In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Khaliah Guillory, a speaker, filmmaker, philanthropist, and advocate for diversity and inclusion. Guillier shares a pivotal career story about choosing to bring her whole authentic self to every aspect of life, including disclosing her sexual orientation when applying for a corporate diversity council, which ultimately empowered her career and personal relationships. She discusses her core mission to foster human-to-human connections by moving beyond manufactured labels of identity, encouraging people to seek diverse perspectives over lunch. Guillier offers broad business advice centered on continuous learning, asking questions, and borrowing genius rather than duplicating mediocrity. She reflects on advice she would give her younger self—embracing authenticity, following personal passions, and redefining the "American Dream" through a hybrid "corprenuer" path. Her definition of happiness involves doing what you love with people you love, surrounded by accountability and growth. Guillier recommends the book "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz, highlighting integrity and transparency as key takeaways, and shares her favorite quote, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken" (Oscar Wilde). The episode concludes with a plug for her website kogpassion.com, where listeners can find her across social media platforms.
Chapters
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Kahlia Guillory with us. She is a speaker, filmmaker, philanthropist, and lover of humanity. So welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on, Tyler. Glad to be here.
Of course, grateful to have you on. So the first one I got for you today is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Oh, man. How much time do we have? I think the most, I would say, career life moment, speaking from a professional and personal standpoint, was the moment I chose to bring my whole self everywhere. So we're all familiar with the phrase of bring your whole self to work. But I, back in 2000— gosh, 6, 7-ish, decided that I would bring my whole self everywhere, not just to work. And what I mean by that, Tyler, is bringing myself as I am, my true authentic self, to work, to the basketball court, to church, to the gym, literally everywhere. And the story or that moment that really altered and shifted everything for me was whenever I was recently promoted. I am a former executive in financial services, and I was recently promoted at this phase in my life. I had, you know, worked the late hours. I had raised my hand and volunteered for additional projects so that I can build that resume and show my management team that I was ready for the next level. And so when the next level came, I was ecstatic. And at the time, my leader said, hey, you know, we are developing and forming the first diversity council for the corporation. And I think you will be a great fit for it because he knew I had a passion for diversity and inclusion. And what he also knew is that I, of course, am a woman, and I also identify as Black, African-American, and I so happen to be lesbian. He knew that, but not everyone else in our corporation knew that. And so I was ecstatic that he gave me the nomination. And I was starting to fill out the application and it asked for the normal stuff, right, Tyler? Like, what's your name? What's your position? And then it got to what's your sexual orientation? And I like quickly hit the pause button. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Why are they asking for sexual orientation? Because I'm not quote unquote out at work. And so I immediately picked up the phone and called the recruiter who was spearheading the nominations for the diversity council and asked, hey, why are you asking this. I'm not comfortable answering this question. And she said, well, we need to figure out who's in the room. I said, I literally will be committing career suicide if in my head I told myself that story, right? That I'll be committing career suicide if I check the box and identify with lesbian for my sexual orientation. Because I, in my head, I'm thinking, man, these executive directors and EVPs of the world are not going to want to promote me. I would literally hit the ceiling because of my sexual orientation. And she said, no, that's exactly the reason That's why we want you to be a part of council so that we can collect your stories and your experiences so that we can cultivate and create a culture where everyone is able to share who they are and create this diversity in thought around the table. I hung up the phone, Tyler, and still wasn't convinced. And then I picked up the phone and called my big sister. And I explained with her the situation, and she told me very bluntly and matter-of-factly and said, "Kay, if they don't want you and you feel as though that you're gonna commit career suicide because of your sexual orientation and who you love, then you don't want them." And hung up the phone and I was convinced and I checked the box and the rest was history. My career was unscathed. Matter of fact, my career flourished even more because I then was comfortable with my team. I wasn't playing that pronoun game anymore. "Oh, what did you do for the weekend?" "Oh, we and they had to work." work, you know, it was like, oh, she had to work this weekend and I just hung out. And it just allowed for me to have a deeper human-to-human connection, not just with my team, but really with myself. And so being able to bring my whole self everywhere, that was the biggest shift and really propelled me into creating and curating the work that I do today. Sorry, that was a long answer.
No, no, it's a very interesting story. And I, you know, it's really cool to just like hear from different people's perspectives. So Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. I'm sure our listeners will appreciate hearing that as well. So I'm curious then to your answer on this next one too. So what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
The most valuable expertise that is in my industry as a speaker, specifically diversity inclusion, I would say is for us to Inspire the human-to-human connection. You know, my entire mission and vision is— and my purpose, I should say— is to transform human emotion. And what I mean by that is when we can lay at the wayside of manufactured labels that has prohibited us from really truly getting to know each other on a human-to-human level, that is the most important thing I think we should do is really consider throwing away these manufactured labels. And manufactured labels, it can be any set or dimension of diversity that we identify with— age, race, military status, socioeconomic status. I mean, when you think of it, it's literally everything that sometimes society has conditioned us to think, oh, well, someone's from this socioeconomic status, I can't— there's nothing I can learn from them. Well, the truth of the matter is that we can learn from anyone's experience. And seek out at lunch, right? Like, I'm not sure who your demographic is, but I'm guessing some people are in corporate and some are entrepreneurs. Some perhaps are stay-at-home moms and dads. But if we can seek out people who don't look like us and perhaps don't come from where we come from and invite them out to lunch, I'm willing to bet and take a shot that we will— each parties will walk away with an experience that we never even explored before.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I don't know the exact quote, but that's Ralph Waldo Emerson said something along the lines of, you can learn something from every man. So, and, you know, I think obviously like every person, and that's how I see it as well, even the homeless person on the street. Like, I think if you were to speak to them, I think you would still learn something from them even though they're homeless. You know what I mean?
Totally. And it really reminds me of my motto, which is, you know, why duplicate mediocrity when you can borrow genius? And there's genius all around us, literally everywhere. And you just never— you're walking amongst geniuses every single day, but we just don't know it because sometimes we just flock to what we know, what's comfortable. And if we can get outside that comfortability, then gosh, I can only imagine what the planet will look like and feel like.
So it could tie in, but my next one for you is what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Gosh, I would say be open to learning, you know, never stop learning. That's probably a ton of them. Never stop learning. I think I can go back to be open to sitting at others' feet and learning from them. It kind of ties back into my motto of, you know, why duplicate mediocrity when you can borrow genius? And absolutely questions. I think we don't ask enough questions as a society because I come from the school of thought that questions lead to awareness and understanding. And how can we be more self-aware of who we are and put a conscious inclusion hat on where we can consciously include everyone that we are interacting with?
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Oh, the best— the best— I mean, guys, the best advice I could give my, my, let's say, 21, 22-year-old self is to really truly just— is to engage my true self, my authentic self, and do it for me and not for everyone else. I mean, I spent a lot of time climbing a corporate rung on the ladder, all to realize that my ladder was leaning across the wrong building. And I was doing that because society, family, friends were saying, hey, this is the American dream, right, quote unquote. That, that perhaps was their American dream. But my dream for me is to really truly pursue all my dreams and passions. And for some people, they can do that in corporate, some people can do it as a corprenuer, which I've dubbed the name, you got one foot in corporate America and the other foot in entrepreneurship, hence you're a corprenuer. And then some people are just full-on entrepreneurs. So I think, you know, really truly just following that fire in your belly, allow it to roar, like feed it with the wood so that those flames could ignite and just take over your body. And if you get a no, keep going. You're going to get to your next. You might have to take 10 nos to get to that one yes, but you just got to keep on going.
Yeah, I always say too, like failure leads to success. I mean, you don't like get to success without many failures. And even then when you do get to so-called success, to get to the higher level of success, it takes more and more failures.
Absolutely. And, you know, sometimes we equate the failure with— I have this ideology that often— something else I would tell my 21, 22-year-old self, right, is that oftentimes we might feel as though that we are buried, but we're actually planted, right? There's something in that situation for us to get. And if we can buckle up and choose to enjoy the journey, and shift our thinking to a positive thought, I mean, gosh, our whole world and the lens that we view it through will change to a positive way, in a positive direction.
Absolutely. I like that. That is a good perspective shift right there. I like that. So then my next one for you is, it's a little bit kind of going down a different path here. In your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
The key to happiness, in my opinion, is is doing what you truly love, doing it with the people that you love, and surrounding yourself with folks who are going to hold you accountable, who will challenge you, who will inspire you to grow every single day. I think success is subjective, right? It looks different. I'm guessing that between the two of us, perhaps that might look different for both of us. And just knowing with confidence that This is what's going to make me happy. This is something that I want to do. And I don't owe anyone an explanation of what's going to make me happy.
And then what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Oh, gosh. The best book that I've read, I would say Four Agreements. Gosh, what's Miguel— here, it's on my— let me pull it up to tell you exactly what it is.
Yeah, that's one of my top books as well. I forget the name of the author.
Yeah, Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements. You know, I mean, just, it's a quick, easy read. And this, The Four Agreements, the one that really sticks out for me that I recall and always use as my, as my value proposition is leading with integrity and being transparent, right? It's Being late, right? I have moments where I struggle with being late. And integrity for me means I'm gonna— I'm human, I'm going to be late at times, but just communicating that to the other parties, like, hey, running 5 to 10 minutes late, you know, or, hey, I know I committed to doing this, but this just came up. Can I get an extension on this deadline? It's just leading with integrity and full transparency. And that's probably the biggest takeaway that I got Amongst many others from that book.
And then what is your favorite quote and why?
It's got to be Oscar Wilde, man. Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
I love that one. Well, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I got for you before we let you go is where can our audience best find you online?
Best find me online would be on my website at kogpassion.com. There they can follow me across all my social media platforms. That's on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. That's the place where they can also see more about my work. And I would love to connect.
Perfect. Thanks again for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Enjoy the rest of your day.
The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.
