What if everything you've been told about building your personal brand is the wrong place to start?

Ali Leung spent her career building some of Canada's most recognizable brands, Unilever, Meta, Weight Watchers, and Shopify. She knows exactly what goes into making something that looks impressive from the outside. And somewhere along the way she realized that knowing how to build a brand taught her almost nothing about knowing herself.

In this episode we get into why "build your personal brand" makes her cringe, why you are the product and not the packaging, and what it actually takes to build a presence that lasts. We talk about the honest feedback that changed how she leads, the season when her career looked impressive on the outside and didn't match on the inside, and how she rebuilt her confidence from the ground up.

Her reframe is simple and a little provocative. Don't be yourself. Become yourself. This conversation is about what she means by that, and why the work is internal long before it ever shows up on the outside.

1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, a space for honest conversation where I share the ugly truth that lives underneath all the glamour and celebration of success and growth.If this episode resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a woman who may need to hear this.

Links and follow

• Find Ali on LinkedIn under Alison Leung
• Everything from the show is at beacons.ai/1800goaldigger
• Voice DM or follow on Instagram @1800goaldigger
• Email me 1:1 at hello@1800goaldigger.com

This week I am not bringing you a polished episode. I am bringing you an update, told to the small circle of women who actually press play and stay.

Two things happened. A woman called me brave, and it made me sad. My mentor watched me feel stupid, and told me the feeling was irrelevant. It took me a few days to realize they were the same story.

This episode is about the difference between feelings that ask to be witnessed and feelings that do not deserve to drive, about bravery, grief, mentorship, self-trust, and the discernment it takes to keep becoming. The feeling is real. It is just not always relevant.

#1800GoalDigger #FeelingsArentFacts #AmbitiousWomen #SelfTrust #PersonalGrowthForWomen #HonestConversations #SeasonTwo #InnerCircle

In October 2023, Nehal got a 5-minute phone call that ended 23 years of her professional career at one of Canada's top five banks. 6 months later, her 16-year marriage was over too. This is the story of what she did with the wreckage.

For most of her life, Nehal did everything "right", the secure job, the marriage, the family that looked, from the outside, like the one everyone wanted. Then the career she tied her identity to disappeared, and followed that she finally heard what she'd been ignoring for years. What came next wasn't a breakdown. It was a total reset, and the start of Born to Rise and Glow.

We talk about the signs she ignored, the cultural script of "men will be men," the moment her teenage daughter held a mirror up to her, and the unglamorous work of rebuilding a self at 45, faith, journaling, meditation, and learning to be authentically herself out loud.

Nehal coaches women and youth through career transitions, the end of a relationship, and finding your footing as a parent in the middle of it all. Book a free 30-minute discovery call: https://mentaa.com (search for Nehal)

This is the first guest episode of 1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, and it's exactly the kind of honest conversation this show exists for. If you're in your own journey of rebuild, this one's for you.

Follow 1-800-GOAL-DIGGER so the next conversation finds you. Find me on all social @1800goaldigger. Send me a voice DM on Instagram with your questions or a personal story. With your permission, your voice could be part of a future episode.

For a long time, I believed that success required stripping myself of softness, performing confidence instead of actually having it, and calling that strength.

This episode is the one that explains why Season 2 looks the way it does. Why it went inward before it went anywhere else. Because the truth is: before you can lead a room, you have to lead yourself.

I explore what nobody tells women about leadership — especially in industries where the template was built without them in mind. The myth that vulnerability is a liability. The cost of wearing a hard shell for so long that you forget who's underneath it. And why the most effective leaders in the room are rarely the loudest.

Drawing on my own experience as a woman in tech sales, research from Dr. Tasha Eurich, Daniel Goleman, and McKinsey, this episode makes the case that self-awareness isn't soft. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

The pursuit of growth should not come at the cost of forgetting yourself inside of it.

1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, a space for honest conversation where I share the ugly truth that lives underneath all the glamour and celebration of success and growth.If this episode resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a woman who may need to hear this.Find me on all social @1800goaldigger. Send me a voice DM on Instagram with your questions or a personal story. With your permission, your voice could be part of a future episode.

⚠️ Content note: This episode discusses addiction, suicide loss, grief, and guilt. If this feels too heavy today, it is okay to come back when you are ready. If you or someone you know is struggling: call or text 988 (Canada & United States). Any time. Any day.

This is the episode I did not know if I would ever record.

The real reason behind the long silence between seasons is notthe puppy.

It is about a friend. A listener who believed in this podcastbefore it was anything, who trusted me with something real, who reached outwhen she was struggling. It is about what I said, what I wish I had said, andwhat happened four months later.

It is about the thoughts that play on repeat. The guilt youcarry when you love someone and you wonder if things would have been different.

It is about the difference between responsibility andcausation. And why I confused them for so long.

It is about coming back — not because I have it figured out,but because silence is not the answer.

Maybe guilt is not always proof that you did something wrong.

Maybe sometimes guilt is proof that you loved someone.

1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, a space for honest conversation where I share the ugly truth that lives underneath all the glamour and celebration of success and growth.If this episode resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a woman who may need to hear this.Find me on all social @1800goaldigger. Send me a voice DM on Instagram with your questions or a personal story. With your permission, your voice could be part of a future episode.

What if the definition of success you have been chasing was never actually yours?

In this episode of 1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, Mika answers the question: What is the one thing you know now that you wish you could go back and tell your younger self?

Through a deeply personal letter to her 12-year-old self, Mika reflects on the pressure to achieve, the comparisons many of us grow up hearing, and the way family, culture, and society often teach us to measure success against a ruler we never chose.

This episode explores the emotional cost of chasing someone else’s version of success, the powerful lesson behind the businessman and the fisherman story, and what it means to take your power back by defining success for yourself.

It is a conversation about failure, joy, self-trust, community, and the courage to begin before everything is perfectly figured out.

If you have ever achieved something impressive but still felt strangely empty, this episode will feel like a mirror.

Reflection questions from this episode:

What definition of success did you inherit? Who taught it to you?

What would success look like if you defined it honestly, by yourself?

What small joy have you been dismissing as a distraction that might actually be pointing you in the right direction?

1-800-GOAL-DIGGER, a space for honest conversation where I share the ugly truth that lives underneath all the glamour and celebration of success and growth.If this episode resonates with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a woman who may need the reminder that she does not have to keep performing a version of herself to be worthy.Find me on all social @1800goaldigger. Send me a voice DM on Instagram with your questions or a personal story. With your permission, your voice could be part of a future episode.

What if confidence has nothing to do with being the loudest person in the room?

In this episode I challenge one of the most common narratives women in male-dominated fields hear — be more assertive, speak up more, take up more space — and offer a completely different framework.

Real confidence is not performed. It is built. Through accumulated evidence, kept promises, and the discipline of showing up even when you do not feel ready.

I also get honest about something most people leave out of this conversation — pretty privilege, why I still maintain my appearance deliberately, and what it means to navigate the world strategically rather than pretend the rules do not exist.

This is a conversation about self-trust, self-efficacy, and what it actually looks like to play the game on your own terms.

Subscribe for new episodes every Monday.Send me a voice DM on Instagram @1800goaldigger — your story could be part of a future episode.

Yesterday was Mother's Day. And while everyone was posting tributes and beautiful photos, I found myself wanting to say something different.

Something more honest.

Because not every mother-daughter relationship fits inside a caption. Not every love story between a mother and her daughter is simple. And not every daughter knows how to say what she actually feels, because what she actually feels is not just one thing.

In this episode I am doing something I have never done before.

I am saying the things I never said.

This is not a tribute. It is not a takedown. It is something harder and more honest than both.

It is a letter.

If you have ever loved someone and resented them at the same time. If you have ever wanted to honour your mother while quietly grieving what she could not give you. If you have ever carried something heavy about this relationship and never had the words for it, this episode is for you.

You are not alone in this. And it is time someone said that out loud.

Subscribe to 1-800-GOAL-DIGGER on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

If his episode made you feel something, if something landed, share it with someone who might need to hear this.

@1800GOALDIGGER a space for honest conversation where I share the ugly truth that lives underneath all the glamour and celebration of success and growth.