We were lucky to catch up with Tabby Biddle recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tabby, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I was 26 years old and working at my dream job at the National Geographic Magazine in Washington, D.C. I’d been with the company for four years building my career as a young, rising journalist. I had my own office with a big window that looked out to “M” street and the daily movements just a few blocks from the White House. I had great, supportive, friendly colleagues at the company. I was getting paid well. And I was the captain of the National Geographic Ultimate Frisbee team, which was a ton of fun. All to say, life was good.

While all this goodness was happening in my life, I started to hear an inner voice that told me it was time to move out from office life and go explore the world. This inner voice started to talk to me shortly after a good friend began to tell me his stories of traveling in Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia the previous year. I felt particularly drawn to his stories about the Tibetan people who he’d met in Nepal during his Himalayan trek. He shared about their kindness and explained to me about their tragic history and the brutal decimation and repression of their culture by the Chinese government in Tibet, and how they had become refugees.

The more I heard my friend’s stories, the louder my inner voice got. It’s time for you to live these stories, not just listen to them. It’s time for you to move out of “office life.”

Not only did I have a great job, great colleagues, a fun life, and a budding career in Washington, D.C. I also had a boyfriend and my best friends from college who lived there. Was I really going to give that all up?

As I grappled with this question, I started to get aggravating low back pain. What was this about? I went to my doctor. I went to a chiropractor. I went to a physical therapist. No one was clear about what was going on. I stretched. I exercised. I followed the recommendations, but the pain got worse. On many days I could be found lying on my office floor because it was too painful to sit. The doctors recommended that I get an MRI. I did. Still no answer. Pain still there.

I wondered if this pain was my body talking to me, urging me to leave “office life” because now I couldn’t even sit! I decided to listen.

I bought a backpack, a ticket to Kathmandu (Nepal), and gave four weeks-notice to my boss at National Geographic. I was going to travel for nine months—first trekking in Nepal and then as a backpack traveler throughout Southeast Asia. Think: Lonely Planet style.

Coming from being an ambitious, Type-A planner who had every moment of her calendar filled, I was going to try something different on this trip. I was going to try to live from my intuition.

Would it work to make decisions based off my inner guidance? Would my world fall apart if I didn’t plan every minute of my life? Could I survive a year living from my intuition? And how might my life be different if I did?

This was a risk I was willing to take to find out.

Twenty-five years later, I can happily report that taking the risk to leave my dream job and go on that 9-month journey to Asia changed my life in a very positive way.

First off, my low back pain “magically” disappeared on the plane ride over to Kathmandu. Secondly, instead of living from a limited mindset of what was possible for me based on pre-conditioned cultural expectations that came from the outside, I found a door into my own voice, my own values, and my own power. And lastly, I came to trust my intuition and inner guidance full stop, which supports my work as a women’s leadership coach championing women’s voices around the world today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My clients come to me with a desire to use their voice in a bigger way. They want to have more influence and make a greater social impact. These women leaders and emerging leaders want to give a TEDx talk, write a book, launch a podcast, grow their public speaking career, build a movement, and evolve their brand, life, and career.

At the same time, these women (no matter how long they’ve been a leader) struggle with self-doubt, overwhelm and staying accountable to their dreams. These are busy women. The complexities of their life can sometimes put their larger dreams on the backburner. But their dreams never go away. They know they are being called to have a larger voice in the world and that they are here to make specific change—whether in the arena of gender equality, racial equality, representation, women’s empowerment, peace and justice—or all of the above.

As a women’s leadership coach championing women’s voices in the world over the last 15 years, I am extremely proud and honored to have supported so many women changemakers who are stepping out in a bigger way to create deeply needed change in our world. It truly is an honor to be a part of this larger movement of women’s empowerment and the rise and expansion of women’s leadership around the world.

I understand what it’s like to have a larger calling as a female changemaker, and at the same time, grapple with fears around stepping out in a bigger way and using your voice in newer, and perhaps more daring way (truest to your calling). I’ve been there myself.

This is why I love to be a way-shower for women across that bridge from cultural expectations and norms to their truest voice and calling.

What sets my work apart from other coaches is my connection to the Divine Feminine through my nearly 30 years as a yoga practitioner, and the way I weave this into my work to help women remember who they are at the deepest level of their soul so that they can truly rise and show up in the world as the feminine leader they came here to be.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

You may remember the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, often referred to as “The Great Recession.” At the time, I was running a yoga clothing company, called Lotus Blossom Style, that I founded in late 2007. The company was barely two years into its life when the market crashed. The retail market was especially hit. This was devastating for the company. We went from being an up-and-coming yoga lifestyle brand receiving media attention and a growing customer base, to an ailing company limping along as our customers stopped buying clothes in the recession and our wholesale clients (yoga studios and spas) stopped buying, too.

To make ends meet, I took on some freelance writing jobs and documentary research work. But I didn’t want to let my company go. I was convinced that we could make it through the recession.

Life had other plans. It was time to pivot.

I put on a clearance sale of our remaining inventory. Fortunately, our customer base stepped in and purchased the goods. In fact, the very last batch of inventory (goddess tees) was purchased by a customer who donated these feminine empowerment tees to a yoga studio in San Francisco who offered free classes to a women’s shelter. Despite the heartbreak of having to give up my company, it felt like a storybook ending.

What was I going to do next? Although my company was over, I knew my mission to empower women to remember themselves as goddesses and “blossom” into their potential, was not.

I continued to do some freelance writing, write my own blogs (which I had started with the launch of my yoga lifestyle company), and began to support other female entrepreneurs with their writing. I soon found myself ghostwriting e-books for female entrepreneurs who wanted to expand the reach of their message and their brand.

What I realized in that process was that I didn’t want to ghostwrite for other women. I had my own voice, and they had their own voice, too. I wanted guide them to find their voice, empower them to trust their voice, and write their book with my support as a coach, not a ghostwriter.

This began my pivot into women’s leadership coaching, specializing in helping women find their voice.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

By the time I pivoted into women’s leadership coaching, specializing in helping women find their voice, I had been writing a blog for three years. One year into writing my blog at the intersection of women’s leadership, feminine spirituality, and social change, I was invited to blog for The Huffington Post. This allowed me to grow my platform both nationally and internationally.

Within a couple of years of blogging at The Huffington Post, I was awarded a Press Fellowship from the United Nations Foundation to report at the U.N. General Assembly on women and girls. This was an exciting opportunity for me. Two years later, after giving birth to my son, I was awarded another Press Fellowship. These two experiences grew my reputation as a writer committed to the human rights and empowerment of women and girls.

Not long afterwards, I wrote my book, Find Your Voice: A Woman’s Call to Action, to help women find and use their political voice. It became a bestseller, and the following year I gave a TEDx talk on what I believed to be the missing link to advancing women in leadership.

During all this time, I was writing weekly blogs for The Huffington Post and continually using my voice to call out human rights abuses of women and girls, gender inequality and sexism. At the same time, I was amplifying women’s voices and organizations dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls.

I believe all of this helped me build my reputation within my market. I was living what I preached – how to find your voice and use it as a changemaker.

Contact Info:

• Website: tabbybiddle.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tabby_biddle
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tabbybiddleauthor
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabbybiddle/

Image Credits
Top Image: Margie Woods Photography