When I was younger, I never questioned whether I would become a mother. I assumed it was one of the natural stages of becoming an adult.

Twenty years later, I am not a mother, and I am no longer certain that I ever will be.

In this solo episode, I explore the question I still have not answered: do I want to raise a child now, or am I grieving the mother I always assumed I would become?

I talk about waiting for my relationship, finances, career, and emotional life to feel settled; the fear of repeating patterns from my childhood; the realities of pregnancy in my 40s; and why adoption remains one of the futures I can imagine.

This conversation is for the women who live between a definite yes and a definite no. The women who made careful choices, watched time pass, and are still trying to understand what they truly want.

I do not have an inspiring conclusion to offer. The story is still open.

Visit 1800goaldigger.com to leave me a private voicemail or share your story.

@1800goaldigger explores ambition, identity, confidence, womanhood, and the emotional truth underneath the glamour and celebration of success and growth.

When a listener named Mel asked me how to future-proof ourselves in the age of AI and how I stay grounded beneath it all, I thought this was going to be an episode about technology.

It wasn't.

It became a conversation about fear, identity, and the pressure to keep up in a world that keeps changing.

In this solo episode, I reflect on what working in enterprise technology has taught me about AI, why I don't have the same level of AI anxiety, and why I believe future-proofing has less to do with chasing every new tool and more to do with growing deeper roots.

Because maybe AI isn't the story. Maybe you are.

@1800goaldigger, sharing goal-digging ugly truth. Subscribe for new episodes every Monday.

I treated myself like a product to be sold. I did discovery on myself, but not compassionately.

In this episode, I unpack what a senior marketer's offhand comment, that personal branding is a little bit contrived, forced me to confront. I talk about Misty, the alter ego I built out of everything I thought I was missing. Why performing is exhausting, because performing is not for the performer, it is for the audience. And the question I was never asking underneath all the positioning: who am I becoming?

This is for the woman who has been optimizing the package while secretly wondering why she still does not feel seen.

If it resonates, send it to one woman who needs it. Voice DM me @1800goaldigger on Instagram or email me 1:1 at hello@1800goaldigger.com. Your voice could become part of a future episode.

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

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

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

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

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

Links and follow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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