293. The Winding Road to Finding My True Identity and Living Unapologetically with NoorJehan Tourte

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening. And don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach Sandee. Enjoy the show.

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Nor, John, thank you so much for being here today. Before we hit record, I was going over your bio, and you're just off the charts. How's it going today? So happy you're here. Thank you.

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I'm so excited to be here, Sandee, thank you. That's so kind of you and more than deserve.

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All right, so for the audience, I'm going to read a little bit from your bio because there's just so many just golden nuggets in here that just speaks to who you are as a person and as a woman. And I love it. And you say here, after unexpectedly making it to the semifinals of the 2022 Sports Illustrated swim search competition, like, whoa, you've made it your mission to get women excited about the prospect of falling on their faces over and over, even if it means they are making their one life on this earth count. I love it. I love it.

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So amazing. So many great things to talk about because I think that it's just a conversation that we need to have because I'm sure you run into this all the time. People look at you, they immediately judge you, make up stories. Right? The whole thing because of your beauty.

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And it's so important to really highlight how beauty comes from within. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside. But before we get into that whole conversation, tell the audience your story and how you got to where you are today. Thank you.

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I'm truly here talking to you because I woke up one day in December of 2021 and I just said, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go chase those childhood dreams. And the reason I decided to chase this childhood dream of becoming a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model is because I had reached a point of contentment. I just woke up and it was this feeling of contentment that I was waking up in my in law's house with my husband. And we were facetiming with my parents.

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And my husband is not from my background and my parents are first generation Indians. I was born and raised in southern California and I was raised with know indian culture, but very much an all american childhood. And then also my parents follow a more conservative faith. And so there was those expectations of their religious community that I was exposed to. I never thought I would marry someone outside the community and that my parents would accept that person.

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Not only do they accept my husband, they love him. They are just obsessed. I think they love my husband more than they love me. So that day I was just sat there and I said, you know what? Your entire life, your entire childhood into your never thought you would have this.

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Your parents facetiming you, so excited to see you and your husband, you getting to have that Christmas that you always envisioned as a child, I just felt contentment. And also in my career and in my social life. And that's then I think when I thought this feeling of contentment, I need to hold on to it. And how do I do that? And I do that by continuing to just Chase, you know, Sandee, I was just telling a friend this.

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You know how they say, you read about it so much that very successful people, usually famous people, will tell you once they've reached that pinnacle, it doesn't feel as good as they thought it would. And then there's that fear of staying there. And since we get that played back constantly to us, I don't ever want to reach the top. So this feeling of contentment, I don't want it to go away. And I think that's why I'm like, I'm just going to keep chasing dreams so that I continue to stay satisfied and satiated and content.

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Oh, my gosh, I love it. Because I know right now, before we hit record, I was telling you, I've got so many different projects going on and that's what keeps me going because these are all, everything I'm doing today are things that I've been wanting to do for over 25 years. And life has just happened for me and I've had a lot of twists and turns where I wasn't able to chase my dreams. And now just being able to accomplish things is just incredible. And that's going to bring me to the next point.

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That thing that you wrote in here, and I love this, you said you believed that becoming a Sports Illustrated model would represent the culmination of a lifetime spent searching for your true identity. But the experience helped you realize that your childhood dream would not only be a cover model, but also a role model. One who empowers ladies to show the world every side, from every angle, unapologetically. That just hits so home for me, because that's how it ought to be, right? We've reached levels of success, and we're doing all these things and we're doing it.

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We're chasing these dreams, and we need to do it unapologetically. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Yeah. It's twofold for me in terms of being unapologetic about it, because, again, I had mentioned I come from a cultural background of my parents faith that might be more conservative, and it's not a community that readily might accept someone being a Sports illustrated swimsuit model. But I also was born and raised in southern California.

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And so I'm balancing all of these different cultures. And finding my identity meant making my own identity. Right. Because I felt sometimes like I was never indian enough for the Indians. I never felt religious enough for the folks that were more religious.

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I never felt american enough at times. And so you're constantly trying to find a place to fit in. And that's then when I think also going out for that competition was my way of saying, yeah, I'm just unapologetically telling all of you, this is who I am. I found my identity, and it's who I am, and I'm embracing it. And I felt really, again, content.

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And secondly, it's something you had said earlier about beauty and what stereotypes and expectations we have of folks. The reason I say unapologetically show all sides is because I am very much in corporate America. I am very much dedicated to my career in advertising. I co lead a group of 50 people, and I take it very seriously and have a lot of pride in it. And I don't think that means that I should be then or anyone should put some of their childhood dreams on hold.

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We've got to be able to do it all and show it all. So, on one hand, right before this, if I'm taking meetings and pitching to clients, but then on the other hand, if I'm going to continue pursuing a dream to be a Sports Illustrated swim model, I shouldn't have to apologize for that. And that shouldn't take away from either sides of who. Absolutely. Because we're seeing it so often.

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Who was it? The Miss America that was just crowned recently and she's in the military. Yeah. I think she's a pilot. Yeah.

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And it was like, right, because we can do it all and you can be beautiful and really smart. My nieces are both ridiculously gorgeous and they're both incredibly smart. I mean, brilliant. Just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And I love that.

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I do, too. Because I think for so long women were, we were stereotyped, like, if you were really beautiful in the swimsuits or models or whatever, that you couldn't be smart and you couldn't run a company and you couldn't sit on the board of know. Now I was listening to some statistics that women in the United states are surpassing men by leaps and bounds, by the number of college graduates, the number of women on board of directors in leadership positions. The only place that we're not excelling is in ceos of major Fortune 500 companies. And hopefully that'll change.

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Yeah.

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It's so funny as Sandee's talking about her beautiful, stunning nieces, who I have no doubt never, I've never really considered myself like, oh, I'm such a beauty and people are not going to take my brain seriously. It was almost know and Sports Illustrated surprised me, especially in their open search competition. It's like the women who do well in that competition and then who really find themselves and find friends, it's actually the women that aren't doing it because they think that there are these beautiful. Right. Because if you're a professional model, you're probably not entering the amateur competition, which is what the swim search competition is.

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It's for folks who might have never otherwise been noticed or discovered. So it's almost like you see the women who just feel really awesome about themselves, whether it's their beauty or their brains or their personality or their talent, and that's what's shining through and what actually I think is getting people who advance through the competition love it. So let's talk about, because you touched. On it a couple of times already, and I want to dive into that a little bit deeper because I would imagine for anybody whose parents were the first generation coming from another country, because I'm in the DC metro area and we're a melting pot because of all the embassies and the government and we've got every race you can possibly imagine is. And, you know, you talked about how you didn't quite know how to fit in.

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And when you were talking about how they accepted your husband, it reminded me of that movie. And for the life of me, I cannot think of the name of that movie where he was indian and he wanted to marry a woman, and he got into comedy. It's based on a true story. Do you know what I'm talking about? That movie, it was incredible.

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And every week, his mom and dad would bring in some woman, indian woman, and he would have to sit there and hide that he was in love with this american woman. And it was this big struggle, and they eventually accepted him. For anybody out there, can you just talk about that a little bit more for anybody out there who is in that situation, no matter what country they're from, right? Yeah. Because as an mean, on one side of my family, they were here before the civil war.

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And my grandmother came to this country from England in the 1920s. So my mom wasn't even born yet when her mom came to this country. So I'm so far removed from that way of thinking. But I'd love to shed a little bit of light on that, not only for people who are in that situation, but for everyone else just to kind of understand how that is a real struggle for many people, because my social media manager, he's from India, he's now in Canada, he had an arranged marriage, and they're absolutely, totally in love with each know he got very.

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Can you, what advice can you give for people who may be struggling with that? Because it sounds like you went through that as well. Yeah. And I love this question, and I really welcome the opportunity to talk about it. The advice I can give from my experience is if you're in the situation with parents who are immigrants, give them a little more credit than you initially think to give them and give them grace, because I think the, obviously, for folks who are not in the situation, I think what happens, what I realize now as an adult is my parents came here as immigrants, so they were learning a brand new country while they were also learning how to be parents.

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So sometimes people only are doing one thing and they're doing both. And so I think that figuring all of that out, a lot of times I think minorities are referenced as being more deferential or being a little more subservient as a community. And I think some of that came from just the fear, the fear of figuring out a brand new place and being so far away from home and from your family. And what I realized in looking back is that that influenced their parenting style. So some of their parenting was a lot more.

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They were so much more risk averse. And I say this now, like having married my partner. And I noticed the differences, I did notice it between my friends and I growing up. But then when you develop a close, intimate connection with someone and their family. If I got in trouble at school, my mom's first reaction was, what did you do wrong?

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But if my husband got in trouble at school, my mother in law's first reaction was telling the principal, how dare you take my son out of class? What is the situation? It's almost like that empowerment. And I see that in how my husband makes decisions or moves forward in life with a bit more fearlessness than I ever had seen in myself. Interesting.

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I think we're constantly seeing that, but I think as a young teenager and 20 year old, I couldn't articulate what I just said to you now. But that's from retrospect. And then that's absolutely like, the tension that that causes, because my parents absolutely tried to set me up with arranged marriages and arranged matches. And if you met my parents, you would never think that, because they are just so outwardly, like, they're so easy going.

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They love being citizens of this country. And even my brother and I, when we were going off to college, my dad said, we didn't come to this country for you both to only spend time with indian people. Go embrace everything, go learn everything. So on that, like, when it comes to education and experiences and travel, they wanted us to do it all and do everything they couldn't do. But for some reason, Sandee, when it comes to relationships, know, settling down, that's where then the cultural know really gets activated.

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And, yeah, I was introduced to many fine indian gentlemen that I had to politely decline because I was secretly seeing my all american white boyfriends. Well, you know, I mean, I was. I was raised catholic, and I joked that I'm a recovering Catholic now. So my parents, that was the ideal thing, was that they. And I did.

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I did marry a catholic man, and we had a catholic wedding, and then we got divorced. And I think maybe the little bit of a difference is that when you were born and raised here in this country, you just see so much going on around and you do get a little removed away from the cultural aspects and whatnot. I know my in laws, my Italian in laws from my first husband. That's how I have the name his. My father in law and mother in law have both passed, but his father came here from Italy and they came as little boys from Italy.

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They weren't allowed to speak.

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So. So there was that thing, too. You have some of those depending on where you come from. They were like, no, you are going to be american through and through. So I think it's to go back to what you said when you said you have to give your parents grace.

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I just got chills because that as children, especially when you're teens and 20s, they forget to give their parents grace. So that was really great advice. So thank you. I love that for the question. Yeah.

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All right. So you wrote something else. This is such a great bio, by the way, because it just really, well, let me tell you, it was a good bio to give to somebody that's interviewing you because it's not just all about your accolades. You really talk about who you are. And so I just really appreciate that.

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So you put in here, amidst the multitude of societal pressures put on women to conform, you want to reassure your fellow females that living the life you painstakingly cultivated for yourself is worth even the worst of days, the worst of moments. Because wouldn't you rather stumble living life than squander at standing still? That's absolutely beautiful. Because here's the thing, right? You have to fail in order to succeed.

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And I think a lot of people don't realize that your worst days are happening for you, not to you. So what's your experience of that? And can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Because that's absolutely beautiful. Thank you.

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Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing it. I think we're so hard on ourselves. And when for me, looking back, all of the moments of failure or those moments of feeling like I failed my parents, disappointed my community, all of those moments, if I hadn't made the decision to willingly or intentionally fail them or disappoint people, I wouldn't be here.

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And it actually gives me chills. What if I agreed to marry one of these boys that my parents had introduced me to at like 22? I can't even imagine not having the life I have. And that's where I say, you got one life. And even on your worst days, if you know that it's the life that you built for yourself, you're going to get through that day.

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And I think that's why it's so important to make some intentional choices. And some of those choices might, in the moment, hurt someone or frustrate someone or disappoint someone. And you might be told you're going to fail or told you're a disappointment. But if you know why you're making that choice, because, and I think it is hard for young folks. I do, because I was very hard on myself, and I just assumed I was just being so rebellious.

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But if I'm truly, truly honest with myself, there was always a deep voice inside of me that said, you know what? You're not a bad person. You are just trying to figure out what you want out of life. And it's not that. So I think, again, on that same theme, I think in your 20s, when you're told that you're the black sheep or that you're being rebellious, you got to give yourself some grace to be really honest about what you're doing and why you're doing it and why that's important is because then suddenly you become an adult.

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And we have a lot of bad days. We have a lot of. Lot of bad days. There's a lot of hard days. But whether it's work or relationships or family or friends or just the world, and on those days, I just have to tell myself, like, you know what?

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This is the life you clawed for. You fought for this. So you're going to get through this bad day. And that's where it comes from. That feeling of it's a life you cultivated for yourself.

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And that's also where. What keeps me going about taking some risks. Right? Because once you get a taste of that contentment that we were talking about, I don't want to go backwards. So if I have to take a risk and if I have to fall, I would so much rather do that, because that means I'm living versus just staying within the confines of a comfort zone or my four walls of my house.

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Yeah, for sure. And the thing is that we're all going to have bad days. While some bad days are obviously worse than others. And so many people go through things that I could never even imagine. Whenever you go through something terrible or just bad, if it's the worst thing you've ever gone through, it's the worst thing you've ever gone through.

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Right. And there's that perspective there that we don't always. Right, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But, yeah, we're always going to have those bad days.

00:23:24
All right, so today you're in corporate America. You are a brand strategist. Is that correct? That's absolutely correct. All right, so for all the entrepreneurs out there, what advice can you give in terms of really making a mark with your brand?

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Is there any golden nuggets that you can give, because I know I have a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners that listen to my podcast, or there may be people that are thinking of stepping out and really creating some sort of business for yourself. What's the most important part of the brand that you could share? Yeah, I love this question, too. As a brand strategist, I'm working with clients, and my intent with them is to figure out how are we going to make your brand stand out from the crowd. And there's a lot of frameworks that we use, one of which is called positioning.

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So how do you position your brand relative to the competition? So you could go through that whole framework. But my biggest piece of advice, if we distill it down, is when you're an entrepreneur and you're building a brand, the first and foremost step, I think people do what they love, and so they'll get excited about, well, I like doing this, or I love seeing so many people doing that. I think I could do that also. But instead it's always thinking about what is the problem that needs to be solved, and then working backwards from there, like, can I solve that problem?

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And then how do I solve that problem differently than anyone else? Because if we start by just saying, you know what, I love fitness. I love working out. I have all these great ideas of great fitness routines. I'm so excited.

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I want to start getting into that industry. You might quickly get burnt out and overwhelmed because you see that it's such a saturated market and you don't know how to break through. But if you start on the flip side and you start, okay, I do like fitness. Are there any problems in this market? What don't I like about what's currently being offered?

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And start thinking about the problem that you can solve. You suddenly cut out the noise of the overwhelmed feeling of it's a saturated market because you're only focused on, this is the white space because this is the problem. And now I got to figure out how to solve it. So that's always the first advice I have for anyone who's even like my own husband. Right, Sandee?

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I went on a plant based diet when we got engaged because I thought I was going to try to try different eating habits. And so I went plant based, and I was getting a meal service, but I was still eating my protein bars in the morning. And he looked at me and he said, if you're plant based, why are you eating those aren't plant based bars? I'll make you a plant based bar. Because his background is in the food industry and in farming.

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So he has all these ideas and connections. So he said, I'm going to cook you up a plant based Protein bar. He did it for me. It turned into something that now is an actual company of ours. It's called fgpar.com.

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And we have this amazing plant based protein bar. But when we actually were getting serious about, are we going to commercialize this? My husband was just so excited that this is great. This is bar. This is amazing.

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And then me as a brand strategist, I'm like, what problem are we solving? You solved a problem for me because I was reaching for protein bars that aren't plant based. But in this market, where there are plant based bars that exist, what are we solving? And that's how we started. And, yeah, now we have our company, FGP bar.

00:27:16
Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. That's awesome. Thanks. I love it.

00:27:20
Wow. Thank you. All right, I'll have to send you. A question for you. What is some of the best advice you have ever received?

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The best advice I have ever received was from my first manager, also happened to be female. And it was don't apologize.

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And I loved it. And it stayed with me because it was day one of my very first day right out of grad school at a corporate job, and I'm asking questions, and she's teaching me everything I need to know about the day ahead. And I just kept saying, sorry, could you explain that again? Sorry. What does that term mean?

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And she finally just said, hey, you're asking questions. You need clarification. You don't have to apologize for that. And do me a favor. For anything at work, don't apologize.

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And it stayed with me for. So, of course, when an apology is merited, give it, but don't let it become autopilot. And that stayed with me because even to this day, when I'm about to write an email, I will intentionally work around and avoid apologizing. But I can still be acknowledging that I was wrong or anything, but not with an apology, because I think it can just change dynamics. What a great leader.

00:28:44
That was a great leadership example because she is fantastic. Yeah. Is she still your manager? She's not, but she's still someone I keep in touch. I mean, because actually, you want your employees to be asking questions.

00:29:01
Yeah, absolutely. How else are they going to do their job? Exactly. That was fantastic. Nor, Jahan, this has been such an amazing conversation, and I know that so many women are going to find value with this conversation.

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And men, because men, hey, if you're with a woman or you have a sister or a mother, you need to learn some of this stuff, too. Is there anything else that you'd like to share before we finish up? I think the only thing I'd love to share, because you had said the best piece of advice I have been given, but something I have been really passionate about lately, about advice that I've been giving to folks, is, oh, good. Especially young women.

00:29:47
I cannot state enough how valuable cultivating a strong command over the written word is in your life. It does not matter what industry you go into, what career you pursue, professional or personal relationship. Having a command of writing and expressing your ideas and thoughts through the written word will just elevate the opportunities that open up for you because it changes people's perceptions of you. And I've seen it happen time and time again, and I just feel it doesn't matter. I'm not saying if you want to become a writer or a screenwriter, but just even how you approach writing a text or writing an email to someone that you might want to reach out to and rekindle a relationship with, or someone that you may have wronged or you're thinking about.

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If you can take what's in your mind and put it in words, that means it's ready to be shared. I've seen it happening so much in work and in life, and I just hope people don't shy away. Of course, we've got chat GBT, we've got the AI, we've got all that stuff going on, and everyone is orally communicating like we are right now. But the command of the written word elevates your eq. Oh, for sure.

00:31:10
Because almost any position that you get, you're going to have to write an email. And you know what? Chat GPT is a great resource because. It can teach you. Yes.

00:31:21
Right? I mean, you can learn from it. You can absolutely learn from. I use it quite often, especially for things like, what is a good reference line for an email that talks about this? And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I never could have thought of that.

00:31:34
And in less than a half a second, I had, like, ten different choices. I'm like, brilliant, right? And then you're more excited to write, and you're like, okay.

00:31:44
Oh, my gosh, I love that. Because I think you get text, and it's one thing if you're texting your friends, but if you're texting your boss, you don't want to be abbreviating every other word either. Yeah, because there still has to be professionalism in the workplace. It's just like it really can strengthen people's perception of you and how they might take you more seriously, or it's a really strong tool for all of us to have. What a great advice and reminder for everybody.

00:32:17
Nor, Jahan, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find you on social media? Yes, you can find me on Instagram at Norjahan tort noorjehantourte. So it's at Norjahontort, and then you can check out our plant based protein bars@fgpbar.com. Fgpbar.com awesome.

00:32:48
Thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation, and I wish you all of the best moving forward. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Sandee.

00:32:57
All right, thank you, everyone.

00:33:11
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are, are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.