Lessons - She Got Fired by Her Bully Boss and Built a Bigger Career From Scratch | Heather Monahan - Author of Overcome Your Villains

In this lessons episode, explore how resilience is built after sudden career setbacks and what determines whether momentum returns or stalls. Discover how public accountability accelerates recovery after professional disruption. Understand how removing toxic environments strengthens self-belief. And uncover how intentional confidence practices can reshape identity and decisions. What do you think allowed you, when you were fired, you handled it very gracefully, you were quote-unquote fine, I mean, you built out, you know, you already had a little community, you sort of doubled down on that. But a lot of people that are fired don't always rebound so quickly. So easily. What do you think the difference is between somebody that can be fired, hit like, you know, rock bottom, quote unquote, and still be okay versus somebody who hits rock bottom and stays there for way too long? Well, listen, I'm not a doctor, right? So I don't know. There are some people that maybe they have PTSD. Like some people mentally, and I don't ever want to gloss over like that. No, that is real. Like some people get depressed, right? And if that happens to you, you need to go get help. You need a doctor. Some people need medication. No shame for any of that. But wherever you are, you have to ask for help. Raise your hand and say, like, this isn't okay. Sitting around in my house crying every single day for more than a few days, that's not okay. You need to get help and get out of that. I'm grateful. I didn't have the, I mean, I was sad. I was in shock for sure. Clinical. I didn't have a clinical diagnosis of depression or anything else. So, you know, I was able to pick myself up. I held myself accountable publicly. That's reverse engineering accountability. And for me, that really works. I did the same thing when I wanted to write my second book, but I was like, oh, I'm being lazy. Why am I not getting this done? I posted, I've got a new book coming out. I can't wait for you to read it. And then I got bombarded with messages. When is it coming out? What's the title? And that forces me to say, I got to serve these people. I got to get moving, right? So you need to know yourself on some level. What is it going to be that's going to help push you over that hump? For me, it was putting that post up that first day, which really started the whole process. And I just knew, listen, I likened it to getting divorced. If no one knows your divorce, no one's going to ask you out. So you need to raise your hand and say, I'm suddenly single. I got to let people know I'm divorced. Getting fired is no different. No one knew I was fired. There was no big news announcement that went out the day that it happened. I need to raise my hand and say, I've been fired. I'm ready to go to work and find other opportunities who can help me make that happen. So all of this is like this, I'm trying to think of the best word for it. So you're going through this process mentally to get over this like really traumatizing point in your life. And it has to do with putting yourself out there, creating accountability, all this stuff. But is there anything else that allows you to get to the point where like you have fired your villain in your head? So you're doing all these steps. So what's the point where you like close the book and you're like, I fired the villain? I mean, gosh, that's like a deep question because the most important. Well, it can go on forever. And the most important villain you're ever going to fire is the one between your own two ears, in my opinion. Right. Like that's that's where the negative self-talk comes. That's you have more thoughts in a day than any conversation you have with anybody. Like it's really down to you. However, I've learned it's easier to tackle that villain when I get rid of the ones that are around me, because if they're around me, they're feeding the one within me and I'm never going to get out of that. Do you mean like actual people or you mean thoughts, influences? What do you mean? I mean, when I was working side by side with people that would smile at me and stab me in the back every chance I got. Those were villains in my life. Right. And when I worked with people like that, the negative inner thoughts that I had were amplified times 100 because they're just feeding, helping to feed and grow that negativity within my own mind. Once I removed all of them from my life, I created opportunity and space for positive people to start showing up. When I was surrounded with positive people that were my champions, those negative thoughts stopped. They certainly got down to a much lower level. And then I was able to get clear and say, oh, I need to get rid of the rest of these inside. Okay, that makes sense. And one thing that you also do, and this ties back to confidence before, but it's also playing into firing your villain. How do you run these confidence campaigns? Yeah. You have confidence campaigns that help you, again, solve for this. So what does this actually mean? Okay, so I was in the advertising business for 25 years, media, right? So my job was to drive revenue. That means I would go meet with, you know, GE and talk to them about ad campaigns to sell their newest dishwasher. I'm going to hang it up, right? So one of the things that I learned, I became very proficient in being successful in helping people create strong ad campaigns. Well, you need to have a great call to action. You need to have a jingle that people it's going to get into people's mind that they're not going to be able to forget you. Right. You need to be when you couple an audio message with a visual, it's much more powerful and impactful. I just use all of these steps that I have learned through creating ad campaigns for customers. And I created an ad campaign for myself. I talked to you a little bit about this. I was working side by side with a CFO who didn't like me. She wasn't overtly in my face. She was covertly and passive aggressive, very passive aggressive, very behind the scenes, very much stab in the back. That made it more challenging. I'm a very outgoing person. So when I did confront her a couple of times, hey, I feel like something's wrong. You're not responding to my email. It feels difficult to work with you. Did I do something to upset you? Can we clear the air? And she'd smile. No. All's fine. And so I didn't know how to fix this problem. And I never thought, remove yourself from this environment. You're at the wrong table. You're sitting with people who don't support you and aren't encouraging you. They're trying to sabotage you. So I stayed in an environment where someone was sabotaging me and it was just... It was eroding at my confidence in a very silent- Because you feel like you're going crazy. You feel like you're going crazy, and you just don't feel as good about yourself. Because you know why? I knew somewhere down deep I needed to leave. But I never pulled the trigger and I didn't do it. So every day that I'd show back up at work and see some other BS that was going on, I felt worse about myself. And so I became a B-rate version of myself. I started thinking if I dim my light a little bit, maybe it allow her to shine a little bit more. And that got in my head, right? So all these horrible, dimming your light's never going to make the world a more positive place, right? That is never the answer. So I was doing all the things that I innately knew were wrong in hopes I could impact how she felt about me. You can't make someone feel positive about you, right? But I was just not in a good headspace at the time. Cut to, I decided, hey, Heather, this is out of control. Like, what are you doing? You need to change this. And so that's when I had this coming to meeting with myself. I said, run an ad campaign for yourself, about yourself, and start boosting your own confidence. And so that's what I did. My call to action was fear is a green light that means go and go faster. Yeah. I created the vision, which was that life-size cutout of me. I married it with the I Am Kendrick Lamar song, which is like, I love myself. I did all the same things I would do for my clients and customers. I did it for me, and I played it on repeat. seven to ten times a day because frequency sells and ingrains in your mind and so i would focus on this i would own my mantras every day i am confident i am powerful i am good enough like i went back to the basics i started writing on the bottom of my shoes i can i will like i really i put the work and the effort in to something that i don't think people necessarily think about every day like how am i working on my confidence today i think many people do No, I don't think they do. Because if you really get literal and focused on it, you can do it. Anyone can do it. And I definitely did it. So luckily for me, I did that about a month before she fired me. And thank goodness I had been working on my confidence. I was a much more confident version of myself when I went in, when she fired me. And she was... rude and, you know, all smiles and laughing when she was firing me. And one of the things I've learned is never react, only respond. And when you're in a difficult situation, you need to take a breath and pause. But when you react, you're allowing someone else to control you. And so I wouldn't let her control me. And I was able to pause and have grace and smile and say, you know, if you have nothing else to say to me, I'll be leaving. And I handled myself with a lot of confidence and grace in that moment, which I'm really proud of. You know what I think? So smart that you work on this actively, because I think actually with confidence, just to your point that you just made, I think what a lot of people do is they always want to be more confident. Everybody wants to be more confident, but they only ever test themselves when they get in the arena and in a high tension conversation or an argument and they measure, okay, well, I didn't screw that one up too much. And that's not my new measure of confidence. But it's like, The only way I can equate that to is if you like stepped on for like an NBA all-star game and you didn't practice all season or play any games. And like that's how you measure your performance. Because you don't put yourself in situations where you're actively trying to learn and grow. And this is like not just confidence. This is anything that is like a soft skill. People just kind of flippantly do it whenever they're asked to do it, but they never practice doing it. Right. I love this. I want to ask because now, you know, as you tell me this story, when we first started, we're speaking about women supporting women. And some of your story really resonates with me because I hear stories of other women executives that are dealing with things. I'll give you a story. Obviously, we'll not name names, but I want you to give advice in this situation. So I have a really good friend. She's very, very successful. Multiple exits. She sold two, three, three companies. So she's thinking about going into a new president role. And there's the founder of the company. He has a chief strategy officer and then she'd be the president. And the chief strategy officer is that passive aggressive. She's been there for 15 years. She's like everything you just said, but she's not like explicitly being an asshole. It's just like you can tell that she doesn't want the new woman in there. And it's really sad because it's like a great opportunity. So what do you do? Do you walk away before? Because like right now we're in like the I'm not even sure if I want to do this stage. That's where she's at. She hasn't taken the job yet? She hasn't taken it yet. She needs to have a one-on-one conversation with the chief strategy officer. Yeah. That's the only way to deal with it. But what if she is gaslighting? What if she is passive aggressive? Then you can't work side by side with that person. Then it's up to you. I would go in and have the conversation with the person first. Give that person the benefit of the doubt, right? Sometimes we only, maybe the person's scared and jealous. We don't know. But maybe once this woman calls around and says, hey, I just want to clear the air. I feel like you're not excited about me being here. Have I done something to offend you? Is there a way you think you and I could work together and flourish together? Or do you think that this is something that we can't, you know, stitch together? stick together to work out. Fine. Let that person empty their bath. Face to face. One on one. Face to face. One on one. Don't do that in front of somebody else. Then... That person empties their glass and they say, you know what? I didn't realize I was being an asshole. You know what? I'm intimidated by you. Thank you for bringing this mind. Like it could be a million different things or it could be, I don't know what you're talking about. And if that's it, then we know that person is not going to change. They are going to keep this. You know, this is the culture of what's acceptable. And if that person's thriving and succeeding at that level, that's what's accepted in that organization. That is not the organization for you. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.