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The Secret Struggle of Leadership No One Admits
90 Plays6 months ago
At The Second Voice, we explore the inner conversations leaders rarely say out loud.
Leadership isn’t just about what you say out loud, it's about the conversations you have with yourself.
In this first episode of The Second Voice, host Luisa Hogan opens up about her own leadership journey and the self-talk that shaped it. She shares how the unseen, unspoken inner dialogue can build resilience (or quietly erode it) and why learning to manage your second voice may be the most important leadership skill you’ll ever develop.
This episode lays the foundation for what’s to come: raw, honest conversations with incredible founders, entrepreneurs, and change-makers just like you and the private battles behind public success. If you’ve ever felt like your inner voice was louder than your outer one, this is where your story meets theirs.
The Second Voice — uncovering the conversations leaders don’t say out loud. Hosted by Luisa Hogan, leadership resilience strategist and founder of Vermelho Consulting.
Luisa works with founders, executives, and senior leaders who carry real responsibility and want to lead with steadiness, clarity, and self-trust under pressure.
Her work focuses on nervous system regulation, leadership identity, and the inner dialogue that shapes how leaders show up when things are hard.
If this episode resonated, it is likely because the second voice is active in your leadership too.
Work With Luisa
If this episode sparked reflection, here are ways to go deeper:
• Leadership resilience workshops and advisory
• Keynotes and curated live experiences
• The Steady Leadership framework and private sessions
Learn more at: vermelho.com.au
A Note From Whisper & Thread
The Second Voice is proudly supported by Whisper & Thread.
Whisper & Thread creates intimate apparel embroidered with quiet, internal messages designed to interrupt negative self-talk.
Each piece carries a reminder on the inside. Not performative. Not loud. Just for you.
Because leadership self-talk does not start in the boardroom.
And confidence is built in the moments no one sees.
Explore Whisper & Thread at: whisperandthread.com
Stay Connected
Follow along and join the conversation:
• Instagram: @thesecondvoicepodcast
• Instagram: @vermelho_consulting
• Instagram: @whisperandthread
Subscribe, rate, and review The Second Voice to help more leaders find these conversations.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
The hardest conversation you will ever have as a leader is not with your team. It's actually with yourself. That inner voice, your second voice, is what tells you that you can succeed or what holds you back.
00:00:12
Speaker
And that's why this podcast exists, because if you can manage that second voice, you can excel in your leadership. And it's about time we started discovering what entrepreneurs and leaders who excel at what they do, what kind of voices they have in their head and what's telling them to keep going and what's holding them back.
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to The Second Voice, where we uncover the conversations that leaders don't have out loud. That second voice that either propels them forward or holds them back. I'm your host, Louisa Hogan, and today i am going to tell you a little bit about my story and why this podcast exists.
00:00:44
Speaker
And while today I'm flying solo, you can expect amazing guests in future episodes that I have lined up for you. We've had some incredible conversations and And i can't wait for you to hear some of the insights and stories that they have shared with me about their inner self-talk and about the voices that have spurred them on or held them back in different situations.
00:01:04
Speaker
You're going to love it. But as far as this podcast goes, the reason why it exists is because so often as leaders, we aren't even aware that we have a second voice that is holding us back. And also not even aware sometimes of the second voice that's pushing us forward and keeping us motivated and inspired.
00:01:21
Speaker
Because sometimes that voice is a voice that's from our childhood, from a parent, from a teacher, from a friend that told us something when we were very young and that we've carried with us out into the future.
00:01:31
Speaker
And sometimes that second voice is is not our voice. It's the voice that we've seen on social media, It's the voice that we've heard from other leaders and it's the voice that tells us we should be doing it this way. That's not how you do it. That's not, you don't look like that leader, that person that you admire, you don't sound like them. You don't lead like them. That's what you should be. And you're not that person.
00:01:51
Speaker
And the reason why I'm sharing that with you is because I have been in that loop. I have been in that negative cycle of telling myself things that without even realizing that I was doing that.
00:02:02
Speaker
And that's why this podcast exists, so that we can explore the voices of some incredible entrepreneurs and some incredible leaders out there who many I've known personally and many who I've just met recently. And and it's been such an incredible experience doing this because I've met some amazing people.
00:02:15
Speaker
And I want you to hear the things that they've told themselves and the uncertainties and the victories that they've had so that you can hear and know that you are not alone in your leadership or an entrepreneur entrepreneurial journey and that you can overcome some of those negative thoughts that you may be experiencing.
00:02:35
Speaker
So a little bit about my journey. I started on my leadership journey pretty much by accident. I came to Australia from South Africa when I was only 23 years old. I finished my degree in South Africa And I did a double degree in education and community development. And I came over to to Australia, sorry.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I followed love. And when I got here, I was waiting for my teaching number so that I could start teaching with my education degree. And while I was waiting for that, I started a school holiday job in a not-for-profit looking after kids during the school holidays.
00:03:06
Speaker
I absolutely love that job. But the amazing thing was accidentally, ah think maybe a month into being in that role, I was promoted into the supervisor role. And I suddenly found myself being the leader of a team of 10 employees who are all doing the same job all around my age.
00:03:22
Speaker
it was and It was a bit surreal. And so what I discovered was that I absolutely loved doing it. And from that experience, I never went back to teaching. I explored my community development side of my degree and I landed on a completely different career path that eventually landed me executive roles, CEO roles, and now here running two of my own businesses at the exact same time.
00:03:45
Speaker
and And what twists and turns that created. And that was in no way a small feat in terms of overcoming some of the negative self-talk that I had, but also building up and finding the voice that inspired me to keep going and to keep improving um my leadership and um having faith in what I do. And if there's one thing I've learned in all of that is your thoughts are not facts.
00:04:13
Speaker
Sometimes a thought pops into your head and it is not accurate. It's just a thought. It's not factual. But at the time when I started my career, I thought my thoughts were facts.
00:04:24
Speaker
And every time I had a bit of self-doubt that that thought was was real and that the thing that I was doubting was true of myself. And that was something really difficult to overcome.
00:04:35
Speaker
And the first time I started realizing that my self-talk was conflicting with the external image that I was trying to project because I thought I needed to be perfect as a leader was when I landed myself a um a role as a chief development officer.
00:04:49
Speaker
And it was in a so ah medium enterprise business. And I was the chief development officer there. And the CEO at the time one day pulled me aside and said, look, everyone can see when you're in a bad mood.
00:04:59
Speaker
So maybe you need to think about like what what that's all about. And I excused myself by saying, well, isn't it good that people can see my authentic side that I'm not hiding when I'm in a bad mood?
00:05:11
Speaker
um And she said to me, well, actually it's what you do with that. but It's not that you're not being authentic. It's that what do you do with that bad? What are you telling yourself to either remain in that bad mood or move out of it? How are you moving yourself out of it?
00:05:23
Speaker
And that's when I realized that my self-talk at the time, if I was in a foul mood, I would spiral myself into the foul mood and I wouldn't even be able to control it. And externally, I didn't even have the awareness that that was controlling my external image that I had.
00:05:39
Speaker
And it was it was rough it was rather enlightening when I had that conversation with her because that's when I started to realize that I needed to shift some of my self-talk so that I could change how I was portraying myself.
00:05:52
Speaker
But then what ended up happening was that i thought that I needed to hide some of that. And then I started being extremely self-critical to myself about how I was being portrayed and what people thought of me.
00:06:04
Speaker
And, you know, if if I even show even one bit of unhappiness, people are going to hate me. And I spiraled into this new way of thinking that also wasn't very helpful. My self-talk was, became very critical because I had this need for perfectionism and no failure.
00:06:20
Speaker
And I ended up working hard at that, but ah it was only over a long period of time that I started seeing some so some success with that. And eventually I landed my a CEO role. um I learned a lot through that CEO role, but i had it was my second CEO role that I took on.
00:06:35
Speaker
that I learned a lot about self-talk and leadership and building trust with my team. And funnily enough, the CEO role came upon me by accident, just like my first ever role.
00:06:48
Speaker
And, um what had happened was I had been headhunted into that organization as the chief operating officer. And within a couple of months, the CEO there, a few months, wasn't a couple, it was a few months, the CEO there resigned. Now that organization I came into, it was in a lot of trouble, um,
00:07:04
Speaker
There was a lot of funding that was changing. The contracts to that organization were changing. The way we had to operate were changing. We had to find new business. That organization was pretty much sinking. And the team there and me were mandated with trying to resolve that.
00:07:19
Speaker
But subsequently, the CEO left and I stepped into the CEO role at the time. And um I was never intending to be the CEO there, certainly not after a short period of time and certainly not in those circumstances.
00:07:31
Speaker
But I was tasked with trying to save that organization. And the wonderful thing was my team rallied behind me, we built an amazing team and they had a lot of trust in me and I had a lot of trust in them and we landed up finding new business for that organization and turned started to turn it around.
00:07:46
Speaker
But unfortunately I wasn't able to bring my board along with that journey and the change was too much for them. And because of that, they decided that the organization needed to wind up because it had strayed too far from its original mission.
00:07:59
Speaker
And while we had brought in new contracts and um signed up new new clients, the the board decided to wind up. And that experience was a pivotal time for me because I had to learn a lot about controlling my self-talk, remaining calm and steady and um keeping my team calm and steady and then, um you know, helping them wind up an organization. And they did an amazing job. They wound up all of the contracts that we had signed up and, um you know, we were successful in winding up that organization.
00:08:32
Speaker
But at the time, my self-talk said to me, Nobody is ever going to want to employ you after you've wound up an organization as a CEO. I thought my CEO career was over. It was devastating to me.
00:08:43
Speaker
And it sounds so ridiculous now. That was nine years ago. It sounds so ridiculous now. But at the time, that was my belief. So if you are out there and you believe something, it can be the thing that s sinks you it can be the thing that drives you to change. And that's what happened to me.
00:08:58
Speaker
I thought nobody's going to want to employ me, so I'm going to have to work for myself. And that's spurred me on to start my consulting practice for Mello. And so ah through there, i started doing, and i've and I've evolved so much in that business too, but I started doing change management because I didn't want other leaders to go through what I had gone through in, you know, leading change.
00:09:18
Speaker
and building resilience because my team at the time had shown me what amazing resilience was. And so that became my specialty. I worked hard at building my knowledge and authority in that space. I have been very lucky over the last nine years to even specialize that further and work specifically on culture change.
00:09:33
Speaker
and building leadership ah resilience. And I am now a resilience a leadership resilience strategist that I do. And I speak all over Australia on that topic. And I'm extremely grateful for for that opportunity.
00:09:46
Speaker
But I wouldn't have done that without the negative self-talk. So that's where the negative self-talk actually helped me at the time, because it it drove me to make a new decision and to change my direction and to and to just go for it.
00:10:01
Speaker
Unfortunately, many people would have that sort of negative self-talk and they would probably give up completely. So for me, if you're finding yourself in a place where your self-talk is telling you can't do something, start asking yourself, well, what can I do? And that's exactly what I did.
00:10:15
Speaker
And nine years later, i have a wonderful consulting practice that i'm in the process of scaling. I'm bringing on associate consultants to help me with the work that I'm doing. And I'm incredibly proud of that business.
00:10:26
Speaker
And then at the same time, a year ago, i launched another business with my sister and it's an e-commerce business all about changing self-talk. And I'm super proud of that. and And my evolution over the last nine years from that experience has brought me to this place here where I'm creating this amazing podcast for you. I'm passionate about self-talk.
00:10:42
Speaker
I'm passionate about leadership and resilience in leadership. And i would not have been there if it weren't for a little bit of negative self-talk that drove drove me to finding a solution.
00:10:56
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that was, you know, facing my self-talk. And in that that journey over the last nine years, I've had to face more self-talk and, you know, there have been times when it's been really difficult, as many of you know, who are starting your own businesses or in your own business, there are ups and downs. It's not always easy.
00:11:12
Speaker
I'm not here to tell you that nine years have been dreamy. There have been very difficult times. and The e-commerce business has been a huge learning curve for me and there have been definite ups and downs with that. We've won a couple of awards with that business in in a year.
00:11:25
Speaker
And then there have been days where I'm like, are we going to make any sales? Because, you know, we're we're winning awards here and there's no sales today and it's very defeating and it's very easy looking at that and to tell myself I'm no good at that and I'm never going to make this work and nobody likes our product and nobody Nobody wants to buy from us.
00:11:42
Speaker
And most days in my entrepreneurial journey, it's learning to silence that voice of doubt that's telling me you're failing, you can't do this, this is not the right way to do it. And going, well, I'm going to take one step forward anyway, one micro brave step towards my goal.
00:11:57
Speaker
And just taking that action has been a lifesaver for me every single day. and And that's something I repeat to myself, you know, when I'm feeling like wow, like I don't know if I can make this work.
00:12:08
Speaker
I just tell myself what's one small thing I can do today to move this forward. And I take that small step and next thing I've got is momentum. And that momentum gives me confidence. And suddenly myself talks like, hey, I can do this. This is this is working.
00:12:19
Speaker
And then the next day we have another setback and then we have to work through that. Self-talk, it's something you, I don't know of anyone. I don't know of anyone who doesn't have a doubt ever.
00:12:31
Speaker
I'm yet to come across one in my podcast interviews with so many different leaders and entrepreneurs. And if you're out there, if you're the person who never has any doubt, never has any self-talk, negative self-talk, please contact me.
00:12:42
Speaker
I want you on this podcast. I want to know who you are and how you do that so that we can all learn for you, from you. But for those of you who are like me, who have those moments of doubt, who have that second voice,
00:12:54
Speaker
that tells you you're not enough, that you're not going to make it, that you're not going to do it. um This podcast is for you so that you can hear, yeah that's me. And I want you to hear the nuggets of wisdom that come out of the leaders in this podcast so that you know that you don't have to listen to that voice and you can listen to the positive voice in you and create a positive voice in a special kind of way that makes you uniquely you.
00:13:19
Speaker
i think another important skill that I've needed to learn is finding out or learning when self-talk was going to sabotage me and when it was going to help me.
00:13:32
Speaker
And that's something I'm still mastering. And i think and in ah in a great way, my husband, um he has taught me a lot around loving myself and accepting myself and calling out when my negative self-talk is taking over.
00:13:48
Speaker
And certainly over the last five years, particularly after my daughter was born, I have learned to be a lot kinder to myself. And it was really pivotal. My my daughter is four years old. It was pivotal for for me to start or stop being so negative towards myself and disparaging towards myself, especially out loud, because I don't want my daughter to learn that that's okay, that it's okay to talk to yourself in that way. And that put me on a journey of learning You know, what what does that look like?
00:14:18
Speaker
And um what what are the better ways to talk about my mistakes and my failings in front of my daughter so that she learns it's okay to make mistakes? I really don't want to pass on some of the voices that I grew up with and that I absorbed from other people around me.
00:14:31
Speaker
And I can't wait. I've got a special guest for you in the future going to talk about just that topic, about leadership and motherhood and the voices that we have and pass on to other generations. And then on top of that, there's been throw in perimenopause. I'm perimenopausal.
00:14:45
Speaker
I'm not ashamed to say it. And that creates a whole new world. It created a whole new world of anxiety for me. I've never had anxiety in my life until I got perimenopausal. And the change in hormones was I went to my doctor and said, help me. I'm in hormone health.
00:14:59
Speaker
And it really is like that created a lot of anxiety for me that I never had before. And that brought in a whole new wave of self-talk that was just, I didn't even recognize that voice. And I'm excited to be talking about that very topic with an amazing woman who works in that space, who I'm sure you're going to love um hearing from if you're a woman in leadership who might be in midlife about to go in perimenopause, who's in perimenopause or is menopausal, some great strategies in there and great listening to the self-talk that comes along with that.
00:15:28
Speaker
Um, Yeah, I'm so excited to be sharing this journey with you and, you know, and sharing some practical strategies with you from our from our guests. Some of the strategies that I use, how I control my self-talk.
00:15:40
Speaker
One of them has definitely been through ah shifting the words that I use about myself, learning forgiving words, changing some of the words into more forgiving statements and So instead of, oh, you're an idiot for doing that, say, okay, what did I learn today?
00:15:56
Speaker
And that has allowed me to learn more from the things that I've ah messed up and start yeah um forgiving myself a lot more willingly than trying to portray this image of perfection.
00:16:09
Speaker
And that other image of perfection that I've had in over the years has been a voice of fear and not a fear of failing because I'm actually not afraid of fear of failing. It's always been a fear of failing in front of others.
00:16:19
Speaker
um i I fear what other people will say, or I have feared what other people will say if I failed. And I really started to shift that. And even like filming this podcast in this room, you can see behind me the embroidery machine that I use for my e-commerce business that, you know, that's part of that business.
00:16:35
Speaker
you know, in this room, I started to overthink a lot around where am I going to film this podcast so it looks ultra polished and professional? And I thought, no, this is about self-talk and this is the realistic, authentic office that I live in.
00:16:47
Speaker
And it's where I do all of my work and where all of my self-talk happens. So this is where you're going to experience most of the time, the conversations that we have, unless I'm at a studio interviewing somebody in person. So that's what you can expect. Some real life self-talk from somebody who's living and breathing business, who's been a leader, who's been an executive leader, who's had many, many challenges and many, many wins and talking about some of the things that got me there, kept me there, propelled me, and hopefully I will inspire you in the process.
00:17:16
Speaker
So that's what this podcast is about. And I want to thank you for joining me for this first episode. I really hope you stick around and listen to the amazing guests that I've got coming lined up. um The solo episodes are going to be few and far between.
00:17:30
Speaker
ah And, you know, this first episode is about letting you know that at the end of the day, leadership is less about the voice that we project and less about the the image that we put out there and more about the second voice that we learn to manage and to understand and to guide and that evolves and changes with us, just like my journey has changed and taken many twists and turns over the years from when I first started, doe-eyed, thinking I was going to be a school teacher and ending up a CEO of a consultancy that needed to be wound up.
00:18:00
Speaker
and then being a founder and a co-founder of two businesses that are doing amazing work. I would not have got here if I hadn't have learned to master that self-talk inside of me.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I can't wait to bring you the powerful stories and insights of the leaders and entrepreneurs that are coming on board. And I look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Take care.