In this episode of the RKD Group: Thinkers podcast, hosts Justin McCord and Ronnie Richard engage with Kishshana Palmer, CEO of ManageMint Inc. and author of “Busy is a Four-Letter Word.” The conversation explores Kishshana's journey of embracing authenticity, navigating personal and professional challenges, and the importance of asking for help. Kishshana shares insights from her new book, which aims to empower the busy, sandwich generation, particularly Gen Xers, to achieve more by doing less.
The discussion emphasizes the significance of personal development in professional growth and the need for simplicity in life and work.
She shares:
- The importance of authenticity in both personal and professional life.
- Her journey of overcoming the struggle of asking for help.
- concept of being your only competition is a recurring theme in her upbringing.
- That her book is designed to resonate with the busy, sandwich generation, particularly Gen Xers.
- How she believes that professional development is intertwined with personal development.
Show chapters
- 00:00 Introduction to Kishshana Palmer and Her Journey
- 03:29 Embracing Authenticity and Personal Growth
- 12:11 Navigating Challenges and Asking for Help
- 20:59 Writing the Book: “Busy is a Four-Letter Word”
- 28:49 Implementing Simplicity in Life and Work
Meet our guest
Transcript
Justin McCord
It's kind of fun to do a dramatic reading to an author, so, Kish, I want to start with a dramatic reading to you.
Kishshana Palmer
My God, let's do it.
Justin McCord
Okay: You're allowed to show up powerfully as who you are.
That's the whole reading, just that. This is from your website.
Kishshana Palmer
That's it. That's it.
Justin McCord
Talk to me about that. Like, just share, where does that come from? Where does that stem from? How did you land on that, and why do you believe it?
Kishshana Palmer
So, okay, as a kid, so I am … I always tell folks, like, these things are kind of important, at least for me. So, I am the oldest. I am the oldest girl. I am first-generation American. My parents are from the Caribbean. I am first in the family to go to college. I am first in the family to have an advanced degree. I am first in the family to own a business. And I did that last part being a solo mama. Okay, I ain't first in the family to do that part, but you know, Lord, the circumstances and things. And as a kid, my dad used, when I would come home with grades and come home from doing things at school, he would always ask me, did I do my best? And one of the things that he would always say to me is, you are your only competition. And he called me Princess growing up. You know, Princess, you are your only competition.
And that really stuck with me because he was never asking me, did I do my best relative to fill in a blank kid at school? So, I went to school with tons of kids whose parents also were from the Caribbean, or they were from Eastern Europe, or they were from wherever, different parts of South Asia when I went to high school. So, I just grew up with immigrant kids, right? And so, a lot of working-class families, a lot of folks who, our parents were making it happen to make it happen for us. And so there was such a high degree of pressure and expectation, and yet that one little piece, you are your only competition, like, that stuck with me really heavy. It got lost somewhere in the like, achieving sauce, but how it came out on the other side is like, you're just allowed to be yourself, and I realized that raising money for most of my early parts of my career that when I was trying to be palatable, Justin, like, fit in, you know, the aesthetic was right, the hair was quaffed the way I thought it would be acceptable, the nails were the right French manicured length, people still didn't like me. People who loved me, loved me; people who didn't, didn't.
And as I crept out and started to show parts of myself, I've always been a big personality. I've always worn lots of color. I've been getting my nails―look, check this out, y'all―I've been getting my nails done since I was 14 years old. That's the reason I got my first job. Because my mom was like, I am not paying for that. I was like, huh, I will go work. These are the parts of me that I thought I had to tuck in in order to be liked ...
Justin McCord
I like those.
Kishshana Palmer
… and in order to be accepted and frankly was rewarded for it. And so, as I started to realize that I was modeling this level of hiding myself and shrinking myself for my daughter, I was like, yeah, this ain't gonna work. No. And so that just busted out. So really, it’s an outgrowth of that really early seed that you are your only competition.
Ronnie Richard
For our listeners, Kishana spoke at an event we hosted in D.C. last year. And like, I want to paint a picture of showing up as who you are, if nothing else. I mean, she came out head to toe, sparkling outfit, complete with shoes with butterfly wings on the back of them. And just, I mean, you walk in the room, and you can't help but notice. And so, you unpack this a little bit, Kishshana, but I'm wondering, there … was there like, a moment that hit you that I need to stop not being who I am and hiding who I am? Or was it just a gradual process of becoming more comfortable with it? How did that, how did you decide like, this is who I am, and I don't care what you think, this is me.
Kishshana Palmer
I actually really do care people, thing. So you know, I heard that when you turn 40, you're going to, you know, who cares? We're going to just like, go through the roof. My mind hasnot really crept up at the rate that my age has crept. I just want to say that for the record. However, I realized that as a solo mom―and I’ve owned my own business since my daughter, who's now in college, was in middle school―I was home. So if I wasn't on the road, I was working from home.
So, I was the neighborhood mom. So, I always had girls in my house all the time. So whether it was the swim team, the soccer team, then it was the track team, then it was the specialty camps, then it was the away camp. My child was in all the stuff, okay? So there was always somebody’s child eating my Costco budget to death.
And I realized that they were watching my every move. They were the ones that came to talk to me about boys and girls, and themselves, and things they couldn't tell their parents. And my daughter would do the same. And I started to think, wow, I've really created this environment where young people who I really care about feel confident to bring me their stuff. And we all know that teenagers have secret lives their parents don't know nothing about. And my daughter going to high school butted right up against COVID.
And so, when we went into this bubble, this container, I made the fatal flaw of becoming my kid's friend. That's what happens when you can't leave the house, OK? And I grew up with the, “We're not your friend.” And so I realized I just liked my kid.
And Sinai, when she was eight, maybe, asked me to get a tattoo when she turned 16. Now, I want y'all to know, OK? I had my one little tattoo. I got it when I was 17. This is very important. It was on the back. I got in the barbershop in the basement. Anybody who was like, mom, my Gen X's should know we all snuck off and did some foolishness, okay? And it had faded to say,Kishana. So when she was eight and she said that she wanted to do that, of course I said, fine. And of course, I pinky swore because that's our thing. So imagine me, y'all, right in COVID. My child turns 15, and she rose up on me and goes, don't forget mom, next year ...
Justin McCord
Yes, yes. Yes, yes.
Kishshana Palmer
… tattoo, and I was like, come on. So believe it or not y'all, it was in the process: one, I had to keep my word. Two, I had to freak out on the inside because I did promise this. Three, so now, I got her first tattoo on her spine with no numbing cream. And so I just want to say, if a 16-year-old could take it like a G that I should just be myself. Okay? And then thirdly, right? And then during that thing, I got one too. I covered my tattoo, and it was beautiful, and then I started to go, wow, this is art. And I was hooked. So now my entire right side of my body is tatted from neck to my kneecap, which surprises people because they're like, because Shani, you, she's pretty, you know, put together, and she's a little conservative. You can’t tell, you know, nothing's ever really exposed until I turn right. So I think it was for me to say like, now you see me, that's my tattoo side, right? Now you don't.
And that to me was a gradual process. And I wondered, how many of us have this ‘now you see me, now you don't?’ And for me, I just kept creeping out. And I realized that I always had ‘now you see me,’ but the ‘now you don't’ is what was getting rewarded before. And I was like, nah, I got to figure out a way for the ‘now you see me’ to be the thing that people want to show up for. And if I can model it, even when I'm tripping over myself …
Justin McCord
Yeah, yeah.
Kishshana Palmer
… then I wonder if those of us, particularly those of us who were taught to be high achievers―that this is what success looks like, that we got to be perfect parents, and we have to be perfect caregivers, and we have to be perfect employees―if we could just let all of that go, what would it look like? So, the process is still ongoing.
Justin McCord
I was gonna ask about that because the process is ongoing. You are incredibly empowering. I want you to hear that and know that. You are incredibly empowering, not just as a speaker but as a person and as a friend. But I know from watching your LinkedIn authenticity that as ...
Kishshana Palmer
Thank you.
Justin McCord
… great as you are at empowering folks, 2024 has been a year that has brought some, not disempowerment, but has brought some barriers to you being your full self. How do you balance that, what you are in as an authority, like, as an empowerment leader while also being encumbered at the same time. Like, talk a little bit about 2024 for us.
Kishshana Palmer
No, listen, I didn't think, I didn't think I was gonna make it out to 2024 hood. I just want y'all to know, okay? 2023 in the second hand trying to take me out And so, and, and so, how I was on the staff meeting the other day, and I was like, man, this has been the longest temporary ever―and when the foolishness first hit, we were like, this is temporary; we've been through worse. Worse, period, paragraph was when I was working in-house for an organization as their interim, and I was in the city of, when I used to live in New York, and my daughter was in middle school, and she calls me, and she's like, mommy, it's raining in your office. What now? There was no roof above the office, just the bathroom. Turns out, in the New York City winter, the pipes burst.
And it just so happened that that week I had taken out all my stuff―so, you know, I'm a little old school, I'm gonna date myself. So, I had all my stuff on my backup drives. I had my physical hard drives, and I pulled them out because I was setting up another team. So I had to pull out my golden goose, my stuff. And I left them on top of my desk. I did not put them away in the closet. Y'all, I lost literally 80% of the first 14 years of my career.
And when I tell y'all the wailing, you would have thought my daddy died, the wailing that occurred. And if I could rebuild from that, I thought, we got this covered. This is temporary. Right? Except my body couldn't take the level of hits that it used to be able to take, you know? This will … Mortal Kombat. Okay. You know when you get the Mortal Kombat blow, and it starts to like, the, the, on the screen, starts to ebb. That was me. Just ebbing. And so, I was not prepared to talk about something that I could not even navigate more than day to day. Right?
And so my child, who was my homie, moves and goes to college. This baby, I've trained it well. I've raised her right. I think she's gone off, I thought, to live a very scholarly life. She did not go live a scholarly life. She led a college student's life. She led a life, you hear me, y'all? She led a ‘about to come home and go to a local community college for your sophomore year’ life, okay? She has now since turned it around. Thank you, just thank you.
So that was happening. I didn't recognize that I was gonna move away from my family, and I had lived literally within walking distance of my entire family for a decade, and they helped raise my kid. And now I'm in a whole new state, and they're a part of the country, talking about, it's only an hour-and-a-half flight. It's like, who's flying here? No one. So now I'm by myself. Everything that felt like it could be a calamity was happening at the same time. And I could not find the words to say help.
And I don't have a problem asking for things. I mean, I don't raise money, so I know how to ask for stuff. But I just could not find my way out of what felt like a shame spiral. I was in this, ‘How could I let this happen to me?’ Right? This is what I advise people against. And yet, here I am. And this is ridiculous. And I did not believe, and I still do not, that professionally I could take the risk to out the foolishness that was occurring professionally that was causing this cataclysmic damn near disaster in my personal life and my business life. I just did not think that my social capital, although I think it is very, very high, could be replenished as fast as I knew I would deplete it.
And so, I had to sit with that.
Ronnie Richard
I want to pause on that moment of not knowing how to ask for help. How often, when you're working with nonprofit leaders in this space, do you encounter that in the challenges that they're facing and having to coach them through taking action or pushing through that and finding a way to ask for help?
Kishshana Palmer
Yep, 100% of the time. So you can imagine the conundrum I found myself in. This is what I do. But I was, it was just like, one thing too many, y'all. Just one thing too many. And I realized that, and this is real growth, and my clients who have walked through this fire with me over the last year, they're coming out swinging. The money that they're raising, the teams they're, they've been able to retain bodies, and how they've been able to reclaim wholeness and wellness for themselves. The level of F that, that I put into my contracts, I was like, look, y'all make me upset too much. There's an out clause, right? And if you don't want to work on yourself, you don't want to work with me, period. Right? Because I'm not a licensed therapist. And yet I was on the phone with therapy sessions at nine o'clock at night going, no, I don't know if this is in the contract, but you know, here we are go on …
Justin McCord
Right, out of scope. Definitely out of scope.
Kishshana Palmer
But I realized, if I was experiencing this level of like, hanging on by my nails off the edge of a cliff, there had to be a way to rethink how to support the CEOs that I work with. Right? And so, I moved away from coaching to advising. That was one of the biggest steps that I made in order to be able to navigate that. I realized that people come to me when they are paralyzed, and maybe I didn't have enough real time inside the can of paint in this season of my life experience of being that paralyzed. Now I know; now I got it, right? And that, I think, allowed me to be able to help folks to really clean house. And when I say clean house, I don't mean in their organizations, in their companies. I mean at home. That's right. That's right. And now, if you want me to be a senior advisor on your team or work, if you're not willing to talk about your private life, then don't even bother to hire me. Get somebody else who can ask, you know, what do you think about that? Now, what would you do in that situation? But―and I have beautiful coaches on my team who will do just that if that is what that person needs―but if we're needing to move, and we need to move now …
Justin McCord
You said, being that whole person, right? Yeah.
Kishshana Palmer
… ‘cause private school tuition is due; because if one more person asks you to bake cookies for the PTO, if you got to sit through one more terrible peewee game where your kid does not hit the ball and you know you have a proposal you need to turn in. Hello?
This is where we're at.
Justin McCord
Yeah, the blending of life has never been more blended, right? Like, just the … then I think where we find ourselves now and …
Kishshana Palmer
Right.
Justin McCord
… you know, it's so funny that you, knowing the context in which you were walking through those things, while you're showing up in sequence and talking to the audience that we gathered, while you're working on a book, like, while you're working through these things, and you can choose to see that as like, why me? Or you can choose to use that as, not just fuel or motivation but like, big blocks to step on and step up. And it feels like that you chose the latter―the book in and of itself.
So, we're recording on official launch day. We're gonna cue confetti that's gonna fall and sounders. And so we're so proud of you.
Kishshana Palmer
Mm-hmm. Bye! Thank you.
Justin McCord
Especially because you were so kind. Like you, prior to coming out on stage when we were backstage at our event back in May, and you had had a long couple of days of travel, and you were looking at different designs for the cover, and it was just like, Justin, will you look at these? Like, tell me this, this, this, like, it's like …
Kishshana Palmer
Mm-hmm. Please. Your advice landed, I hope you know, in the final thing.
Justin McCord
I did notice. How did the process of writing the book fit into the path that you walked on through those different challenges over the course of the last year and a half?
Kishshana Palmer
Yeah. So, what ended up resulting from the last year and a half is that each chapter is actually quite self-contained. So, the way I ended up writing it was, I want to be able to write from the perspective of if you need a deep belly laugh on the plane or in the lounge, that's embarrassing, you might fart a little bit, you know, that kind of laugh. You got a good fight, six of the 12 chapters, that are gonna give you just that ...
Justin McCord
Good laugh.
Kishshana Palmer
… knowledge, and stories and things to do next. If you need a personal reframe, you got about two or three chapters to do just that. If you need to bring something to your team, whether you work at a nonprofit organization, whether you work at a tech startup, whether you work for another type of for-profit business, you've got that. If you're ready to scale, if you got to do a turnaround, there are a couple of chapters to do that.
So you can either read the whole thing together, or you can say, this chapter says I got to get myself together around my tech. OK, pick this chapter. So, I wanted to write for what I believe is the middle child of the working generation, and that's the Gen Xers, right? Not that it's not applicable to my daughter, because she did read it, and she definitely circled and highlighted for me what applied to her as a college student―so, shout out to being able to walk into higher-ed institutions and share that. Also for early career professionals who, I'm like, we don't want you to operate the way we did because we are exhausted. Also, we want you to learn how to pay your dues too. So there's a little bit of, a little balance we got to work out there. Balance.
But if you look at the set of super-duper popular leadership books that are written right now ...
Justin McCord
Sure, little balance, yeah, yeah.
Kishshana Palmer
… mostly, they're not funny. And also, they're written for, I believe, either folks who are aspiring to the trappings of the boomer generation to later boomers, or they're talking to the ‘woe is me’ in various different ways of younger millennials, so Gen Z, et cetera. But what they're not talking about are us middle kids.
And so, I decided if I would write to my peers, we are busy. We are sandwich-generation kids, so we're taking care of our parents. And oftentimes we are caregivers for children, for siblings, et cetera. Many of us are juggling entrepreneurial ventures as well as being in-house as W2 employees. Many of us gave up on our passion pursuits that used to be our career ideas in chasing after things we thought we were supposed to do. Lots of us are drowning in different manners of debt or percentage rates on housing. You want me to keep going?
We in a bad way, y'all. So I wanted to ... Huh? Yes.
Ronnie Richard
You're amongst friends. You're amongst friends.
Justin McCord
You're amongst friends. Normally, the middle of the sandwich is the best part.
Kishshana Palmer
‘Cause it ain't the juicy bits. Y'all better listen, you can drop somebody who was born in the seventies into the mid-eighties, any darn where, and we will figure it out. You hear me? I've got to figure it out, and I need to be able to absorb, and I need to be able to synthesize and then action something. You should be able to do it in 20 pages or less.
And selfishly, I love short stories. And so, I figured it'd be cool to write like how I love my short stories. And that's what I did. So process-wise, I was thinking about selfishly myself. And I said, well, if it works for me, there have to be others that it'll work for. And that is how the book came to be. But it was a tough, tough process to write.
Ronnie Richard
Did it start out with the intentions of reaching Gen X and short stories, or was that sort of an evolution along the way? Walk us through, what did you learn about, I guess, did you learn about yourself as you were going through that evolution?
Kishshana Palmer
It was an evolution. Yeah.
Sure, so I think one of the things that really stuck out to me is I've always been on, ‘so learn the rules and then break them.’ And I felt that a lot of frameworks in leadership were just like, complicated, and hard and had a lot of big words. And when you’re tired and stressed the hell out and your team's getting on your last gray hair, do you need complicated? Do you need outreach? No. You need simple. You need something to break it down. You need something that, like when I talk about Marvel comics. If I brought in Marvel comics right now, if I brought in … I could bring in so many references. If I talked about the Goonies, there's so many things that I could break down framework-wise, and you'd like, get it. Got it, on it, done.
And I wanted that experience in a leadership book that also, kind of like, snuck on you and made sure that you took care of your life too, right? Because to me, professional development is personal development, and personal development is professional development.
I always wanted to write a box set of books. I thought I'd write fiction books when I was a kid. So, I was obsessed with, don't laugh, y'all, Daniels Steel novels. And Harlequin romance. Also the Hardy books, Big Valley High. You know, I did it all.
And so my goal, and it still will be, is to write that box set, right? That takes you from when you are sitting in a college classroom going, “What the heck is going on here?” Or you're like, “F college, I'm gonna start my own thing,” all the way to, “I'm ready to just chill on my, like, platoon boat and fish.” That, what is the arc of that story that we would tell? And so, as I started to write and I started to really dream about what that could look like when there were five or six books done, I started to write with that end in mind.
Justin McCord
What have you―so we'll talk about the book itself in the intro a little bit more, “Busy as a Four-Letter Word: A Guide to Achieving More by Doing Less.” You can order it at Kishshana's website and every other place that you order books―what decisions have you made to simplify, or to prioritize or to make something essential? How are you practicing what you're preaching is where I'm going.
Kishshana Palmer
The easiest thing to practice every single day for me is how I designed what I call my five-star wellness plan. So, from the leadership-employee engagement perspective, Gallup talks about there are five ways you can look at employee engagement, right? So, you can look at their physical, emotional, they say mental, but I say spiritual in the book, financial and community; do I have best friends at work?
So, I'm a CliftonStrengths coach. I have loved it since I was in my 20s before I knew you could even be a coach. And I decided, let me take this thing and see if I can flip it, and reverse it, and use it in my real life the same way I would at work. So, what I realized is when I hold fidelity to what is happening in my physical wellness and well-being―and that is both my physical dwelling, my house, as well as my vessel―when I'm aware of what I need in those two things at that time, even if it's simply, I'm at a point where my mental health and well-being is off, let me tell you what you can tell in my physical wellness and well-being. Okay, please, genius at work here or mad scientist, who can tell? When my spiritual health―and for those folks who are believers, I don't care if you believe in the bees, the trees, the animals, the leaves, Hare Krishna or something in between, whatever your center of belief is―if that thing is not rocking and rolling, what are we doing it for?
Then for many of us, particularly those of us who worked in the social sector for most of our careers, we've been taught and socialized that we're supposed to be poor. No, we're not. And so, that financial wellness and well-being is super critical.
And then lastly, your community wellness and well-being. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Coming on the other side of COVID, many of us, even the most social of us, are at the house. Who all gonna be there before we decide we're gonna leave and go and do something, right? Really, like, you will cancel something day of and be like, it was $80. It's fine, I'm not going. And so, really being able to say, what do I need in these five areas of my life?
Justin McCord
Absolutely, yes, yes.
Kishshana Palmer
In this season, and your season could be a year, your season could be because your partner is battling an illness, your parent has started to show signs of dementia, you've had to move across the country, your company has to right size, there's exponential growth, you see what I'm saying? You get to decide in this season how you take hold of, how you take care of yourself. And as you're able to outline … and these five areas is, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this.
So for me, what has kept me sane is turning all of my routines into rituals. And rituals are just the have, just kicking it up a notch. So, I don't rush to doing my face every morning when I do my skincare. And I now start recording videos while I'm doing it. I was like, y'all see more in this robe than you've ever seen. I don't rush when I sit down and have my coffee. I don't rush.
So, certain things I used to just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom through. I take my time, even if it's just five extra minutes. And that slowdown has been enough for me to go, my blood pressure has lowered. Maybe I can get off this medication. Ooh, maybe now I'm going to go back to Pilates four days a week. Ooh, yes, now maybe I can get to CrossFit. When you start doing one thing at a time, just small, and you treat it like a joy, you owe this to yourself, it starts to have that ripple effect.
So that's what I've been doing. I keep it simple. I wish it was complicated, y'all. I wanted to sell y'all on some complicated methodology, but the hell with that. I'm too tired for it. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. That's right.
Ronnie Richard
The little things in life, that's what matters, right? Wise words, I would say, for sure. Wise words to live by, Kishshana.
Thanks for joining us today. Listeners, her new book, “Busy as a Four-Letter Word: A Guide to Achieving More by Doing Less.” Check it out. Like we said, launch day's today, so it's on the website. It's in stores. Go get yourself a copy.
Kishshana Palmer
And for your listeners, I have a nice little chunky nugget. If you purchase 25 books or more, which you will get at a discount, just want y'all to know, I will happily come share time and space with your team for 30 minutes to talk with them about the book, to talk about a topic you're experiencing, to have a lemon squeeze. That is not an additional cost. That is a perk of buying what I call my small book, okay? Just like our small-dollar donors. Because I want folks to be able to have access to this work. I am not coming to sell y'all anything, although, you know, if you hire my team, let me tell you, your life will be changed. But I do want more folks to experience what life is like when you get to show up as yourself in your work and in your home life, and what it looks like when you get to be who you need to be, and you get to take it one season at a time. Just like in an awesome football game. I don't know if y'all saw the Georgia/Alabama game a couple of weeks ago. That thing was a nail biter. One yard at a time. You know I mean? And that's what I want folks to be able to get comfortable with experiences.
I want to appreciate y'all for having me. And let's just do this. Let's slow down in 2025 so we can do more.
Justin McCord
Yeah. Love it. So good, Kish. It's great to see you.
Ronnie Richard
Yep.
Kishshana Palmer
You too. Thanks, y'all, for having me.
Group Thinkers is a production of RKD Group. For more information, including how you can partner with RKD to accelerate growth for your fundraising and nonprofit marketing needs, visit rkdgroup.com.
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