S1 E7: finding authentic confidence (part one)
Welcome back to the Colorful Futures Podcast! This week I’m joined by confidence coach Erika Eileen, and trust me—this conversation is everything. ✨ We’re digging deep into the wild, messy, and transformative journey of building true confidence, from feeling good in your body to owning your worth in the business world.
Erika shares her path from body confidence coaching to mentoring entrepreneurs, and we get into the nitty-gritty of how confidence isn’t just about showing up—it’s about teaching, advocating for yourself, and releasing the need to fit into other people’s expectations. We talk about the struggle of the “good girl” mentality, navigating career fulfillment while staying true to your values, and how identity and shame can shape your journey.
If you’ve ever questioned your confidence or felt held back by what others think, grab a cozy blanket. your favorite snack, something to fidget with and get comfy. Let’s get into it and release some of that shame together. 💖
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Who is Erika Eileen?
Erika Eileen (She/Hers) isn't your typical run-of-the-mill coach! Through Erika's content and coaching, she will have you strutting into any room, oozing confidence and charm. Whether it's in the bedroom, the boardroom, or anywhere else, you're going to rock it like a pro. You can say goodbye to those pesky insecurities that have been holding you back, and hello to a whole new level of empowerment when you start to hang out in her spaces! Erika Eileen's, aka The Confidence Coach for the Girls*, coaching honours the individual's needs, desires and life experiences first and helps her clients create a life worth living for THEM. She is known for holding her client's hand and holding space, as much as she is known for giving her clients a little push off the edge when she knows they are ready and have what it takes to SLAY!!! If you want someone who will keep it real with you, and use her own life lessons as an example to show you that confidence isn't about being PERFECT.... Erika is your gal!
Follow Erika on Instagram to learn more about her work.
Transcript
Liora Alvarez: Hello, hello! Welcome to another episode of the Colorful Futures podcast where we talk about the intersection between intersectionality and careers. I'm your host, Liora Alvarez, career coach and HR consultant. And today we have such a special guest. I'm so excited to have you here. Erica, who is a confidence coach, business coach, biz, body, bedroom, just all the things that impact our confidence and our lives. And I'm just really thrilled to have you here as our first guest.
Erika Eileen: I am so excited to be here, partly because I saw this come into fruition, partly because I got to be inside of it when it was an idea and now I get to be the first guest, as I should have been. The Capricorn in me is like, absolutely, the Leo rising in me is like, 100 % there's no other option. But yeah, I'm really excited to be here. I love your audience and I love your community. So I'm very excited to chit chat and to spice things up in their careers.
Liora Alvarez: Yes, and I love you and I love you for being here and I love you for being on this journey with me. You have been here since day one. Like I don't even think I had any revenue. I had zero sales when we first started working together last summer, two summers ago. It's wild.
Erika Eileen: You had an inheritance, you had an inheritance. Dark humor, sorry. You had an inheritance and you had an idea and you had some confidence and you made a motherfucking meal out of it.
Liora Alvarez: Yes, exactly. So do you want to give a little bit of background on your work? What you do and then I would love to hear kind of what led you to where you are now, in your career journey.
Erika Eileen: Yeah, so my job, I always call it a job because I have to mentally tell myself that it's a job because it's so fun. But my job essentially is mentoring and coaching folks in all aspects of confidence. It originally started with body confidence and almost like interpersonal confidence in terms of like, who you are as a person and how you view yourself. But very quickly I realized that confidence kind of overflows into every single aspect of life, whether you think it does or not. And it just kind of bloomed from there.
So I work with folks who are specifically in the realm of looking for help in the bedroom. So sex and sexuality. I work with people in business and I work with people who are just like, yeah, looking for body confidence and general confidence within themselves. And as my business flows, as my content flows, sometimes I have more business clients, sometimes I have more body confidence clients, but really truly there was different parts of my career where I was connecting with lots of different people and trying to figure out who I wanted to support and who I was best able to support and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, where you live, what size you are, what color of skin you have, what your identity is and what you do for a job.
Everyone struggles with confidence in very similar ways, which is actually kind of cool because there's not many things in the human experience that can be shared among many. So yes, there are lots of differences, but the end, the root of it, like, body confidence is body confidence. There'll be things that some people experience that others won't, but at the end of the day, it's always pretty much stemming from the same spots.
Liora Alvarez: Yes, that is so true. And I love that, I think we've talked before about how you like you, have a niche, but you don't have a niche. And I love that because I can so relate. Because like nothing exists in a vacuum.
Erika Eileen: It doesn't. And I remember on one of my first coaching calls with my coach, I was like, I'm gonna sell confidence. And she was like, just so you know, you are not going to make as much money as the person selling a diet. And I said, just so you know, that just fucking lit a fire under my ass, thank you.
And it was literally the go-getter of my career because I was like, I know that everyone can go out and start a diet. I know that everyone can go out and make more money and try to feel better about themselves. But what happens when you have a baby? What happens when you all of a sudden are diagnosed with a chronic disease? What happens when you lose a limb or your abilities end, okay? Your relationship with your body is gonna look different. What happens when you lose your job? What happens when your partner is hot-wiring money from you without knowing and now all of a sudden you have nothing in your bank accounts when you thought you had 500,000? What happens?
So yeah, like, confidence is hard to sell and it's hard to market because it's so interlapped and it's so over-layered into so many different parts, but that's what, like, excites me. That's what turns me on as a business owner. I'm like, okay, I'm going to find a way that these connect and I'm going to make this understandable for you so that you can move through it and not feel like shit about it.
Liora Alvarez: So you posted something to your stories. I think it was yesterday about how you are like, you just started this group program and you're kind of rediscovering your ability to teach and like leaning into this teacher role. And I find this really interesting because you started as a teacher, right?
Erika Eileen: Mm-hmm.
Liora Alvarez: So how does that feel to like, kind of in a very like, unrelated but related way come full circle back to owning that teacher role?
Erika Eileen: Mm-hmm, so the thing I love about like, the human existence is that like, everything comes to a shock and nothing should come as a shock. So when I was younger, when I was 10, my first job, my first career was, I called it “Mother's Helper”. And I gave out pieces of paper on colorful, very Liora branded paper, when I was 10. And I printed it out at the library and it said, hi, my name's Erika. I am a helper from your kid's school, because I was helping with the kindergarten class. Like, I love your child so much. Like, if you need anything, I would love to help. I can't babysit yet. But like, if you need someone to play with your kids while you do grocery or like while you fold your laundry, while you do housework, like I would love that. I charge $5 an hour for as many kids as you need.
I undervalued myself at the time, and that was my first job. And then as I progressed throughout my childhood, I worked at an ice cream store, and then I was a lifeguard, and then I was a children's like, daycare person at the YMCA. Then I was all of these things. And so every single job that I've had has been in some sense as a teacher or as a mentor. And so, like I said, I did Zumba instructing. I was a lifeguard. I was a swim instructor. I was a mother's helper. I was a canoe coach as well. I was a camp counselor.
Then I started kind of, going to school. I went to school for physical health and education, as well as gender equality and social justice. And in that, I was like, I want to be a doctor. That was kind of like my whole thing. I wanted to help people. I wanted to kind of like, just like, guide people.
And I decided not to because of my chronic disease and it was actually not even my own decision. It was kind of like a lead conversation by my dad who I hated taking his advice, but he was like, listen, you don't have to take any other piece of advice from me. But as someone who lives 24/7 with a chronic disease, I just want you to consider what it's going to look like for your future to not only have to care for yourself 24 seven, which is really hard, but also be in a job that has not stable hours, that you're going to be caring for everyone else in the exact same part and field and industry that you have your own trauma in.
And shockingly, because I hated my dad at the time, I listened to him and I'm so thankful that I did. So yeah, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I didn't know. Then I was like, maybe I need to be a teacher. And then I was like, I'm going to do research in cancer and then I'm going to be a lecturer. I didn't.
I started working at Freshie, which is like, a salad bar and a restaurant because no one would hire me. I went to Australia because I was like, fuck this shit. Like, I have two degrees. I did my thesis. No one cares about me. Like, I can't sell myself. So I went on an Eat Pray Love with myself down to Australia where I nannied for a year.
That's where my journey really started because I was like so far from home for the first time ever. Like I had traveled the whole world, but like I don't know if you all ever been to Burns Beach in Australia. It doesn't get more, like, it doesn't get farther from there. So it was there that I kind of like, started finding myself. And then when I got home, I ended up in a nursery, like a preschool and I was teaching and I loved it. They were so sweet. They're so cute, but I was there for the staff and I didn't see it until after I left.
But at that time, when I was starting to go on my confidence journey and like really finding myself, I was sharing online and I was coaching for free in the DMs before I even knew what the coaching industry was. And yeah, I was just sharing my relationship with diabetes and my body and who I was as a person. And after I ended up at the preschool, for some reason, they didn't like the fact that I was like, shaking ass on Instagram in my underwear and then going to work the next day and taking care of these kids and teaching them their ABCs.
But it's funny because now that I'm out of it and I'm in this role, like all of my friends at that job were like, you were not there for the kids. Like, you were great, you can change a diaper and you can have fun. But in reality, like you were the person that kind of led the staff to think positive and to have a different mindset and to enjoy themselves and to not take things so seriously. And that's when I was like, okay, like no matter what I've done, I've always been teaching, but I've also always been kind of mentoring and guiding.
And yeah, this past 18 months in my business have looked very different than the first three years of my career, I think. And I was saying this in my stories yesterday too, like if someone in corporate came to me and was like, I'm not fulfilled in my job. I would be like, okay, you know this. I'd be like, okay, like is it the actual job? Is it the company? Is it the hours that you're working? Is it who you're working with? Is it in the capacity? Is it the industry? Like all of these things, right? Like I would find a way to be like, what isn't clicking? Can we make it work? And if not, like where are those transferable skills so that you can go and find something that you do fucking love and like stop beating your head against the wall and just allow yourself to do that.
But when it comes to like, owning your own business, it's a completely different story because it's so deeply attached to who you are as a person and like, your confidence in general, that my ego completely got in the way the last 18 months of being able to be like, your business grew but it needs to mature. Whereas like, I have matured so much in the last five years just from going through like, estrangement with my parents and my whole family, to being told that I might have cancer and then them being like, psych, it's actually not cancer, like, wrong person. Then I was like, spiraling from that. Then I started reconnecting with my parents and now I've moved back in with my parents at 31.
And yeah, it's a really unique experience to lose, not your purpose and passion, but lose that like, fight that you have and question everything. And then all of sudden, yeah, 18 months later, I'm sitting here being like, like what I wanted to do, it doesn't matter if it was confidence, whether it was body confidence, business confidence, sex confidence, whatever it is. Like, what I want to do is I want to teach and I want to explain, and I want to help people understand. And that is like a really big part of my journey now of being like, it doesn't matter what I'm doing. I just need to be teaching. And like that was so big for me because now I'm like, I just need to teach.
I can teach dogs if I want to. I could go and teach kids again. I can do that, but I need to be in a position where I am learning, myself, and then using that information and passing it on for greater good.
Liora Alvarez: I so resonate with that. I'm a forever student. I love learning, but I love sharing that with others because I'm like, what is the point of learning and like, having these eye-opening, mind-opening experiences if we're not passing that on?
When I was a kid, my mom, my mom's a teacher. She's a late career teacher and she always told me like, oh I could see you being a teacher. And I was like, ew, I don't want to be a teacher. Like, no, thank you.
And now in my job, right, like as a career coach and a consultant, I'm like, I literally am teaching all the time. So I like, somehow found my way in that role anyway. So when I was reading your stories yesterday about like, finding your way into teaching, I was just like snaps all around because I can so relate to that.
You were talking about how, when you were, when you were a kindergarten teacher, I think it was, that you were there for the people. And that's kind of what, I don't want to say, what kept you in that role, but that's really what it felt like kept you there.
Erika Eileen: Oh, no, it kept me in my role. It was not getting handed shit from the children's diapers that they dug out themselves. No, that did not keep me in my job.
Liora Alvarez: Yeah, I'm sure the pay wasn't fantastic either at the time.
Erika Eileen: No, $16 an hour to raise children. That ain't even my own, I can't even dress them how I want to dress them. I gotta dress them in the clothes. Yeah, no. Yeah.
Liora Alvarez: Yeah, so I met with a client and a friend a couple months ago who loves her team, loves the work that she's doing, but she's getting underpaid. And when we were like, having this discussion, there was so much resistance to her actually like, moving on from that and getting paid what she deserves, like what she rightfully deserves and be able to actually feel more stable financially because she was kind of convincing herself of like, oh well, I don't want to leave my team, my team's so great, they've treated me so well, I love this work, but like, I'm not surviving financially, I'm not getting to where I want to be.
But even though she knew that, it's like, so hard to leave this thing that you feel so connected to. So, I'm curious like, what you would say about something like that.
Erika Eileen: Okay, so you know how like 20 minutes ago I was saying like, it's crazy because even though we all look different and we come from different parts of the world and we have different walks, like we all experience the same shit. I have probably had 100 out of my 500 clients go through this. And there are times where I wish I could reach through the computer and like with loving hands, like shake my clients and be like, do you hear yourself? Do you hear yourself?
Like, do you hear yourself? I think, sorry to everyone listening, I'm a hard truth hitter, but that is people pleasing to its core. That is disrespect towards yourself to the core. I think there is so many people who want to be known as good.
And I have this deep belief, especially for femmes, women, non-binary folks, like I have this deep belief that when we are born, the like good little girl, is like embedded in us from the day we are fucking conceived, and that mentality and that pressure that we put on ourselves to be the good little girl does not go away. And so we see it in who we date. We see it in the grades that we get. We see it in how we were in our classes, when we were sitting there being like the goody goody.
And then the boys were throwing scissors at the teacher's head and we were like, can you, can you sit beside Johnny? Like he needs a good little like focus friend. And you're sitting there being like, I have to now babysit this person?
And so I think the idea of this like good girl mentality is like deeply rooted in a lot of us and then as we get older if we don't detach from what we believe people think about us, we go into these careers and we care more about the corporations, their money, and people pleasing and being liked than actually having our own back and I have a really like big connection to the rebel mentality.
It actually fucking saved me, I think, and I read this book on my flight to Australia, and my dad gave it to me and he always is like I sometimes wish I didn't give you that book because he's like, you took it a little bit too fucking seriously. But it was the book called like, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
Liora Alvarez: Yeah.
Erika Eileen: And I don't remember the book, straight up don't remember it. Thank you, ADHD and memory. However, I do remember in that book, it talking about how often we put everyone else in front of us, and how it's a disservice to who we are, and how we feel.
So for clients and for people who come to me and they're like, I love my staff and I love this and I love that and I love that. But like, I literally have to live off of food stamps. No shame whatsoever. But they're like, and the government's now cutting me off from this program or like, I can't afford that. And I'm like, babe, with all due respect, like you deserve more.
You deserve a job or a career that doesn't put you in a state of just always pleasing someone and at the end of the day it just always comes down to how you're perceived and worrying about being the bitch. Like the other day, I said something to a client and I instantly wanted to be like, I don't want to seem like a bitch and I was like, for what? Standing up for myself?
Like, it's one of my clients, I fucking love all my clients but I was like girl, you haven't paid in two months. And like, I'm usually really chill, but I was like, I need some money because I have my own bills to pay, right? So now I'm paying interest on my credit card. And I was like, my gosh, like, I'm so sorry to bother you. Do you mind paying that so I can just like, pay off my Visa and not pay?
But my instant thought was, my gosh, you're being such a bitch for asking. Where it's like, that's your money. Like you, you're paying now to work, girl. You're paying now to work. And so I would say like, you have to dig deep when you're in a situation of trying to decide whether to go or not, and it's the same in the relationship too.
You have to dig deep and ask yourself like, who is at disservice right now and it's always if not mostly typically you and yourself, and you have to make peace with that too because that's really hard to sometimes be like, I am keeping myself in this position.
Like, the government's not going to come and like, raise the minimum wage. This multi-million dollar corporation is not going to be like you know what babes, here's a ten thousand dollar raise you deserve it. So you kind of have to have your own back and I deeply, deeply, deeply believe that I also learned that through my advocacy for my own diabetes. And it happened all also when I was in Australia because I had to advocate for myself across the world.
But yeah, it's a skill that you need to learn, is self-advocacy.
Liora Alvarez: Yeah, I love that. I'm curious, since you meant, you were talking about like, being neurodivergent and being queer and like having a chronic illness. How do you feel like your identity or like, all of these pieces that kind of make up who you are and all these different aspects have impacted your career journey?
Erika Eileen: That's a great question. I feel like every individual walks through life experiencing things. Some people experience generational wealth. Lucky nugs. Some people experience the total opposite, of being born into chaotic and like, disorganized households. Some people are born into amazing households and end up with chronic disease. And some people are born with all of these things.
And I think for me, I really neglected major parts of who I was. And it was because they were all deeply rooted in this like, unspoken shame. So I have type 1 diabetes. I was diagnosed when I was six. When a doctor tells a six-year-old that your body's not working, you instantly go, one, am I dying? Two, what did I do wrong?
Because none of my other friends are sick. None of my other friends are dying. None of my other friends have to now take 10 needles a day and poke their finger and all these things. Like, what did I do wrong? And from age six, my whole brain has been, I'm doing something wrong, I'm doing something wrong. And okay, you have one experience where you're like, you got the flu. You didn't pay attention and your friend was sick and you went for a sleepover anyways. So you can blame yourself for that one thing.
But when you have a chronic disease that you make over 300 active health decisions every day from, every time your blood sugar is high, low, you feel sick, you feel tired, something didn't work, you took too much insulin, you didn't take enough, you have an opportunity to blame yourself. And you have an opportunity to tell yourself that you're not good enough, and that you fucked up, and that you are a failure, and that you don't know yourself.
And then that's just one thing. That's diabetes. Then I had the queerness, and I grew up in a predominantly white conservative town. And I thought like you were either gay or you were straight. And I also like, didn't know, that's my favorite, I didn't know anyone that was gay until grade 12.
Liora Alvarez: Yeah, quotes around “know”, quotes around “grade 12”.
Erika Eileen: Yeah, yeah, for those of you listening, yeah, there's a lot of quotes going on here. And I just thought it was like, you're either gay or you're straight. And I never like, I never even asked myself, like, what are you?
Because I just was born into this comphet community and household and family and environments, and I was a dancer, so I just like never asked myself that, and it wasn't until I was like, 24 that I was like, mmm, wait a second, I don't think it's normal to like, I just kiss girls when I'm drunk, like you know what I mean, like I was actually like able to be like shit, and so like, even just like, neglecting that part is a huge part of my business now, and my career, and my life now, because I'm like, damn like I went 24 years not even asking myself like, is this a possibility for me?
And it was funny because when I actually asked myself about the queerness, bitch, I started asking myself about everything. And that's when I started being like, maybe your mental health isn't normal because I have always been, trigger warning, like, but I just also just speak very freely. Like I have always been suicidal.
Like I always was like, I just don't want to fucking be here. And my whole life, everyone was like, it's because of your diabetes, it's your diabetes trauma. Like it's a long life, living life like this. And I thought it was that, but then I was also so chaotic. Major, major emotions. I couldn't control it. Like I was just always so busy in my brain. I wanted to like, literally pull my brain out of my body most days.
And yeah, when I started being like, wait, if I'm potentially not straight, maybe I'm also potentially like, like maybe this is also not normal to want to KMS every single day. And maybe it's not normal to feel all these things and knowing that I went like 25 years of my life neglecting a lot of things that would have changed the trajectory of my life and I try not to dwell, but it is a mourning experience.
Llike, now when I'm in my business, I'm like, everything is a possibility like I have to be so open-minded and I love that because when I was open-minded about making a relationship with my diabetes instead of just like literally wanting to kill myself with it, right, like all of these things I was like, okay if all these bad things were happening to me and I like, found a way to kind of make a relationship with it and be open to alternative ways with it, like what else is possible.
And now I feel like with my business, it allowed me to do that because I was like, I'm not like, stuck in this whole like, this is what you teach and this is who you are. I'm able to be like, I could probably do this and I could probably do that and I might actually be really good at this. And it's a little bit tricky sometimes when you're someone that is really good at a lot of things, because then you're like, my gosh, I don't know who I am.
And I thought that at first, I really thought I was lacking confidence in knowing myself, but there's also this really beautiful thing where you're able to kind of see the world a little bit more differently and a little bit more open-minded. And you can very quickly tell if something's not for you or not, but being able to be open about it is the missing piece and the part that really ties it together for my business.
Liora Alvarez: I love that you brought in just like, this level of being open to like, exploring what is going on with your own mind and body and heart and spirit. And I talk a lot about this of just like, when you eventually like have that awareness of like, this is how my brain works, or this is like, you know, the the interest that I have, or being queer and or divergent or whatever, I found that that can release a lot of the shame, because you're like, I'm not actually trying to fit myself into this thing, because like, I'm not even meant to be there.
Thank you so much for hanging out with Erika and I for the first part of our conversation this week. You can catch the rest of our convo next week in part two. See you then.