The Villains of Life: One Woman’s Journey in Overcoming Them

Heather Monahan knows adversity and dark times. A product of a tough upbringing in Worcester, Massachusetts, she has faced many major hardships over the course of her life. 

With a psychology degree from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Heather set out on a sales career, rapidly ascending to top salesperson and brand manager during her early years on the job. This was the catalyst for her successful 20-year climb through corporate America, where she became a trailblazer for women seeking to break the glass ceiling and claim their C-suite status.

That’s when the villain of doom decided to visit her. After a 14 year run with the same company which included advancement to the role of Chief Revenue Officer, she was fired by a higher-up who happened to be a woman. Says Heather: 

“That awful situation was devastating to me as a single mother as I didn’t know where my next paycheck was going to come from. Luckily, I picked myself up and asked for help. I posted on social media that I had just been fired and that I needed help.” 

She believes that that experience along with many other periods of adversity has made her so much stronger and resilient. 

“For me, whenever there are uncertain and difficult times I now know that I will get through it. I look back on my past and I am able to see that if I was able to overcome that difficult situation, if I was able to withstand this really challenging time, then that’s further proof that I’m going to be able to do the same now.” 

Today, Heather has committed her life to empowering others by revealing key secrets around what it takes to get ahead at work and in life. A recognized keynote speaker and entrepreneur, she is the founder of Boss In Heels, a global community and a lifestyle brand dedicated to helping others gain confidence and live the life they want to live.

As a confidence expert, she partners with Fortune 500 companies and professional sports groups seeking to foster confidence in the workplace and on the court. Heather’s work has been featured in a number of prominent venues including US Today, CNN, Forbes, and Fast Company.

In 2018, her book Confidence Creator, which we featured here at “Great Books, Great Minds” skyrocketed to #1 on Amazon’s Business Biographies and Business Motivation lists the first week it debuted on Amazon. Delivering deep personal stories for her life and career, the book explores some tough lessons she endured along the way that were pivotal to her self-assurance and life achievements.

Now in a new book entitled  “Overcome Your Villains: Mastering Your Beliefs, Actions, and Knowledge to Conquer Any Adversity'' she helps readers evaluate and eliminate any outside or self-defeating blockers that stand between where they are now and where they deserve to be.

Amid massive supply chain hiccups tied to the pandemic, Heather shared with me the endless series of roadblocks she encountered in getting “Overcome Your Villains” released to the public. 

“It’s funny how with the first book I launched in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing. I self-published, didn’t do any sort of pre-launch initiative, and didn’t have a VIP book launch team. Nor did I didn’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. Yet that book went number one in five different categories the first week that it launched. It even trumped (no pun intended) Donald’s book for #1 on the business biography list.”

Recounting the crazy, massive success the first week the book came out, she said that everything went perfectly including the fact the books shipped on the right day. Everything went perfectly.

Now fast forward to 2020: 

“My community had become so much bigger and my email list much larger compared to what I had for the first book. I had a strategy in place and had months of a VIP book launch team at my disposal. There are over 400 people working with me on that team. And with the amazing help of the HarperCollins leaders, experts in this arena, I have so much more expertise. I was so certain that this book launch was going to be massive compared to my first. I was very, very clear on that.” 

Then the world of pandemic realities hit full force, leading to publishing hiccups that she never would have anticipated in releasing the new book. 

“We had been working eight months in anticipation of a planned book launch date of November 9th. This seven-day window ensuing from that date is vitally important for your media campaign. Whether it’s the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, this media attention is critical in terms of helping the book catch fire and get noticed. Bulk book orders are another strategy that you can put in motion to make that happen. There are so many things that you have to orchestrate in order to impact the first seven days.” 

Sadly, she says, two weeks before the launch date that she had been working towards for eight months, she got an email from Harper Collins leadership saying that there were some supply chain issues impacting authors like herself that would impact the release date of her book.

“They couldn’t give me a certain date because they didn’t have it. There were so many issues around getting books out of the warehouse which was completely beyond their control. Unfortunately, I had bulk orders that were scheduled to ship as well as live events that I needed them for.”

As luck would have it, somehow Barnes and Noble, Christian Books, and Book A Million all got their shipments of her books. Those, she says, all went out in one week, and then the following week the rest of the books shipped.

“My massive strategy to hit those first seven days, it's just an unfortunate situation that no one had control over due to the supply chain issues that everyone is having to deal with. Now looking back on this it's so funny that here I am three years later thinking that I’ve got all of this strategy and support in place to ensure that this process would go a lot smoother when in fact the launch for my first book was so much smoother.” 

Now for the good news. The book has now been officially released and distributed. Heather says that the reader reviews have been amazing, which has made the challenges all worth it. 

When asked about what fueled her decision to originally write the book, Heather offered this thought: 

“A theme kept coming up in the conversations I was having. With respect to my first book, people kept wanting to know how I was able to successfully bounce back from getting fired, So I decided to start keeping notes on a Word doc. That document ultimately became the outline for my new book “Overcome Your Villains.” 

Heather believes that her newest book is incredibly relevant for the times:

“I couldn’t have orchestrated that part any better, with all of the challenges everyone is facing, all of the haters that are online, all of the angst and anger. There couldn’t have been a better time for this book to come out.” 

Overcome Your Villains, she says, delivers a powerful, proven three-step process for overcoming adversity in business and life. 

“The timing for the book has been perfect. We all know that uncertainty has become the new norm and with that comes enormous challenges. Walking into uncertainty means anything can happen and that can feel really scary for a lot of us. I definitely know it has been for me.” 

Times have always been uncertain and they always will be. We have all fooled ourselves in the past into believing that things were predictable but the reality is they never were. So the more we own the uncertainty and choose to only look inward to find certainty the more opportunity and success we will create for ourselves.

Your certainty lives within you!”