you tell us the story about what led you to this particular career path?

Having built my career as a Director at leading fashion advertising agencies across London and New York, I thought I had achieved success and yet didn’t feel fulfilled. In search of more, I escaped London for Berlin to work for myself, building a thriving company consulting global brands from Vans to Mercedes Benz. Whilst loving entrepreneurship, I still wasn’t fulfilled. My spirituality deepened, clarifying the uncomfortable reality that my work encouraged overconsumption, unhappiness, and pillage of the planet. My business wasn’t aligned with my values.

I knew I needed to make another drastic change: so, listening to my intuition, I trained as a transformation coach. I began coaching visionary impact entrepreneurs around the world on their personal and business challenges, blockers, opportunities, relationships, and growth. This led to me founding Conscious Accelerator where the world’s top visionary entrepreneurs who want to leave a positive legacy come together.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

That’s a hard question! Looking back I realise that I excelled in my career in fashion advertising partly because I was in my masculine energy. I responded to the environment around me and was definitely influenced by what was considered to be professional, ambitious, impressive, powerful… It took me a couple of years of running my own businesses to really unravel this and understand that a balance between masculine and feminine is what really gets us to thrive.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Being intuitive: Following my intuition and turning off all the noise and external expectations around me as much as possible so I could really start listening to myself and following what’s right for me.

Being able to let go: Finding ways to release the identity I have constructed for myself as a fashion business women and being open and flexible enough to evolve and change. No doubt this will happen again in life! We hold ourselves back by putting ourselves in a box and worrying about how others perceive us if we change it.

Being a good communicator: Cultivating honest, genuine connections with people who are aligned with my values so we can grow together and lift each other up, especially with women.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. The premise of this series assumes that our society still feels uncomfortable with strong women. Why do you think this is so?

In a patriarchal society, women have been put up against each other and made to feel that they need to fight for the one seat at the table that might be available to women. This is just another way that the patriarchy has kept us down. When women come together and help push each other up, they are able to really thrive.

Without saying any names, can you share a story from your own experience that illustrates this idea?

Yes. When I worked in a fashion advertising agency, I was the youngest Director, and only one still in my 20s. A new Senior Manager joined the company, who was very competitive and had good experience, and took issue with me being more senior to her but younger. I knew this came from her own deep insecurities, but she took it out on me. She put me down whenever she could, even in front of our colleagues, and made it very difficult for me to work with her. She even sent short, rude emails and was very hard to communicate with. This was the first time something like this had happened to me at work, and I felt deeply upset by it. Even though I knew rationally that the problem was her own and nothing to do with me, it was hard not to feel it personally and emotionally. In the end, she shouted at me in the reception of the agency and a number of people witnessed it. I was shaken and not sure what to do, but felt embarrassed that I was caught in some kind of petting fighting in my work place. I wrote her a long, angry email, read it through, and then deleted it. I’m so thankful to my colleague and friend who recommended doing that to me! Get it out of your system, but don’t send something you’ll regret or sink to a bully’s level. I considered speaking to our CEO (my manager) about the situation, but it just felt so immature and I didn’t want it to damage my reputation. I said nothing to him. A month later she was fired. It turned out that other people reported the situation to him from their neutral perspectives and in the end, the right thing was done. I hope she learned from that and now lifts women up rather than push them down.

What should a powerful woman do in a context where she feels that people are uneasy around her?

The most important thing is to realise that this is not about you, but it is about them. It is not your job to make other people feel comfortable. It’s your job to live your truth and share your powerful gifts with the world. Not everyone will be ready, and that’s fine. Go to where you find people who are ready.

What do we need to do as a society to change the unease around powerful women?

We need role models of various different types of powerful women and stories of their success.

We need to champion other women and change jealousy into inspiration.

We need to proudly live our own power and truth without apology, paving the way for the next woman.

In my own experience, I have observed that often women have to endure ridiculous or uncomfortable situations to achieve success that men don’t have to endure. Do you have a story like this from your own experience? Can you share it with us?

Working in the fashion industry I felt that I was very judged based on my appearance, even in the board room. The men around me certainly were not! I had to make sure I looked the part on a totally different level to the men. The men who were hiring were choosing us women based on more surface level criteria, plus being even more critical of our business experience. We had to have it all.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women leaders that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

Unfortunately, I have found it often to be other women standing in our way. There is also the exclusion from the boys club at the top. The way round this? Make our own club — for women and for enlightened men. Club members always lift each other up because when the people around us succeed, we succeed.

Let’s now shift our discussion to a slightly different direction. This is a question that nearly everyone with a job has to contend with. Was it difficult to fit your personal and family life into your business and career? For the benefit of our readers, can you articulate precisely what the struggle was?

There have been many challenges along the way. Wanting to do everything at once! Having so many ideas and wanting them all to come to life but knowing that spreading myself too thinly will not lead to any good results. I overcome this urge by keeping an ideas board where I log all the things I want to do but only allow myself to have 3 main focuses at any one time. I review these 3 items every 3 months. I have also found saying “no” to be the hardest thing, which I am constantly trying to practice by focusing on my top 3 priorities that I have selected and asking if requests that come into me serve them well or not. Sometimes it’s ok to say “no”. And other times it’s ok to say “this is not the right time”. What will help you to achieve the most important goals for you?

I stay focused by really prioritising balance. Making sure that I continue to move my body and get outside in nature, even when I’m busy. Starting my day with a little family time, however, that is possible that morning. And by scheduling my time across the week in blocks for each project rather than jumping between each thing multiple times a day. Blocking really saves me energy and allows me to go deeper and be more productive. I also try to stay off digital on Sundays as much as possible, which brings me a really fresh start to each week. I know it sounds simple, but this Sunday’s digital detox makes a big impact on me.

What was a tipping point that helped you achieve a greater balance or greater equilibrium between your work life and personal life? What did you do to reach this equilibrium?

It has always been important to me, but when my baby daughter was born, I was able to be more focused than ever before and she showed me how to be fully present in everything I do in my day. It’s never been more important.

I work in the beauty tech industry, so I am very interested to hear your philosophy or perspective about beauty. In your role as a powerful woman and leader, how much of an emphasis do you place on your appearance? Do you see beauty as something that is superficial, or is it something that has inherent value for a leader in a public context? Can you explain what you mean?

This has been a complicated journey for me. After working in fashion and beauty for so long, I rejected the pressure on our appearances and business women for a while. Especially working mostly online, it was such a sigh out. But now I am rediscovering my passion for design and creativity and having fun with my appearance, and it feels empowering. It might sound cliche, but I think it’s very important that we use beauty and fashion to express our individualism, rather than to respond to comparison with others, which is so hard to avoid these days. We can use beauty as a power, but it should be a power we carry within.

How is this similar or different for men?

I have never been a man, but I feel they are not judged by the media in the same way or compared to each other based on how they look. We have a long long way to go.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Powerful Woman?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Inspiration: change jealousy or comparison, which can be harmful, into inspiration. Don’t push the women who make you uncomfortable away, invite them in. This can be very useful in the world of social media.
   This has helped me to connect with some incredibly inspiring women and invite them onto my show Going Conscious as guests, rather than stay in a feeling of intimidation. Usually, they accept and we develop natural relationships that lead to further collaborations and support.
2. Vision: be clear on your boundaries and purpose, what you are here to do and why. Some people won’t like it. Some people will love it. That’s ok — but don’t stray from your own path to respond to external influences — it won’t work.
   It was very hard for me to announce my new “Conscious Accelerator” business after my fashion consulting one as I worried that people would judge me. But I knew I had to stick to what felt right to me, and accept if people fell away. I’m sure there were some who didn’t like it, but I didn’t hear from them. I heard from all the amazing people in fashion and beauty who are also looking at creating an impact on the world that is aligned with their values.
3. Success: define what success means to you, and work towards that. Success means something different to all of us and is individual and unique. Don’t work towards what other people tell you successful is — focus on yours.
   I was brought up to think that success meant power, fame and money. I was working towards someone else’s idea of success. Now I realise that success to me is about freedom, impact and fulfilment. This does include financial success too, absolutely, but this comes from being in flow with my values and having freedom in my working life and schedule. Since I started working towards my own success, I feel so much lightness, ease, and, success!
4. Value: once you know what success means to you, don’t value yourself based on how close or far you are from that. Your inherent value must come from deep within yourself. Trust yourself and love yourself more when things are harder or not working out how you thought you wanted them to.
   I have started writing 3 things I am grateful for myself for, as well as 3 things I’m grateful for in the world, each morning. This made a big difference in reminding me how much I have already done and how much I have to thank myself for — however big or small. I recommend you try this and see how different you feel after just one week.
5. Community: to change the narrative for women in business, we need to hold hands, work together, and raise each other up with confidence and abundance. No one woman can do this alone!
   I find that the more diversity I bring into my circles and communities, the more richness we all experience.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Dr Shefali Tsabary, author of the Conscious Parent. I feel that the next phase of my life is connected to her vision and work somehow, and that we are destined to meet soon.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.