Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Alright, y'all. Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast. Today, we have Adriana D'Onofrio with us, and Adriana is a life and business coach for dreamers, doers, and trailblazers who are ready to break free from hustle culture and create a life they truly love. And doesn't that sound amazing, y'all?

Erica: Adriana specializes in helping purpose driven and high performance individuals build a soul aligned life. One that gives you the freedom, the time, the financial security, the creativity you have always craved. So if you are looking to design a corporate career, a business, or dare I say, just your whole life, one that honors your values and amplifies your passions, one that aligns with your highest self, this episode is for you. What Adriana speaks on is so relevant to you, whether you're in corporate or running your own business.

Erica: So you're gonna want to tune in. You're gonna want to listen up, because this is all about building a life that serves your purpose. Okay? So, Adriana, welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast. How are you today?

Adriana: Hi, Erica. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.

Erica: Oh my god. We're both excited, but we're both also freezing our asses off, so we can dive right in. I want to know. You're already a badass businesswoman, a badass life coach. But tell me all of that, before we got to today. What is your come up story?

Adriana: Oh, where do I start and how long do we have?

Erica: Not that long.

Adriana: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I've been a thousand women, and I've lived a thousand lives. I always say that. It's been a journey. It's definitely been a journey. I was born in New York City, but I grew up my whole life in the suburbs of North Carolina. I was raised by an Italian immigrant father and an American Midwestern mother, one sister, just a very seemingly normal suburban family, so to say. But I did a year of college in North Carolina, figured out I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to school for fashion design at the time and took a year off.

Adriana: And I went to live in Italy with my grandparents for six months. I then found my now husband in Italy, came back to wrap up my life in the United States, but then decided to pick up and move my entire life in my early twenties across the world and start a new life in Italy.

Erica: Sounds like eat, pray, love.

Adriana: It was such an eat, pray, love moment of my life. And I like to say that we go through so many phases of these big pivotal milestones that contribute to the evolution of self. Right? And we go through these big pieces. So here I am in my early twenties. I had the terrible breakup and the drama and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And I just picked up and moved across the world by myself. And I did. But I lived in Rome for five years, and that was one of the most pivotal and contributing moments of my life to who I am today.

Adriana: It was such an eat, pray, love, find yourself, and find what you wanted to do with your life and fall in love and have this romantic love story. It was an Italian love story. And I went to a very prestigious, private haute couture fashion academy in Rome down the street from the Vatican. So here I am living this amazing life in this historical building, and my professors are people who work with Valentino and with Gucci and with Salvatore Ferragamo. And it was amazing. There are so many things that living in Italy taught me. I was also a nanny for a very prestigious political journalist's family and learned so much from them and motherhood. Being a woman in an Italian culture contributed so much to who I am, and it's just been amazing.

Adriana: So then fast forward, I think it was right after the year I graduated, we came back to New York City. And we had just gotten married at the courthouse and did the whole thing. My husband was working on getting his green card, and I hit the ground running in the hustle culture of New York City. I was here by myself for a while trying to get my life set up. My husband was still in Italy at the time, and we were doing the back and forth for a while, which was very difficult. A lot of it was due to immigration issues as well. I was in a five floor walk up in Brooklyn with a roommate, could barely afford rent. I was doing probably a hundred interviews and applications a day. I would be that person, door to door, walking in, didn't care, no shame, resume in hand, would show up anywhere. And the fashion industry, starting up in New York City, is cutthroat. It's so cutthroat. I remember so many interviews and so many lost opportunities. But it was so interesting how it led me along the way. I ended up working for Fendi for a little while in New York City, then migrated over to designing couture bridal for a while.

Erica: It's like my dream right there.

Adriana: Oh my god. That was probably one of my most favorite jobs ever. And let me be very clear, I was the grunt work girl at this couturier. I was packing, hauling 50 pound, 100 pound beaded wedding gowns over my head and packing boxes for trunk shows while managing all of it, and getting coffee for everybody in the office. I was that person, but I didn't care because I loved it. I got to go on these trunk shows on the weekends and design custom gowns for these women, these brides that would come in, and I loved it. But that was when I started to realize, looking back now, that I love making people's dreams come true. The bridal industry really gave me the taste of that. At the time, it didn't come to me in this spiritual, self aware way, but that was what I loved about that job, about what I did there, about a lot of my jobs, being able to make that impact and see that bride's face light up when she found her dream dress, and make it happen over and over and over again.

Adriana: And just constantly be in that state of creating people's dreams into reality and showing them it's possible. That was kind of the start of this spark of what I do now, basically. It's evolved over many, many years. I ended up moving over from the fashion industry in New York City and was recruited into the architecture and interior design industry. I started working for a very, very high end luxury interior design rug company in New York City. This is the cream of the crop. My clients were people who could whip out their Amex for a $60,000 rug like it was buying coffee. It was a whole other level of luxury, of clientele, of design and quality and everything. I worked my way up really quickly, and that's when I discovered corporate executive America in a very new and different way. I was in this amazing luxury industry, but very quickly they discovered I was very good at my job. I went from starting at the bottom to running, creating, and building my own department in the hospitality sector, I think, seven years total with that company. I pitched that whole division and department to the CEO, and I said, this is what you need, and I'm the one for the job. Let's build it. But I quickly discovered after getting that position that it just wasn't a good fit for me.

Adriana: It was the epitome of a combination of lack of support and structure in the corporate world, a lack of mentorship, a lack of leadership foundations and tools for someone stepping into their first real global executive role, and leaders who really weren't equipped, even on an emotional intelligence level, to handle certain things at that level in the corporate world. It spiraled quite quickly. The whole thing maybe lasted about a year until I was like, I can't do this anymore. I was miserable. I was exhausted. I was working more than twelve hour days. I was commuting back and forth from my suburban town in New Jersey into New York City every day. I had a young son that I just had. I was breastfeeding during part of this journey, even in my office. Another full time job. It was a whole thing, and I quickly became one of your classic corporate executive, burnt out, miserable people. My marriage was hanging on by a thread. All of the relationships in my life were hanging on by a thread. I was an overworked, burnt out, underappreciated employee at this point.

Adriana: That happens way too often, that I see in this corporate structure, ill equipped leaders in these positions, a lack of support either from their employers or companies, but also a lack of mentorship and evolution and tools to really become the successful leaders they have the potential to be. So I then stumbled on this calling of mine to become a coach and do just that. It became this big full circle moment, looking back on my life, at all the things I ever valued throughout my career, of helping people's dreams come true, and doing the inner work to elevate my people on my team, my employees, empowering them to be leaders within their own businesses, in order to create leaders rather than more employees who just need their hands held. It became this big passion of mine.

Adriana: I had a moment of, alright, this is what I've been doing my whole life in a very different capacity. This is where my passion and my value really lie, so let's go do it on our own. So then I started The Elevated Executive. This has been an amazing and wild journey. I did start with my own podcast, The Elevated Executive, and it started off as this fun space to go off on tangents about my own values and beliefs and thoughts and theories about elevated leadership, and it kind of snowballed from there.

Erica: Oh my gosh. Well, you know what I immediately thought of when I heard your story? Like, you finding this big sexy Italian hunk in Italy and getting married is like, oh my god, everybody's over here like, this girl has the dream life. Then you bring your ass back to New York like a crazy person. But I one time did this exercise in a group coaching session where they had us take a big piece of paper, draw a line across the middle of it. You're holding it horizontally. And then you draw the ups and downs of your life. Because if you're gonna have highs, you have to have lows. If things are gonna be really great, you gotta go through the stuff. And so here I am hearing your story, which starts out with Roberto, big sexy Italian hunk, which by the way, guys, I don't know if his name is Roberto, I just gave him his name.

Adriana: His name is Massimo. He is better.

Erica: Oh my god, y'all. We are ending the podcast right now. Massimo. It had to be Massimo. Alright, so we've got Massimo. That's it, we've made it. But as you said, you're in your twenties, you have all of this life to live. And I point this out because so often we get to these places and we just expect to go up, up, up. We never expect to experience heartache or depression or struggles. And I think it's safe to say we all strive to go up and up, which is why you were like, I'm gonna take these next jobs, I'm gonna do these next things. But if you don't slow down and if you don't stop, you will hit those things, like the burnout that you experienced, and you'll wake up and you will be full ass into the rat race that is corporate America.

Adriana: Yeah, and that's exactly-

Erica: I have to ask you this question because it's been spinning around in my mind with all of these different lives you've led. When I put my lenses on, which I imagine are your lenses, seeing the world through your eyes, I imagine success looked very different at multiple stages of your life. From when you picked up with nothing and moved to Italy, from when you got married, from when you moved back. So where you are now, and looking back to where you were in corporate, first, can you tell me what was success like for you? What was your definition of success in corporate, and how has that shifted today? Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities. My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing.

Erica: This isn't just a book, it's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you, because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Adriana: Oh, that's such a good one. I'm getting full body chills on this question, actually, because this was a pivotal moment in my own journey, for sure, to all of a sudden define success differently. And you're so right, it becomes this thing that we're conditioned to think we want, which is such a big thing, and that was a big thing I needed to let go of. My definition of success was keep going, keep striving. You're gonna be CEO before the age of 35. This is where we're going, this is what we're doing. You're gonna have this seemingly glamorous hustle, career woman, New York City life. And I was, in a way, looking back, already that person telling myself that I wasn't. And here I am, hustling and bustling into this world of corporate America and New York City. I was very young in a very prestigious role at a very prestigious company. And I was miserable, but it was something I convinced myself I wanted, or something I convinced myself would get me approval from somebody, whether it be my parents, whether it be just anybody externally outside of myself.

Adriana: Yeah, all of it. And it would be something viewed as successful because here she is, having this title of being a corporate executive before the age of 35. And even as far as making sure I bought the house and bought the car and had the baby and had the family and checked it off, and had this hustling, bustling career, the success of all of that became this almost weight rather than success. And it didn't hit me until that rock bottom state of the burnout of, oh my god, what am I doing, and what do I actually really want? Which before that point, I don't think I had ever actually asked myself that. What do you actually really want? If money were not an object, if you had no opinions in the world that could mean or say or do anything, if you could really actually do anything in the world and nothing you did would be wrong, what do you actually want? What do you actually want for your life? And I think that was a huge wake up moment for me, of, I actually don't want this.

Adriana: A pivotal part of this, I'll have to say, was becoming a mom. Having my son changed my life with career and just looking at what that means to me and what it looks like and what I want my life to look like. It started with that first day I had to send my six month old to day care because I had to go back to work. I was still breastfeeding. I was distraught. I could not wrap my brain around it. And here's the other kicker, this area of the world in New York City, the cost of living is so expensive, you literally, no matter what layer you are, you could be a multi six figure earning corporate executive and still be living paycheck to paycheck. And here you are, spending twelve hour days commuting and running to New York City to get home to spend one hour with your six month son, and your entire paycheck is going to pay for someone else to raise your child that you never get to see.

Adriana: I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I was like, I don't want this. This is not the life that I want. This is not the lifestyle that I want. This is not my idea of what success means. So it became this journey of breaking down what that means for me and how do I create it, and what does this look like. Now it's about slow mornings and being able to have a cup of coffee and take my son to school and be there for pickup, or pick him up early if I want to because I just wanna go spend some time with him and go to the park. Today, I get to keep him home because I can, and I can run my business and spend some time with him. He was sick all last week, and I had the luxury of being able to keep him home with me and juggle my work and my life and my son at the same time, and it was wonderful. We had some amazing moments, and he's in this fun toddler phase, and you see him talking and playing and walking, and these are things I would have missed out on if I would have stayed in this seemingly successful corporate role that I was forcing myself to convince myself I actually wanted. Success is such a different meaning for me now. I want this fulfillment inside, this abundance inward rather than exterior.

Erica: Yeah, I think what you just described is probably what 99% of women our age bracket, raising kids, go through. We came from a generation where women didn't have as many rights, didn't have as many luxuries. They were just getting the permission to start working outside of the home, but still be a great mom, and nothing was ever adjusted for that. Nobody ever said, hey, if you're a full time mom, you probably can't also be a full time worker and do it all, with quotes. So okay, I love this. If you're trying to figure out what your definition of success is, the first question you should ask is, what do you really want? I'm gonna add on there, the second question you should ask is, how do you want to feel? Because if you don't know what you want, how do you wanna feel? Do you wanna feel busy? Do you wanna feel productive? Do you wanna feel relaxed, like you just said? And I know when I was going through my journey of unwinding corporate Erica and stepping into this new version of me, it was like, I wanted the relaxed hustle, relaxed ambition. Because I am as ambitious as the craziest person out there, I wanna go after all these big things, but I also wanna have the slow mornings, and not do anything because it's Monday. So outside of that, what do you want and how do you wanna feel? Do you have any other thought provoking questions that would really guide someone?

Adriana: Speaking on that topic, this is actually something I do within my coaching one on one with my clients all the time. There's a course I take them through in the early stages, and it's a journal prompt, actually, to exactly this: what do you actually want, and how do you actually want your success to feel and look like? And what does it look like when you drop off this conditioning and these exterior questions. And then I go through a series I call the Five Whys. You pop out what you want, your first journal prompt ends up being, okay, what do I actually want if there were no limitations. And then you ask yourself why. And then you ask yourself why again. And then you ask yourself why again. And each layer, they end up digging into. Sometimes I do this verbally on an actual Zoom call with them, and we work through the whole process. Then I give them the journal prompts to go back and work on their own. It's incredible, the layers they end up uncovering with each why, because then the real why all of a sudden comes out on the fifth one. It always comes out on the fifth one, and it ends up being either a really deep rooted value they didn't even know they had.

Adriana: I would say, go back and look at all of the roles you've ever had. What did you value the most out of that role? Because there had to be something good within each of these pieces, you were fulfilled at that moment in time, at that point in your life, by that job, for some reason. Kind of unpacking what that is and how it lines up for you. I've also really been into this new theory of sinking into our own feminine energy. We all have feminine and masculine energy. To your point, it's that relaxed hustle and deconditioning ourselves to break free of correlating ambition with hustle. Those two no longer actually have to exist together on the same plane. Ambition is one thing, but passion and motivation and drive to go after and achieve something, there's such a more receiving energy way to go after those things. It comes down to aligning your energy, rather your action, with the thing you're going after. It's such a different way to approach success and achieving success, goal getting and setting, all of it, without having to do, do, do, but instead, you get to just be. What is the person?

Adriana: That was such a big shift, even in my own journal prompts, going through this journey in my early stages of my spiritual awakening, so to say. All of my journal prompts, and this is something one of my mentors taught me to do, was write some of your journals in the day as if you're in the present tense of your manifestations. All of the things you wanna come in, here I am, this is how today is going, I have this, I do this, this is what I get, all of these things. It's so interesting, I've gone back and read some of these from a year ago, two years ago, and it's amazing, because I've seen this evolution in myself, going from these journal prompts of saying, I have, I have, I have, I want, I want, I want, this is amazing too, I am, I am, I am, I feel, I feel, I feel. And seeing the evolution of that language just in my journal prompts alone was such an awakening in myself as a coach, through my own journey, and something I'm carrying over even into my own clients, because it's such a shift, such a profound shift, to go from, rather than, I want this amazing dream house, completely decked out to the nines, how do I feel in my dream house, and how do I want that to feel, and how do I want the space to feel, does it feel cozy, does it feel homey, does it feel welcoming for guests and my family. There's lots of laughter, great questions.

Erica: What I will implore all of my listeners to do is actually make some time in your day to do those Five Whys, because it really is so easy to gloss over every single day. It's so easy to make that a problem for manana. No, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna sit down, write out your Five Whys today, get started. If you get stuck, that's okay, walk away for a little bit and come back. I personally have found sometimes you can get stuck on that third or fourth why because you're not ready to process it. So if you need to put a pin in it and come back, you can do that. But if you guys have loved Adriana on this podcast, which I absolutely have, you have to check out her amazing podcast called The Elevated Executive. So, Adriana, you wanna tell me a little bit about your amazing, incredible podcast?

Adriana: So The Elevated Executive is pretty much what we've been talking about here. It's about elevated consciousness and elevated leadership, high performance and higher consciousness. It's about really exploring the inner work of what it takes to become the most elevated executive of our lives. It's such an ironic name, and I love it on all levels. It's not just pertaining to business, or to what you're doing in your career or entrepreneurship or corporate leadership, wherever you may be. Elevated leadership is about the inner work, the work you do to become the best leader for yourself, in your business and in your life, and then to empower others to become the best leaders for themselves, and the ripple effect you're creating through your own inner work is really what it comes down to. I love it, it's been such an amazing space for me. There are some amazing guests on there talking about their own journeys, as well as I share a lot about my own personal experiences and personal growth. I do get pretty vulnerable and authentic in some of those episodes. There may be something I'm working through at the moment, and I just show up, and all my people call it, we just let it go. But it is a really amazing space, and it does end up correlating a lot with my coaching program as well.

Erica: Amazing. Okay, last question, best question. If you could go back in time to the woman who's running around New York City, she may have Massimo with her, I don't know, but she's running around New York City feeling very uber stressed out about all the things, what piece of advice would you give her today?

Adriana: Well, one, stop. Stop what you're doing and take a breath.

Erica: Sometimes that's all you need.

Adriana: Stop what you're doing and take a deep breath and get grounded. I think the biggest thing is, I was so detached from who I was during that time in my life. I think the biggest advice I would give her would be to take a breath and go inward. Go get grounded. Go figure out what you want. And even the groundedness, taking a minute to actually reflect on where your values lie, how to align your values with the current situation, because I get it, we may all be in situations that aren't ideal at any point in time in life. Life happens. There are things where we need to stay in our corporate jobs a little bit longer in order to pay the bills, and it is what it is.

Erica: Gotta do what you gotta do.

Adriana: Yeah, and we're doing it all. But it's about how you approach it with your mindset, and how you shift your perspective to be able to approach this from a space that is healing for you and for the situation around you. And that in itself will already change how you show up to that job, that position, that relationship, that situation.

Erica: Oh my gosh, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, this was amazing. I absolutely have to have you back, we gotta dive into more stuff. But check out her website, check out her podcast, check out her coaching programs, you guys. That's what I love about this podcast, meeting all of the women who are doing all of these different coaching programs, they all offer things that are different than what I offer. So tap into The Elevated Executive if that resonates with you. Until next time, we will see you there. Thank you, Adriana.

Adriana: Thank you for having me, Erica. This was great.