Nazlee Mayhew is the founder and director of Global Mindset Solutions. She is a seasonal Business and Money Mindset Coach, a Social Entrepreneur, NLP Master Practitioner, and an emerging author.
Global Mindset Solutions’ vision is to empower, educate and equip women to enhance their leadership and business skills and help strengthen the communities they serve. This will enable them to reach their full potential faster, help boost economic growth and create financial freedom.
Today Africa spoke to Nazlee Mayhew about her professional coaching journey and her passion for empowering women to fulfill their potential through skills development.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Thank you for inviting me to have this session with you today. It’s an honor to be on your platform. A little bit about myself. I’m from Zimbabwe and I’m married, I have a son. We lived in the UK for about 15 years and then we moved to Malta. We’ve been here about eight years.
So my professional career has always been a personal assistant and office manager for 30 years. And when in one of my jobs, a colleague said to me, why aren’t you a life coach? I had no idea what life coaching was about. It’s something that the Americans and those in the UK have been doing for 40, or 50 years.
And that’s based on the fact that I used to also run workshops from time to time in the organization, whether it was diversity and inclusion, well-being, or personal development. So when she asked me that question about six years ago. I looked into becoming a life coach and I did my first certification.
It just made me realize that my passion for learning, which started many years ago as a young child, always reading books, we were always encouraged to read books by our parents.
My mom would leave us in the library where she should go and run errands. Obviously, we were under the care of the librarian and we sat there for hours, my brother and I just reading. And so it’s always been part of our life for this personal development and this hunger. I’m not only speaking for myself, I know for many other people coming from Africa, we always have our noses to the books and we’re always learning.
But you also learn over time, it’s about implementing it. So through life coaching, I then started coaching around confidence, around mindset, which is a lot of the work that I do for reprogramming the way we think based on how we were raised as children, and then also helping them set up their own business.
So that’s how I came to develop Global Mindset Solutions. Because I know that once we change the way we think and the beliefs that we hold about ourselves and the world. We can then start to unlock our full potential.
Can you share your personal journey and what really inspired you to go fully into coaching and consulting and what equally inspired you to found Global Mindset Solutions?
I’ve always felt that there was more to life. I’ve always felt that as women we can have it all; the husbands. the children, family, a career, everything, just like men do. But with women, it’s a different aspect because we’ve got the role in the house as well as career.
So it’s balancing those two without burning out. And also having a support system, whether it’s from your husband or family to help you. I’ve always wanted to own my own business. I started one maybe 30 years ago. And I showed my friend my business card and she laughed at me.
And because I didn’t have the belief in myself, I shelved it. When in the UK, I started to become a wedding planner because I love weddings, especially the church part, which is the spiritual part. But then I also enjoy the event management part of it. And I did that for a month and then I stopped. I sent out loads of letters to potential brides and on social media. I didn’t hear anything and I stopped.
So when this colleague said to me, why aren’t you a life coach? I thought I had to understand what stopped me from building those businesses because it’s something that I was passionate about. And that’s when I started to understand how our limiting beliefs hold us back so much, the stories that we tell each other.
Through life coaching, I then set up Global Mindset Solutions. And I’ve been doing that for five years now, based in Malta. I’ve had women from various backgrounds, various stages in their business, from different educational levels, whether they only went to college or whether they got several degrees.
And what I’ve come to learn is about coaching the person, because initially, I’d also feel intimidated that this person has a degree. There’s a client I have, she’s an engineer, her mind is just so powerful, and the things she talks about. But through coaching, you learn that there’s a person behind that title.
That’s what inspires me to help more women in business or their careers, is getting to know that person, and building that relationship, which I feel is so important. They then can trust you with their inner secrets or things that they’ve gone through, traumatic experiences. Because it’s something very personal.
And it’s not a place where people have that opportunity to share those kinds of things. But because we focus so much on the person, we can get to understand them and what is going on in our subconscious mind and what’s stopping them or blocking them. So that’s my coaching journey, you know, to where I am today.
I recently changed. I’m a Certified Business and Money Mindset Coach. But I recently changed, and it’s a tie to business growth strategies because there are so many strategies, both internal and external, that we can unlock our potential.
What challenges have you faced growing your business Global Mindset Solutions and how have you been able to overcome them?
I’ll talk about external challenges. So financially, you know, we’re not business people. We don’t have a daddy who can give us millions of dollars to start your business. But it’s this passion that you have that keeps driving you every day.
So the first 99 cents I spent on my business five years ago was with GoDaddy. I bought my domain name for my company. And for me, that was the first investment that I made as a business owner.
But the tech part also came into it. So, if you learn as you go along, then you have AI, which has also been included. And so you’re always learning something different, it’s something new.
The tech part is one aspect, and the financial part is another. And then I will start taking money from my savings account and my husband is not a risk taker. So we’d have several conversations around that, that I’m investing in the business.
I was able to do that. And then as I started building my clients, any income that I derived from that, I was able to slowly, slowly add into the business. That’s the financial part is that we’re not able to go to a bank. I opened a business bank account. And they said, well, when you have $10,000 in your account, we can use that as an overdraft.
And I said if I have 10,000 in my account, why would I need an overdraft? So basically, they’re saying, we can’t help you. So you’re not going to get any support from the banks or your parents’ funding or anywhere else. You’ve got to start on your own.
And I would encourage anyone who’s listening right now that even if you have zero cents or 99 cents or $1,000 if you believe in what you’re doing and the impact, it goes beyond just making money in a business. The impact that you’re making in women’s lives, in my case, is that it will keep you going. You will become creative.
You will learn, you’ll use YouTube, you’ll use Google, you’ll tap into free sessions and to start with, but it’s also about implementing. So the finances are one side, the tech is another, about to learn how to use that as well.
Support is very important. If you don’t have any family or friends or they don’t understand your business, and I know a lot of times we would want to sell, if you’ve got products, there’s candles or vegetables or coaching services, whatever it is you have, you want to sell to your family and friends.
Don’t be disappointed if they don’t buy it because they don’t understand your passion. It’s something different to them. So as much as it’s a new thing for you, it’s new for them. So don’t be disappointed if you’re not getting that type of support. You can seek elsewhere. You can get a role model or a mentor or join business groups where there are people who are heading in your direction. Support is also very important.
Then internally it was the self-limiting beliefs. So even though you’ve got all this information, at the tip of your mobile phone or your laptop. You can go into Google and search, how do I do this? Or how do I create that? It’s your belief, can I do this? Is this possible for me? So those are the external and internal challenges that I face and slowly have overcome them over time as well.
How does Global Mindset Solutions empower and support women in leadership and business?
For women in leadership, because not everybody wants to be a business owner. For the women who want to excel in their careers, I work with mid to senior-level managers. I help them also create their leadership development plan so that they know at least for the next 12 months what they’ll be doing in their career and for their teams.
And these are all tied to the organization’s objectives as well. I help them also understand what their strengths are because more often than not, for women, is that we downplay our skills. We dim our light, we don’t show who we are because of various aspects growing up where you’ve been told to be quiet or you should just be in the home and not do anything.
So a lot of these things hold us back. And it’s unlocking their strengths and seeing what is my superpower. Who am I? What is my identity as a leader? Because sometimes you may take on that role as a leader, but we’re not fully embracing it or embodying it in the sense that we can help our teams.
So it’s looking at their strengths and their style. It’s looking at their career plan both for the organization and themselves. They may want to be promoted within the company, and we help them work through that. Or they may want to leave in five years and start up their own.
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I work mainly with HR managers, but not only with them specifically. They may want to open their recruitment agency. So we look at that as well, so their leadership plans. We also look at how they can manage people more effectively. So emotional intelligence is one of the big soft skills that we work on, which ties in with communication and interpersonal skills and understanding people.
Everybody has a story. Everyone is going through something. And sometimes we can bring that to work, and our managers may not pick up on that as well. It’s been able to get to understand your team so you can get them to be more productive and perform even better, which in turn will lead to the company gaining more profit as a result. So that’s for women in leadership.
For women in business, I help them set up their business plans and include strategies like sales, marketing, and digital marketing, which is quite popular. Everybody uses social media these days to develop their signature program with all the modules that are involved in it as well.
And to help them identify the ideal client and who they want to work with. And first of all, a lot of my clients, like myself, we’re introverts. So going onto social media is quite a busy place, it’s quite a noisy place. How do you then use social media to your advantage as an introvert, but also be able to grow your business through that? That’s how I help both women in leadership and business.
You didn’t include men. Or is Global Mindset Solutions only for women?
(Laughs) I coached a team last year and one of them was male. And then I did offer mentorship to a few people earlier this year, and one of them was male as well. So it’s just that because I’m a woman I find it easier to interact with women.
I must say that I’ve had one or two occasions where a man would want to work with me, but it quickly went south. So I’m not in a hurry to connect with men in that sense, because it can go either way. But it’s not that I’m not open to coaching men. It would be somebody who wants to access our services and be focused on themselves and not have a hidden agenda.
Since you launched, what strategies have you used to attract and retain your clients?
Coaching is a very personal journey for clients. For myself, I found networking to be the most powerful way. So I also attend International Women’s Day events and speak to other women who are either the speakers for that event or when you’re mingling with them or chatting with them afterward through networking.
And I’ve acquired clients through that way, which is quite powerful. So it’s all about building relationships. They may pay for my high-end product or they may attend a workshop where they might buy an ebook for $10. When we also host our events, either International Women’s Day or other events throughout the year, we have get-togethers or lunches.
I would go first to those people. So they become clients and friends as well. So they would also then refer me. I’ve had a few referrals as well in the last 18 months where people say, you know, I’ve worked with Nazlee or I haven’t worked with her. But I would recommend her, you know, and I’ve got clients that way as well.
So it’s all about building relationships and it’s not something that’s done overnight. Social media is another way where you can obtain clients. So providing value through your posts, connecting with people, gaining new friendships or relationships with people business-wise where you can also grow your business through social media as well.
What are some of the common mindset blocks that you have seen in your clients, and how do you help them to overcome them?
I would say the biggest one is imposter syndrome because the majority of my clients are high-achieving, ambitious women. They know what they want. They’ve achieved a lot in their life. But there’ll still be something that’s holding them back.
And imposter syndrome is the belief that you’re a fraud. Who’s going to believe me? Who’s going to think that my credentials or my qualifications are genuine, which they are? So that’s one area that holds us back a lot. And it’s also an area that I’ve gone through myself. I’m able to identify them as well because it’s work that I’m familiar with.
The lack of confidence, growing up as a young girl, you’re told you’ll get married, you’ll have children, your life is just you and your husband. If you do get a job, you go to work and come back. We don’t go and play golf like the men did when they closed business deals or gonna have a drink in the pub.
It’s different for women. I’m talking more about my life as an African woman. And so you find that even if you are ambitious, that you did go to university, you have your degrees, something is holding you back. And you don’t have that confidence. Even if you do speak up in the boardroom, this is for women in leadership, you’ll find that, sorry to say, it’s mainly men.
Not only that, say women wouldn’t do it. but you’ll be spoken over like what do you have to say? I am more important than you. And if you’ve got egos in the boardroom, it tends to make you dim your light.
We help them build that self-confidence and that self-belief, and that’s by tapping into their strengths and their superpower. Where if somebody’s speaking over you, you’re able to stand up for yourself and advocate for yourself and say, could I finish what I was saying? You don’t have to be as aggressive as the other person.
Some women want your position and know that you’re scaling up the ladder and they also want to hold you back. How do you tackle those types of things in the corporate world?
The other one is the money mindset. We go back again to your childhood. Although I’m a coach, I’m not a therapist, but I will go back into your childhood to get to understand who raised you. What do they say? What beliefs are you holding the values that you have from your family?
And there’ll be a lot that we’ll take away from our parents, without a doubt. But sometimes we’ll hear our parents saying things like rich people are evil. Money is the root of all evil. Even the Bible says that. The Bible doesn’t say money is the root of all evil. It says how you use it is where it becomes evil. But the money itself, it’s a tool. It’s a transaction that we use.
Back in the day, the Romans used to use salt. Salt was more important than gold. And that’s where the word salary came from. Today we use money. So just giving the comparison that it’s a tool. Or they say we have to work hard for everything in life. We’ve got to work twice as hard.
My grandmother, I used to go and visit her in the village as a young girl. And I couldn’t speak the local language. And she didn’t speak much English. But we used to communicate. And she said to me, she said, my child, you have two strikes. One is you’re a girl. And two is that you will find that you’ll be held back in life because you’re a girl of color. And that stayed with me for a long time.
I used to wrestle and always fight against the world because I had those beliefs. But she also told me that I’m amazing. I come from my mom and her and the village and our people when we get together. And I’ve seen all the struggles that they’ve gone through. And we rise through it all.
My grandmother is late, sadly, she passed away on my birthday. She’s always been special to me, and I remember those conversations. So when it comes to making money, you’ll find with my clients that they don’t want to charge. Especially in the coaching space where we’re coming from servant leadership where we’re helping people. We want to help people heal if they’ve gone through traumatic experiences or if they want to rise in their careers. So we’re very much for our clients.
But then if you’re saying, I need to sell my services, then you find people back away. Or they’ll be on social media and they’re posting quotes from the gurus or from the Bible or how you can change your mindset. Those are all great. And I’ve also done it myself, don’t get me wrong. But it’s surface level.
We need to be able to have somebody read our post and say, oh my goodness, you’re talking about me. Like the client I had who said, I read a post a year ago and it stuck with me. And when I realized I was still having this problem, Nazlee came to mind. And that was from 12 months ago. How much information are we taking in every day?
People are scrolling past your posts. And when you speak to the women, it’s like, if I do sell my services and I do make money, am I going to be able to keep that money? Because we do have a relationship with money. And it impacts different areas of our life. So these are the challenges that women face.
They’re limiting beliefs, feeling they’re an imposter. They’re money beliefs. And then also just as a business, how do you build a business without having a business manager or a business development manager helping you? You’re doing it from your heart and your passion.
But do you wanna build a profitable business so that you can quit your jobs, you can spend more time with your kids so that you can pay for their private education, don’t have to struggle with you and your husband, you have your dreams. So how do you do that? And that’s the core of the work that I do.
What tools and techniques do you use in your programs to invoke new insights and create lasting change?
It starts with asking powerful questions. So we do have a tool kit where we have questions that we can ask, whether it’s based on the goal or what they’re going through in their personal life. But asking those questions is something that we don’t get the time for.
You think even if as a manager, you’re leading your team, when you’re meeting with your manager, this is what’s happening. This is what I was dealing with. It may have been somebody was underperforming at what I did, or business was going well. And even if you do have those one-to-one meetings with your manager as well, it will be around the business aspect.
But coaching is so personal that we sit with that person and we listen. So even the non-verbal cues tell us a story. There’s an NLP technique, and NLP is neuro-linguistic programming, that if we’re talking right now and you keep putting your head down, it’s you accessing emotions. If you’re looking up, you’re thinking, that time that I was working with my uncle, what is it that I was doing?
Even your body language tells me a lot. If you’re folding your hands, I’ll know that most of the time you’re protecting yourself. Or if you say, oh, it’s really difficult to start up a business. I could never do it. I don’t have any time. We all have time.
And I’m not talking about time like Beyonce, who wears a whole team of us. But when I speak to women and find out, let’s go through your week. So it’s also looking at your daily habits. So it’s asking those questions.
Then look at your daily habits. And they’ll tell you, well, I scroll on social media for two hours in the evening when the kids are going to bed. I watch Netflix the whole weekend. I’m always following this other coach and seeing what she’s doing. When are you spending time on your business?
So if your time is constantly going out, but you’re not focusing back on yourself. Then you’re saying let’s start. Saturday morning, you can ask your husband or partner if they can take the children for 30 minutes or an hour. You just work on your business or be able to say to your family because they are part of the business Mom’s got some work to do, so can I just have one hour?
It’s finding those pockets where you want to achieve your goal. You will find the time. If I go to social media I’m not scrolling and reading on you know reality shows or what this person had to say about somebody else. It’s negative. It’s not helping me.
I do find useful information and I might read it. But my purpose when I go on social media is I want to connect to my community. I want to share information. I want to build new relationships. Can you see it’s a different mindset from I’m going on to scroll and see what’s going on in the world and to gossip and put my comment on it, and then you get up into a fight with people?
It’s looking at their daily habits and how they can find those pockets of time, looking and asking them those powerful questions, using techniques like the NLP that I was talking about, and developing a plan for them.
They may have an idea or a vision for their business, but it’s not five years from now. It’s not three years from now. It’s now. And a lot of the time, especially when I’m talking from Africa, we want to put food on the table. I need to feed my child. I need to pay my rent. And those are all valid. Don’t get me wrong. My child needs new school shoes. They grow so quickly and new school uniforms. And the school has got another fee that we have to pay.
So we’re thinking, how can I go on and make money to take and pay for those things? But you’re going from a point of, I need to dig into Nazlee’s pocket. I need to get that dollar from her. How can I do it? And we can see it a mile away. You can see it a mile away. So you find that I’m not selling any services. I’m not making any money.
It’s because I know you only want my money. And when I’m talking about building relationships, I’m talking about an authentic place where you can build relationships with people.
And then people will gladly part with their money for your services. I can tell you that 80% of the clients that I’ve worked with, they’ve paid me straight away. They didn’t think about it. And they didn’t go and hire somebody else. They just didn’t ask me, we want to work with you.
I said I’ll send you the contract. They sign it, they pay, or they pay a deposit, and we get going. Because they know that I’m invested in them. Yes, I have a business. But if you focus on how I can get that dollar from that person, you’re not going to get anything out of them at all.
So those are the tools that we use in terms of, how are you managing your business. What’s your vision? What’s your mission? Five years from now, what impact do you want to make in the world? And then we work backward to where we are today and how you can start building that business.
How do you measure the impact of your coaching programs on your clients?
The impact is that they change their relationship with money. They go from a scarcity mentality to an abundance. So the scarcity mentality is we have a chocolate cake and there’s 12 slices and we all think I’m only going to get one slice. And if we’re 14 people, one of us is going to have to share with somebody else. So we’re thinking that I need to get my slice of cake and I’m gonna do it by any means possible because I want their slice of cake.
What we don’t realize, if you ask the host, she has three other cakes in the kitchen. So you’re only seeing, that’s the abundance mindset that there’s always more for me. I mean, you wake up in the morning and the birds are singing. They don’t go to the supermarket to buy food, but they’re singing and they’re happy.
From a faith point of view, if God is providing for the birds and the bees, they find flowers and things like that, what more for us? So when you start thinking about this enough for me, or I’m not going to compare myself to another coach. How many clients do you want to work with?
If she’s working with 10 and you work with 10, how many people are on Facebook every day? There are billions of people. So if you only want to work with 10 people a year or 20 people a year, from that 7 billion, that’s from the cake analogy, that there’s more.
You may just get a slice today. You may not get the slice because you’ve gone to work with somebody else. But it’s making that impact that’s believing in yourself, which is transformational and long-lasting. Because the higher you go or the next level you reach, those doubts are going to come back because our mind has one purpose, and that’s to keep us safe.
That’s all it has to do. It’s got one job. How am I going to keep this person safe? So now she was charging $10 an hour. Now she wants to charge $100 an hour. No, no, no, no. What if she gets rejected? What if people laugh at her? What if people tell her that she’s an imposter?
All those thoughts that you had at the beginning come back. But we build it to such a place that we can say, do you know what, to your inner voice, I got it. I know that I’ve got the support to do this. So you go straight away, I’ve got this negative thought in my mind.
I’m not going to be able to get a client for $100. Let me go back to charging 10. No, but I’ve invested in myself. I’ve invested in my business. I’ve got clients who are willing to pay that $100. So what is it that I would need to do next? These are the steps I need to take.
So by building that career plan with them or their business plan with them. You might find that they want to stand in their power stand or it’s getting in tune. Not only with your thoughts but your body, the two have to be connected.
Because I’m sure you’ve seen leaders or speakers whose message is very powerful. But you might find that they’re fidgeting, they’re shifting from one foot to the other, they’re staring at the back of the wall. So maybe they’re not fully confident in themselves, but the message that they’re delivering is great.
It’s those kinds of things that we help them and make that impact. So it’s transformational and it’s long lasting. Even if I work with a client for four months, I’m not going to want to continue working with them like, say, a therapist would. Because I have now given them the tools to start their business or grow in their career.
And when they have those doubts, you know, they will, you know, be able to say, who is it that I need to tap into now? We tap into the moments where they are most comfortable about themselves, and we get them to a position where they can hold it.
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So that even if they are feeling nervous in an interview, or they’re talking to a potential client, or going on a date, you pull that person right out. Because that young person, or even your future self, is within you. So that’s where the transformation comes in.
What are your plans for Global Mindset Solutions?
I’d like to open up an academy in Zimbabwe within the next two years. And I’d like to over the next five years, once it’s opened, help at least a million women in Zimbabwe through paid or through free workshops.
It’s something that we would want to do. It could be a grant from organizations who provide business owners with grants and I can invite women on for free workshops or I can have get-togethers and then also, you know, obtain paid clients. And I believe that the more empowered women are and also working together with men.
We need men as our allies, that it’s not a threat to them, that we’re not taking over the home. He’s the provider and the protector. What you’re saying is if you think of the bird when he’s building, she will fly out and bring a twig, she’ll fly out and bring a flower, she’ll fly out and bring the grass.
We are builders, you know, for the majority of women, we bring children into this world, we can make great things. For the families that are together, it’s to help them build so they can achieve their goals together. For women who are single and raising their children to be able to not struggle.
So by providing women with the financial resources so that they can become more financially independent and time independent. The big thing with women is we don’t spend enough time on our self-care. Self-care is seen as a luxury.
And it’s because we’ve got all these tasks and by no means am I putting any of them down. We enjoy doing them. We enjoy serving our families and extended families, our parents who raised us as well. But sometimes you also just need to rest because you have that time to yourself.
What advice would you give to women or others who are starting their business?
I would say to them that there’s a saying, and this is a shortened version. It says the richest place on earth is the graveyard. There are so many of us who pass away without having unlocked our full potential. We all have a gift. God has given every single person you come across a gift. So it’s for you to use that gift.
When you ask, what is my purpose on earth? That is your purpose to find what gift has God given me and use that as your purpose to help other people. It’s tough. It’s not easy. You will face many challenges, whether it’s people who only want your money and they’re not interested in building a relationship with you.
There will always be challenges, you will doubt yourself, but surround yourself with people who are heading in the same direction. Remove yourself, even if from social media, I have a WhatsApp group and the ladies have said they’ve deleted their Facebook pages or Instagram pages because it’s draining. Social media has gotten to a point where it’s not so social.
So if you are on social media, spend time wisely, and know your goal, why am I on social media? If I’m going onto Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook, I’m sharing information with people. So getting to understand what your goal is.
There are four things I talk about, it’s to pivot. So if you start your business and you see that your business is not working, then pivot. No one’s going to know unless you want to tell the world.
Also, if you feel that you’re struggling and not making an impact. Pause, take a break, go for a walk, be out in nature, read a book, go swimming, or go back to your hobbies, what do you enjoy doing? If you need to pull over because you’re in somebody else’s lane, and I always say stay in your lane, just drink your water and stay in your lane, pull over so you can start again.
Follow people who are successful if you are on social media and you enjoy doing that. It’s remembering your why. So why did you start? What’s your purpose? What’s your vision? Do you have a roadmap for where you’re going? Hang around with people who inspire you as well. You know, find a role model, hire a coach. There are several things to do, but keep going.
Find out more about Nazlee Mayhew
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