Discover the power of uncovering your hidden gem—the unique talents and passions that truly define you beyond your daily routines. In this episode, Sairan Aqrawi, an accomplished engineer and transitional coach, shares her wisdom on how to reconnect with your core genius, especially for those who feel it’s too late to start a new chapter in life. Whether you’re navigating a career transition, searching for deeper fulfillment, or simply ready to explore what truly matters, Sairan offers invaluable insights to help you find and embrace your hidden gem. This is your reminder that it’s never too late to begin again!

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What Is Your Hidden Gem And How To Find It With Sairan Aqrawi

How To Find Who You Are Outside Of All That You Do

Introduction To Sairan Aqrawi And Her Journey

I’m here with Sairan Aqrawi. Welcome.

Thank you, Marc, for having me.

It’s a pleasure. I had a nice time talking to you before the show. Why don’t you just give our audience, a minute or two of who are you. What do you do? What do you love?

Thank you. Basically, my day job is I’m an Engineer with the Metro Authority. I’ve been an engineer for over 30 years. I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering and my Master’s in System Integration. While I was doing my Doctorate in Engineering here in D.C., I had an opportunity to speak with a group of younger women who were doing their engineering classes, and I fell in love with mentoring and coaching, so I put my Doctorate aside. I joined ICF and became a coach, and I never looked back.

You’ve done a lot of different kinds of coaching, but what you told me before, you’ve done leadership, business, and international transition coaching.

I started with one niche because, when I was speaking on one of the platforms in Illinois, they asked me if I would be willing to participate in a chapter book and talk about the truth about the American dream. There were about 20 or 22 coaches, and we all participated in one chapter. My chapter is called The Truth About the American Dream. My mentor said, “We love your story. You could help a lot of women internationally fulfill the American dream and get rid of those obstacles, the blocks, the culture shock, and the language barrier, and you can help them around that area.”

Transitioning Careers And Mentoring Midlife Women

I was a transition expert for a while. I had a full-blown website, logo, and all of that, but then I decided to pivot on September 1st, 2023 and I shut down that platform. Now, I’m a Business Coach for midlife women. Although I say midlife women, I still get clients who are men. Most of them want to be certified in ICF because I’m a mentor coach, so I’m an ACC.

For those women, I get different kinds of age spans. Some of them are young. They’re still looking for advancement in their engineering careers, and besides doing their engineering, they want to have something on the side, like a small business. What I do is help them start something small on Instagram. Together, we go through a one-month discovery process, building their foundation.

I’m using engineering terms again, even though I’m coaching, and that will help them gain clarity because when they come with a lot of things in their mind, I keep telling them, “You are still not clear about what you want. I need that clarity because if you are not clear, we can’t focus. You need to be clear on what you exactly want.”

Some of them are like me, in their 50s, and are thinking about how to exit their daytime jobs and what to start on the side. Some of them come up with complaints, whining, “I hate my job. My boss doesn’t love me. I don’t like the environment.” What I do is try to tell them, “Let’s keep your job. Let’s start something simple and small. Tell me what exactly your talent or hobby is or what one thing you do really well. We can open an Instagram for that.”

Sairan Aqrawi became an international transition coach after her journey as an immigrant from Iraq. She settled in the United States in 1997 and is using her personal experience to help guide and support people arriving to the U.S.

In that case, you feel like a businesswoman and an entrepreneur. You’re going to stop talking about your boss not liking you because you’re going to look forward to the weekend for that networking event and speaking gig. Now, not only are you an employee, you are a businesswoman or businessman. I feel, Marc, that a lot of clients, and you are a coach, so you know this very well, come to you not because they are totally lost. I think they come to coaches for guidance because they have no sense of belonging. They don’t feel that impact.

They’ve got everything. They have the job, the six-figure salary, the $2 million house, the best wife or husband, the kids are A-students, but they don’t have that joy. I don’t know what it is. “I have everything, but I don’t have joy. I don’t know what’s going on.” When I keep asking them questions, we peel that onion and go deep down. What’s going on? I feel, yes, you do have something hidden. It’s just been buried. You’ve been hiding that hidden gem.

There’s so much you touched on there. I feel like we have four episodes worth of what you said. First of all, getting people connected to what is that hidden gem? I really like that metaphor. Actually, if you don’t mind showing your gem that you showed to me.

It’s my business card. I thought about it. Coaches, we talk IQ, EQ, so emotional intelligence, and as you know, a lot of business cards are just cards that you post after the event. With all due respect, I do keep some business cards. I get to keep some of the business cards. What I did, I thought about it, and because of my Instagram, all my messages normally end with the emoji of a gem. I have the business card. It’s like a hidden gem, so I ordered these. It’s two inches. It’s not big. Is it two inches? You see, it’s only two inches.

What I did was order these from Amazon and ask them to print my name and last name. I take these mostly for speaking gigs here in the DMV area, and I give each member of the audience one of these. I tell them, “Don’t hire me. Don’t contact me yet. I want one thing from you. Go home and connect with me on LinkedIn. See what I am capable of.”

Discover your hidden gem. It’s been buried for too long. Unearth it, embrace it, and let it shine. It’s never too late to start again.

The Hidden Gem: Discovering Your Core Genius

“Look at my Instagram, then peel my name. Just peel that name and throw it away, but keep it beside your computer. Every time you look at this, ask yourself, What is my hidden gem? Have I discovered it yet?” We all have it, Marc. There is no way anyone in the world doesn’t have a hidden gem. Either that hidden gem is asleep or being buried for some reason. I tell them, “Look at it, discover it, then you can contact me.”

That’s brilliant. It’s also a brilliant marketing technique to give someone something that they actually like and will want to look at, and every time they look at it, they think of you. I was sending folks a fridge magnet for a little while and other things like that. I love this. I love this idea of a hidden gem. I don’t know exactly what language I might use around that, but we’re really talking about it, and I see this with people. 

I work with a lot of midlife people as well. The thing that I think I hear in one form or another is, “My life is fine. Maybe money’s fine. Relationships, everything’s fine. The kids are fine. No kids are fine, but I don’t want to just live this fine life for the next 30 years.” We hit midlife, and there is brain development that starts to happen with the white matter in your brain, connecting different ideas, which starts to happen in your 40s. We encounter what I call a midlife catharsis. We have this moment where we realize that we could actually plan out the next 30 years.

To think about spending the next 30 years exactly the way I’ve spent the last 5 or 10 is depressing. I want to have a more vibrant life, not necessarily bigger. I don’t necessarily need to go create some giant thing and be Tony Robbins or whatever. But I do want to feel more meaning in my life, and I want to feel connected to that. When you say hidden gem, I think about that. I hear things like purpose or fulfillment and how can I create something like that in my life?

Coaching Midlife Clients Through Major Transitions

With all of that, our lives are busy. You work with women. I know that you work with folks who are busy, or leaders, or midlife, and they have families. They have responsibilities. One thing I know is that people don’t have a lot of time. What are some of the major frustrations for people who come to work with you?

I sense that most of the clients who seek guidance and coaching, midlife or even younger, have everything available to them, but it has no value. I’ll explain what I mean. Everything you need is available, including technology, AI, and everything around you. We stop creating, we stop art in our thinking, and we stop creation. We stop being innovative, doing innovation. There is no innovation anymore.

Clarity is the key. Without it, you can’t focus on what you truly want. Get clear, then take action!

Everything becomes populist. Everything becomes jazzy, beauty, AI. I copy that picture. I do that course. I look at this art, I just look at the same clothes everyone is wearing on Instagram, and that looks nice on me. We stop being unique, being different, and that’s very dangerous because, as you see with all the coaches, with all respect, most of them look at another coach as a role model, and they try to mimic that and they lose their identity. In return, to answer your question, we lose a soul. Our soul gets lost. I’m trying to be Marc. Marc’s trying to be somebody else. 

It’s okay if I admire your work, but I can present that work in my own style. I have innovation. Why am I copying exactly what you’re doing? This is where the frustration comes from comparison. They compare people in the same industry. I’ll give you an example. Those tech women, they come to me. They say, “I’m 35. I’m still not a manager. I’m still not a chief.” Why do you think when you are 35, you have to be a manager? What book says that? “I don’t know, but I’m 35. Yes, I’m old.” What book says 35 is old?

Where are these terminologies coming from? Are you creating your own book or dictionary or something that I’m not aware of? Same thing with women. They come to me in their 50s and say, “I’m in a midlife crisis. I’m in menopause” all these negative connotations. As a coach, you know this very well. You are a coach yourself. We try to tweak the words to give a positive impact. Stop saying, “I’m old because I’m 50.” What book says that you are too old to open a business when you are 50? Show me that book because I haven’t read that book, and I read a lot of books. What book says you are 50 and cannot open a business? What book says you are too old to be an artist if you are 65?

Speaking of books and artists, many of the most famous writers, especially, published their first anything after 50.

Robert Greene always spoke about it in his Mastery book. He said he didn’t know his niche and his mastery until he was in his late 30s, and that’s Robert Greene. We are talking about Jack Canfield, Robert Greene, all of them. They took a couple of paths until they found out what their mastery was or what their hidden gem or exact niche was. To go back to your question, when those clients come, they’re all over the place.

I have women who come to me, they are 35, they want to be a chief engineer. They want to get pregnant, they want to travel with their husband, they want to have, I don’t know, plastic surgery, they want to be with their friends. You’ve already said nine things at once. What’s going on here? You want to do everything, fine, but what is your priority?

Gaining Clarity In Life And Career

You can be a manager in your 40s, but can you get pregnant when you’re 50? No. What is more important? Gain clarity. What I tell them is, “Without clarity, don’t even dial my number because when you come to me, I don’t want you to vent for the rest of the hour. When I start talking with you, I want you to be clear. What exactly are you looking for? What is the end result you want to accomplish with my coaching? I don’t want you to come to the session just venting that your husband is not helping you around the house. It’s not a problem yet, and I’m not your friend. We are not chatting. This is a coaching session.”

I think it’s something, I forget where I read this, it might’ve been in Karen Davis and her husband’s book, How to Get the Most Out of Coaching: A Client Guide for Optimizing the Coaching Experience. She says in the book, I forget the exact words, but therapy is about healing and coaching is about discovery. Coaching is about let’s get a sense of the pressures and the obstacles and where you are in your life. What are the things that are keeping you where you are now? I say this is why I like that hidden gem thing because what it is you’re not, I see, as you do, all these people out there, “I’ll help you 10x your view,” and that’s great. 

If you’re in the right position, that’s great. Even to do that, I think you have to start with something small, and I think you said it earlier, something meaningful. I think that we have. I’ve heard you say it. I think we have judgments from the world around us and social media about what is meaningful. We compare ourselves to other people. If I’m not doing that, I’m not doing anything meaningful, and that keeps us from action.

If we, as Karen Davis and other people say, have a bias towards action, I hear that in the work that you do, right? In this hidden gem work, where you’re helping people say, “Okay, you don’t have to change your whole life. You don’t have to have the baby and the job, and you don’t have to do all of that at once. Let’s get some clarity on what would be the most meaningful.”

I think that’s actually really nice for those reading, like a really nice takeaway. I know a lot of people, and I know a lot of people who read this have many ideas about what they want to do, especially if you are creative or tapped into that in any way. You have so many ideas. I’ve seen it really change people’s lives doing what you do. It’s when you say, “Okay, those are all great. What if we just picked one? What if we just picked one and worked on it this week?” People start to be in action, and they start to feel that connection, that feeling of belonging, those feelings that people are really after at the end of the day. What would you say?

Totally. Marc, I’ll give you an example. If I had a couple of ladies, I would say, beginning of 40s, single moms having two kids. Just to be a reasonable coach and talk reality here, if I know they are artists and they draw very well, I’m not suggesting they quit their engineering job. Why? Single mom, 2 kids in college or 2 kids in high school, taking care of the elderly, their mom is with them, their parent, whatever, be reasonable. I’m not telling you to quit your job. I don’t have the authority to tell you, but I ask them this question. I say, tell me, when you are not working at the office, not taking care of the kids, what are you doing? “I just draw.” Show me what you draw. They show me. Really? You’ve been hiding this? 

“It’s okay. I’ve been doing this since high school,” and this is how I know this is one of their core geniuses because I ask them, when did you paint that? “Two months ago, and I kept it in the basement.” “How long did it take you?” “I don’t remember.” I ask, “When you go to that basement and look, do you feel the time?” “No.” That is your core genius. You’re doing something, and you don’t feel the time and effort.

I have to knock on the door and say, “Marc, you’ve been in that room painting for three hours.” “Really? It’s been three hours? Why? It felt like three minutes to me.” Do you know why it felt like three minutes? It’s because that’s your core genius. You didn’t feel the time. You didn’t sweat. You were not even thirsty. You didn’t even want to have a bottle of water because that’s your life. That’s your baby. That’s the one good thing you can do, not feeling the clock, not feeling anything. All the noise around you somehow gets muted because you are deep in. You are an artist, or you’re doing mandalas, or you’re writing a book, or you’re a handyman.

There are a lot of men I’ve met. They are engineers, but when I look at the type of furniture they make, I’m like, “I wanted to fight with my husband because he’s not a handyman.” I see what they do around the house. I’m like, “Did you build that?” “Yeah, it’s nothing. It’s a weekend.” “No, it is something. You are a handyman. You are talented. You just happen to be a civil engineer, but look at that closet you made or that bookshelf you made for your daughter. That sells for thousands of dollars. It looks like an antique. It’s okay.” “I just did it in the weekend.” It’s okay to you, but it’s talent. That’s what I ask them. I say, “Please share it. Don’t live in this world without sharing what your hidden gem is because this is very valuable.”

I have many thoughts on the idea of talent, but that aside, I can resonate with this idea of having a thing. What you described to me is the question that I sometimes ask people. It’s like, what are you doing when you’re not doing anything? When you’re not doing your life, what are you doing? Because that’s when you’re just being.

When you’re not dealing with the kids or your partner or your work or the handyman who you’ve had come to your house, when you’re not doing those things, what are you doing? Let’s ignore social media, doom scrolling. What are you doing? I love that. I really love what you said. Where is it that you lose track of time? I’m stealing that. That is such a great key to passion. For me, it’s something that really got in my way actually for a long time.

I think when I turned 40, I got one of these. This is one of those multi-tools that you carry, a total nerd on your belt, like a total dad nerd, but I love it to a fault. I love going around our house and seeing things, and like, “Oh, maybe I can fix that,” like my daughter’s bed. We can’t sit on it without the things, the bars, popping out. I was looking at it and I’m like, “What? Let me figure it out.” There’s a screw missing.

I took one of her pencils, and instead of using a screw, I was like, “I could do that. I could do that all day.” The thing that starts to happen with me with passions like that, or coaching, or writing, or any of these creative things is, I started to feel like it was getting in the way because I wasn’t spending time doing that. I was losing time, and you’re “losing time” but what I was gaining was a sense of belonging with myself. When I come back to the work of my life, the coaching work, the creative work, I am much more, I don’t know what other word to use, but I feel much more powerful. I feel more resilient.

I feel like I’ve accomplished something, spending time with my kids. My wife and I share a lot of the responsibilities, but I do a lot of the day-to-day. I take my daughter to school, I cook dinner, and we share bedtimes, but I do a lot of the bedtimes. There was a time when I felt frustrated because I was supposed to be working.

I’m supposed to be doing this other work, which I also love, it’s great, but once I got into the idea that I also love that and my work is not my being, and when my life ends, I don’t want to look back and say, “I did all the work I could.” I want to say, “I did good work.” I want to say, “I was a good partner.” I want to say, “I was a good father.” I want to say, “I fixed a bunch of stuff around the house.” All of these things are important to me.

I will just touch on one thing you said because I don’t want to forget the thought. You said that when you feel frustrated, sometimes when you do so much coaching, art, job, father, partner, and everything, sometimes we all go through this. You feel like you want to reset and shut down. Let’s say you take a break from coaching. I’m just giving you an example. Let’s say, “I’ve done so many clients. I did a lot of workshops. I did ten student gigs in a year. I’m just going to take a break. I made a lot of money. I’m not going to do coaching again. What is this coaching? Everybody became a coach.”

On the block, if you put my ZIP code, all my neighbors are coaches, and then something happens. This happens with purpose. While you are on break, you decide not to do coaching again, not working, and all of a sudden, you open your email or your text, and you see someone that you coached, someone who attended your workshop two years ago, whom you even forgot their first name and last name. They are thanking you. They are in tears. They appreciate every effort you put into changing their life. They said, “Please don’t stop. You changed my life. You’re changing people’s lives. Thank you.”

“I just decided not to do it again.” That’s what just makes you go back on the same path of helping others because by the time you know that you helped enough, and you made the money and the impact and the change, and you want just to call it a day, “I’m retiring, life is good, why am I taking clients? Why am I doing workshops?” One thing happens in front of you, telling you, “Please don’t stop. You made such a difference in my life. Please continue doing it for others,” and that’s what keeps us going.

You get called back to work. That’s beautiful. I wanted to ask you also, so you have a day job, you have this business working with midlife women, and you have all these other skills and certifications and Master’s and all these other things. As you’re building, I don’t know if I would call it a side hustle because you’re pretty well established, but as you’re building this new business, and I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast are interested in building, with whatever skills they have, some kind of business, what is the most frustrating thing to you about building a business for yourself?

The Importance Of Action: Start Before You’re Ready

The beginning. It’s so muddy and hard because you question everything and you want perfection. My advice to all the people who want to start, just start. Too much planning will kill the idea. Too much planning is going to hurt you. Time is going so fast. The more I plan, planning is good.

You plan your Thanksgiving. You’re not going to just throw Thanksgiving for ten family members without telling them. The more you plan it, you’re going to lose the sense and the flavor. You said hustle, and I tell those people who say side hustle, I said, don’t call it side hustle. Don’t have that quotation about it. There’s no connotation about the pressure and the stress on you.

Call it the side heaven because you want that place to be a refuge, a yoga place, a corner. Like me, when I write, I can stay in that room writing for hours. I don’t feel anything. You have to remind me it’s been four hours in the room because I keep writing. I don’t feel anything. Same thing with your art. It’s not a hustle. It’s a heaven.

Overcoming Criticism And Staying True To Your Path

The frustration comes from people, especially engineers because everything is calculated. They want everything to be at the perfect time, with the perfect plan, and perfect everything. This is not math. This is a business. You’re going to lose a lot of money before you gain a lot of money. You’re going to be disappointed until you hear someone say, “Good job, you did good.” You will hear a lot of criticism. You will even hear a lot of bullying.

People will make fun of everything you do. Those people who didn’t take you seriously will come one day and will tell the universe they know you because they are trying so hard to get back to your center. By you calculating every criticism, being upset about everything said about you on Instagram, people not taking your art seriously, people not taking your writing seriously, then you are stagnant.

You are parking in the same place. You are not moving on. You are not progressing. You are not growing. The most frustration is at the beginning. To get out of that frustration, I tell people just to start before you are ready. Take action before you are ready because if you don’t, a lot of people did already before you. You’ve got to keep up.

I could not agree more with that. I think I’ve heard that in other places. I think for me, the key around starting before you’re ready is, in part, that you’re just never going to feel ready until you actually have done it for a little while, and then you’ll feel ready.

You have to do it.

You have to do it, like you said, you have to do it. You have to make mistakes, be willing to learn from them, and say, “Okay, maybe now I’m ready, now that I’m doing it.”

You are a coach. The more you do it, the more you become a master. Michael Jordan and all those athletes, they were not overnight legends. They made a lot of failing steps until they became who they are. Same thing with the speakers, coaches, and people who own companies. I’m sure if you hear their stories, they lost a lot of money before they became known to the universe.

I think one thing that I’m really taking away from this conversation is just the idea that, if I’m, say, listening to a podcast and I’m working, but I have some side passion, or maybe I don’t even know what that passion is, just really think about where do I lose time? Where do I get in that flow state? How can I create either more space for that? If I choose to create, start building on that. Maybe I will create an audience. Maybe I go to Instagram. Maybe I will create a website.

That is also one of the things that I tell people absolutely not to do. Don’t wait till you build a website. Just go do the thing. With coaching, when you’re starting, if you know how to build a website, sure, put up a website, but like, you go to your friends, you go to your neighbors, you go to your family, you coach the people, and then you learn a lot from that experience. From there, you can start to say, “Okay, I actually do know how to do this, and I’m ready to offer that on a bigger scale.” And then, at some point, you have all of these past clients and backgrounds, and you can start talking about it.

Talking about the comparison game, you can’t compare yourself to somebody well-established, whatever it is you’re trying to do, coach, artist, I don’t care, like engineer, you can’t compare yourself against someone else’s well-established highlight reel to the intimate knowledge you have of your day-to-day. You also don’t know what their day-to-day is like. They’re also probably not talking about all their failures.

Just this idea that, if anyone was going to walk away from this podcast with anything, it’s to take a minute and just think about where in your day or this week, where did you lose time. Where did you just completely feel like you were in flow? What, if anything, do you want to do with that? What do you want to create around that? I think that’s beautiful.

You also lose that time, Marc, and you feel your soul speaking with your brain. You smile for no reason when you’re doing your core genius. Your soul is just so alive. It’s like a butterfly. Your brain and soul are just playing together. You are not just doing a job to get a paycheck. This is your baby. This is exactly like if I raise a baby, I’m raising this business the same way I raise my son and my daughter. All my soul and brain are in it.

My heart and my brain work together. It’s not just the brain and the heart because you need both of them. I think for us to master anything, and you mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, I can love and be in love with something and be passionate about something, but if I don’t take the first step, I don’t even think about it. Without action, nothing will happen. The action comes from you, not from your coach, not from your partner. You have to take the action and you stop complaining and whining that the time is not right. When is the time right? When is that time? I don’t know, where is it? It’s now.

There’s so much there. I will say I feel like I have to say, if you are feeling stuck around action, hiring a coach like you would probably help you figure out how to get past that. Speaking of which, I’m so good at segues. Speaking of which, where can people find you? What’s the best place to find you? Who should find you?

Marc, this is not fair. Do you know why? If they read this and they look at your experience and mine, they will never call me. They will never come to me because they see how much skill you have. They say, uh-uh.

No, what they should see is how much I got out of listening to you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Basically, if you want anything around tech, career, leadership, technology, engineering, LinkedIn, and all of that, I’m on LinkedIn. Sairan Aqrawi is on LinkedIn. If you want anything around building a small business on the side, on your Instagram, with zero money, you don’t need anything. All you need is a phone and opening an Instagram account. You’ll find me on Instagram. If they mention your name, they will get a one-hour complimentary session.

That’s very kind. Thank you. It has been awesome talking to you. I have some notes here that I think I have a couple of articles that I thought of just from listening to you talk. I hope the readers got as much out of it as I did. Thank you so much for being here.

My honor. Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Sairan Aqrawi
• Instagram – Sairan Aqrawi
• Mastery
• How to Get the Most Out of Coaching: A Client Guide for Optimizing the Coaching Experience

About Sairan Aqrawi

Sairan uncovers hidden talents and turns them into thriving businesses, especially for women in midlife who may feel it’s too late to start something new. She shares her own journey of transformation, from engineer to business coach, and the tools that helped me — and can help others — make bold transitions. It’s all about embracing your unique strengths and using them to create lasting impact!