When the Guest Becomes the Mirror

I do a lot of interviews on Rooted in Your Confidence. I bring women on who are leading, building, and creating women doing things in spaces that were never designed with them in mind. And every single conversation teaches me something.

But every once in a while, I sit across from a guest, and I realize she is not just here to share her story. She is here to show my audience something about themselves.

That happened recently when I sat down with Lacey Cadieux-McLean, Founder and CEO of Rhubaia, an eco-conscious fashion brand paired with an AI-powered virtual closet built to help women manage their wardrobes more intentionally. Lacey came on to talk about building a company at the intersection of fashion, technology, and sustainability. And she did that. But what she also did without knowing it was walk us through every single pattern I work with women to break.

I want to talk about that.

She had the idea for years. Years. She could see it. She knew exactly what was missing in the market. She even reached out to another company with her own suggestions for how to fix their product. And still she waited. Still, she told herself it wasn't her time, wasn't her place, wasn't her lane.

She was too old. Too busy. Not enough money. Three kids. Another business is already running. Not smart enough for this.

I want you to read that list again, because I need you to recognize it. That is not a list of real obstacles. That is a confidence disruption doing exactly what it was designed to do. It was keeping her from her own vision by making her feel like the vision belonged to someone else.

Here is what I know about women: we do not lack ideas. We do not lack skill. We do not lack experience. What we lose somewhere between who we were born to be and who the world told us to become is the trust in ourselves to act on what we already know.

That is what happened to Lacey. And the moment she named it, something shifted.

She also told me about a mentor early in her career who kept catching her asking for permission. Not for big things. For basic things. Permission to speak. Permission to lead. Permission to simply exist in a room she had already earned her way into.

Her mentor stopped her every time.

Sit down. You are here. That is enough.

Now, here is what I want you to sit with Lacey, who is a certified Project Management Professional with over 15 years of experience leading major technology initiatives. She has been brought into corporations to run complex, high-stakes projects for other people her entire career. And she still needed someone to tell her she did not need permission to take her seat.

As Lacey said it herself during our conversation:

"I realized that I was formulating all of this and expecting other people to do it, and not me."

That is not a personal failing. That is what happens when you spend years in environments that were not built for you. You start to internalize the message. You start to police yourself so the room does not have to. You start asking for permission to do the things you were already qualified to do because somewhere along the way, someone made you feel like your presence required justification.

And you call it being professional. Being humble. Not being too much.

But what it really is……… is you doing to yourself what those environments tried to do to you first.

She talked about typing CEO in her email signature for the first time. She had worked for CEOs. She knew the title. She knew the weight of it. And still, she sat there feeling like a fraud. Like she was claiming something that was not really hers.

That moment, that right there, is why the Brag Bag exists.

I said it on the episode, and I will say it here:

"We get lost in what other people's beliefs are before we even have our own beliefs as women."

Because when we do not document our evidence, when we do not stay connected to the proof of what we have done and who we are, moments like that will hollow us out. We will forget. And in the forgetting, we will give away authority that was always ours to keep.

Lacey had the receipts. She just had not been taught to hold onto them.

By the end of our conversation, I was sitting across from a woman who had done the work maybe not with a coach, maybe not with a formal process, but through living it, pushing through it, refusing to let the waiting become permanent. She found her way back to herself.

But I kept thinking about how much time passed first. How many years did she carry that idea before she acted? How long she spent asking permission she never needed. How much energy went into the self-doubt that could have gone into the building?

That is the cost we do not talk about enough. Not the cost of failure, the cost of waiting.

And here is the truth: most women do not need more time. They do not need more credentials. They do not need one more piece of evidence that they are ready.

They need someone to help them clear the path back to what they already know about themselves.

That is the work I do inside The Intensive.

The Intensive is my private three-session coaching program built around the Brag Bag® and the TRUTH Method™. It is for the woman who is already capable, who already has the experience, the vision, the skill, but whose confidence has been disrupted by the environments she has navigated, the voices she internalized, and the years of making herself smaller so others felt more comfortable.

We do not build your confidence in The Intensive. You already have it. We're clear on what has been sitting on top of it so you can lead from it, speak from it, and get paid for the value you bring without apologizing for any of it.

If you heard yourself anywhere in Lacey's story, the waiting, the permission-asking, the self-doubt dressed up as practicality, I want you to stop waiting the way she almost did.

The link to learn more and book your call is below.

I just wanna let you know™ you do not need one more reason to be ready. You just need to stop asking for permission to start.

Samantha Kaye Harris Founder & CEO, SKH Solutions Power, Voice & Self-Trust Authority Retention, Workforce & Confidence Strategist