💌 Feature: Ashley Menzies Babatunde, Podcast Host of "No Straight Path"

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Length: 8 min | Readability: Grade 11-12

• From Harvard trained lawyer to Hubspot podcast host. This week's feature: Ashley Menzies Babatunde on her advice around self discovery, her life routine, & more!

• Try this exercise with yourself or a friend/colleague to dig a little deeper!

• Weekly roundup of articles and advice this week: 5 components essential to your workplace well-being, how working 10 more hours can increase thyroid issues, how to better control your responses to frustrating situations, and more!

⭐️ Feature: Ashley Menzies Babatunde

Just like her podcast show states: from Harvard-trained lawyer to Hubspot podcast host of "No Straight Path," Ashley's journey has been no straight path. Ashley Menzies Babatunde is an attorney and storyteller passionate about the intersection of humanity and career. She is the host of "No Straight Path," which is part of the Hubspot Podcast Network, where she speaks with a variety of guests about their definition of success, how they overcame setbacks, navigated pivots, and found purpose in their lives.

Before I dive into the insights and learnings that she shared with me during our conversation, let me give you some context to who Ashley Menzies Babutunde 👑 is.

First of all, Ashley is such a badass. Ashley is of Black American and Guyanese descent, with her father's family immigrating to the United States from Guyana. Her mother is from the South and are descendants of slaves.

In her essay about her journey with taking the California bar, she states, "From my mom’s side, I saw my cousins struggle in single-parent homes and inner city schools. And from my dad’s side, I was reminded that I was fortunate to be able to attend school in America. Although my parents made it clear that they loved me regardless of what I achieved, I felt like I had a responsibility to work hard and succeed."

And work hard she did: Ashley attended Stanford as a track athlete and graduated with honors, then accepted into Harvard Law School and became a lawyer, and is now building out a podcast sponsored by Hubspot! (Read the essay to see how she recalls all the accomplishments she had even in middle school 👀)

However, there is so much more richness, depth, and color to Ashley's story that if you only looked at her LinkedIn or her resume, you wouldn't be able to explore.

What truly inspired and drew me to her story was not only her track record of discipline and long accomplishments, but actually her journey of struggles and challenges when she was trying to study for the LSAT and bar exam.

During the process of failing the bar exam two times, grinding it out each time, and then passing the bar the third time, she went through a tremendous self-discovery journey (and we'll get into her insights down below!).

Not everyone wants to be a lawyer and will need to pass the bar exam, but nearly all of us will go through moments of "failure," or when we truly start to question our life's path moving forward. Ashley came out with so much wisdom and insights that she shares in her podcast show and essays, and with us below.

If you want to read her journey in further detail, please read her essay about her experience below or check out her podcast where she goes into this in more depth. I promise you won't regret it!

From my conversation with Ashley, here are my key insights and takeaways:

How do you know if something is hard because it's hard versus it's wrong for you?

"At the core.. when it's antithetical to your personality. Trying to overcome the opposing counsel hurdle [in law] was hard for me. Every time it [the opposing counsel] just got harder.

Track your feelings over time [she recommends journalling in a free-flowing manner] to make sure that the feelings stay the same. These negative feelings [in big law] were still there [for me]. Because I realized it was antithetical to who I am as a person."

She also discusses how she knows something is wrong for you when it starts to impact your health.

"The impact on your health becomes so obvious when you talk to your different friends. When you have so much anxiety that you’re talking with a therapist everyday to get through work, that's [one example of] how you know it might not be a good fit."

How did you start to realize that you wanted to pursue storytelling?

"It started with my first blog post in 2018, when I realized I liked storytelling. It was an important part of who I was. Before that, I really didn’t have the time to pour myself into that because I was really just working towards my law school career. I rediscovered my passion for storytelling, and that came out of a challenging time in my life. I [also] loved personal storytelling and telling other people's stories.

I'm not sure if it's an aha moment... I think it was a series of events and experiences that brought me to this moment that steps me into the power of storytelling. 2018 was the catalyst for it.

In college, I wrote for the Stanford Daily and I joined the paper my senior year. After two quarters of being on the paper, I won the best feature award. I think I realized that for some things you have to work so hard at everything, and other things you have a gift for and things just happen faster when you're leaning into your talents. With the podcast, I put that out and then I got opportunities to be in the Hubspot Accelerator program. [Side note: for context, HubSpot built an accelerator to give content creators with the capital, resources, and distribution they need to grow their podcasts - think of it as a Y Combinator for podcast creators!]

Additionally, I think childhood is important.

In my show, I like to ask "How were you? How did your family describe you? What kind of human were you?" I try to weave the thread of who that person is when they were a child because that's your unadulterated self, that's their self when no one told them what to be. So I go back to my childhood and look at those attributes and qualities. My life is a reflection of those qualities.

How do you gain self-awareness? What did you do when you were stuck?

Ashley's recommendation is to journal and do some free writing in order to figure out who you are and how you want to move forward.

"Write your feelings on paper! Pay attention to the work, activities, and people that energize you. Pay attention to the work, activities, and people that drain you. Pay attention to the language when you’re honestly describing something in your life to your partner or your best friend.

That record of experiences and patterns will show up, and you will start to really see what makes the most sense."

Do you ever check in or read over your past entries?

"I usually check in when I’m stuck. I check in when I need an answer, am confused, talking to a lot of different friends, and need to get back to myself."

What is your "life routine?" What do you do in your life to stay sane?

"There is no routine. In my 20’s, I was very routine-based and routine-oriented. In my 30’s, I’m just tired. None of my friends have routines anymore, even though we were very routines-focused in our 20's. 😂

I'm doing a challenge with my friends to do a workout 4 times a week. I hadn't been keeping up my workouts during the pandemic but now I'm back at it during my sabbatical. It's all fun - I do this thing called trap cardio and some HIIT workouts.

I'm a huge relationship person. I listen to podcasts [Ashley's recommendation: Brene Brown's podcast]. I really try to call a friend everyday. My husband is in trial right now, so even the little points of connection when he gets home are good. I have a goddaughter and I FaceTime her everyday. It's the greatest joy of my life - she is so sweet and hilarious.

I'm also getting back into reading for fun!"

If you're curious, Ashley's currently reading:

• Viola Davis's Finding Me

• Jenna Kutcher's How Are You, Really? Living Your Truth One Answer at a Time

How do you define your success today now that you're in your 30s versus years ago when you're in your 20s?

"Now, I define success by a few things.

Doing work I love. Work that is a reflection of my values.

Making an income that supports the lifestyle that I want to live. I don't need a fancy huge mansion, but I like nice things. It's a running joke at my firm - I always order champagne! I like nice things. You won't see me in designer in everything, but everything will be quality.

Doing work that allows me to give back to others... I love having these types of conversations like we're having. I really enjoy inspiring other people.

Finally, doing work that gives me the time and space to do things that are not work related. My relationships and hobbies."

If you enjoyed reading this, please don't forget to check out the latest episode of "No Straight Path" on Spotify, Apple, and wherever you listen to your podcasts! You can also follow No Straight Path on Instagram!

💪🏼 Try This Exercise:

One powerful thing to think about is: what are the one or two events that happened in your life that have transformed you forever?

Write those down. Or if you're like me, start pretending you're being interviewed and talk to yourself through it. Reflect on it and marvel on how far you've come!

What's even more powerful is doing this exercise with a friend or work buddy. At our recent team offsite, we developed a workshop called "Telling Our Stories." Each person was paired with another person on their team to go and chat and discuss on their own.

Each person started off by stating what their impression of the other person so far was; you can choose to respond or not respond to it, whether by providing further context as to whether that impression is correct and etc.

Then each individual revealed their 1-2 events that have transformed their lives, and after sharing, we all reflect and share our thoughts. At the end, we shared in a group with each other.

Next time, when you're wanting to get to know someone a bit deeper than surface-level, ask them this question! Who knows — you may be surprised by what you hear!

💡 Weekly Finds:

• 🧘🏻‍♀️ The 5-components essential to your workplace well-being. The U.S Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new resource that outlines how a stressful workplace can actually be toxic to our physical and mental health. He outlines Five Essentials for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being to help companies better support the mental health and well-being of all workers. As you evaluate this resources, ask yourself: do you have these 5 factors in your workplace? Do these 5 factors matter to you?

• 😓 If you add an additional 10 hours of work, you’re 46% more likely to have thyroid issues. You read that right. A study by Dr. Young Ki Lee demonstrated that overwork is actually correlated to changes in your thyroid function! (study here). This study was completed in ~2020 or so but I only just realized this through a LinkedIn post. This study found that for every 10 hours of work you added, you increase your odds of having hypothyroidism by 46%. And if you worked greater than 42 hours a week? Hypothyroidism occurred over 2 times more frequently in those that worked 53 to 83 hours than those that worked 36 to 42 hours. Please check your thyroid and hormones!

• 🤬 How to better control your responses to frustrating situations. There is this beautiful quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” One flaw of this quote is that it doesn’t elaborate on how to create that space and that the different qualities of space affect the kinds of choices we can make. This article dives into this “space” and provides a perspective on how to not let our emotions take over and trigger a response.

• 💆🏻‍♀️ 47 of the Best Self Care Sunday Ideas. If you have prioritized self-care time for yourself and have no clue what to do, this is the article for you! Depending on how much time you have, this blog post provides several different fun and interesting activities to explore!

• ⏰ 10 Tips for Mastering Time Management at Work. Normally I wouldn’t share these types of posts because they’re not really that helpful or realistic. But I actually implemented these tips since I moved to Palo Alto and it helped set me in the right direction in order to make sure I manage my crazy schedule. I highly suggest the time analysis to understand how you currently spend your time, the scheduled breaks/buffers (be generous and kind to yourself!), and iterating on your time blocks so that you have a clearer understanding of how you spend your time.

• 👩🏻‍🏫 If You’re Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You Won’t Learn Anything. The author of this article apparently decided to wake up one day and call us all out. But don’t worry, the title isn’t as scary as you think! (By the way, it’s okay if you also don’t want to learn anything. Let's be real - we're all tired!). But if you do enjoy occasionally learning new things or if there is something that you’ve always wanted to do but are scared to do, here’s a post that breaks down the steps to help you do the thing that you’ve always wanted to do. That place outside your comfort zone.

💌 Happy Hallo-weekend! 🎃 Hope this newsletter gave you some food (or candy 😉) for thought! Please reply to this email or submit here if you have any feedback.

That’s it for today — see you next week!