Meet Femi Olasupo

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Femi Olasupo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Femi , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

My confidence and self-esteem come from a commitment to self-mastery and deep self-knowing. I’ve heard it said that confidence is not walking into a room and thinking you’re better than anyone; it’s walking into the room and not having a need to compare in the first place. For me, that sentiment exemplifies the difference between someone who is seeking external validation and someone who is rooted in internal validation. There will always be people who are younger, smarter, richer, or luckier than you in some aspect of life. But, what there will never be is someone who is you. There will never be someone who sees the world exactly the way you do, who expresses themselves exactly the way you do, who’s had to fight through the exact same challenges, etc. The best path to success and fulfillment is through deeply wanting to live this life as yourself. It’s the best thing any of us can do. And, it’s the greatest gift we can give to the world – to love all parts of ourselves, to know ourselves fully, to delight in who we are, and to vote for the kind of world we wish to see through our behaviors, what we pursue, and how we choose to show up in this world. By doing this we inspire others to also show up as themselves. It’s worth noting that a lack of confidence and self-esteem is commonly due to self-abandonment or self-neglect in some way. Not showing up as yourself, because you believe being something different is better. Being you is the best because it’s something you are uniquely qualified for and only you can be.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I currently have a day job but I’d love to focus on the work that truly fills my cup. I am an author, speaker, and someone who loves to travel and share that experience with others through my group travel program, lovingly known as Frolic With Femi. I have written a few picture books. I prefer to call them that rather than children’s books because my intention was always for these books to be for all ages. I write about topics such as following your dreams, learning to love yourself and your path, and developing emotional intelligence. In addition to my picture books, I finished my first full length non fiction manuscript and it will be published later this year. It’s called Emotional Support Book. It focuses on 8 core emotional intelligence skills to overcome adversity, cultivate resilience, compassion, and self-care. In my day job I manage a lot of people and a lot of work and was delighted when I was invited to give a Tedx Talk in March 2024. My topic of choice aligns perfectly with my work as an author. My talk centered around Compassionate Leadership. In my book, Emotional Support Book, I also discuss the importance of what I call, “Sensitivity Leadership.” We are all emotional beings but the world offers us such a limited education in managing our emotions. It’s been my great pleasure to contribute to that conversation because I know emotions offer us great wisdom, guidance, and protection. Mastering one’s emotional world is self-mastery. Lastly, I love to travel and often solo travel. But in recent years, friends and family have asked to travel with me so I decided to do an experiment and offer the opportunity for group travel. To my surprise there was such interest that I committed to two group trips to my favorite place Scotland in 2025. I plan to continue offering group travel opportunities in coming years for those who would rather travel with a group, won’t don’t have interest in all the logistical planning, who want to travel with fun, interesting, and kind people, and I even plan to do some creative retreats in other countries to combine my love for travel and creative projects! Overall, I believe that life is a gift and I don’t plan on wasting it. I hope to inspire others not to waste their gift either.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three areas of knowledge that have been most impactful for my journey are:

(1) healing past pain/emotional management skills. We lose an insane amount of energy avoiding feelings, repressing who we really are, please pleasing, being afraid to say no, being afraid of not being good enough, being afraid period. If you can heal what hurt you, if you can learn to look your life in the eyes and truly sit with and learn to love all parts of yourself, you unlock an incredible superpower. You become a bit other worldly because now you own yourself and your life, instead of anything outside yourself owning you and your life. It’s powerful.

(2) learning how to rest – rest and recovery are vital parts of high performance, you can ask any athlete. Life can be a high performance sport yet a lot of people are not properly rested. And it’s hard. This is still sometimes a struggle for me. But, I’ve come to learn how to recognize my own signs of exhaustion so that I can give myself what I need without guilt or shame or thinking that I’m lazy. My perspective has changed and I see rest (physical, mental, spiritual) as a tool and an aid to help keep me in the long game so I can truly pursue all that I desire. This is deep self-care and it goes far beyond spa days and “treat yourself” afternoons. It’s looking at yourself as someone innately worthy of being taken care of.

(3) Courage – if we think of courage as a skill, that means it’s something you can develop. How do you develop courage? By being afraid, worried, unsure, and doing that thing anyway. This has been one of the most impactful skills on my journey because it has allowed me to talk myself INTO many opportunities that moved my life forward. There’s no way I would be where I am today if I didn’t take my fear along for the ride and do it anyway. It’s amazing what you find out about yourself, too. You find out that even if you’re not always qualified on paper, you may still be qualified in practice. You find out that some of the people you think are so much better than you are just better at talking confidently, but that doesn’t always yield real results. You find out that you’re much more capable than you gave yourself credit for. You find out that most things are trainable and “figureoutable”. You discover that the pursue and the journey of DOING is the process that qualifies you. Once something is done, once you’ve gone through that process, no one can take those qualifications away from you. They can even steal credit, erase you from the success story, forget to mention your names in rooms you basically built (all things that have happened to me) but they can’t take away the experience and skills you own from the process of doing. So, go do, courageously. Fear can tag along, too.

How would you describe your ideal client?

My dream is to create spaces for all the people who’ve ever been called “too sensitive”, the ones with personalities that are “too big” or “too much” (as if that’s a bad thing), the creatives, and those with an insatiable thirst for life to gather, frolic, and play their way into greater confidence, clarity, and a sense of completeness for being exactly who they are. I want us to collaborate on creative projects, travel together, have great conversations, and build community! Whether it’s writing a book, traveling, going to see Denzel Washington on Broadway (it was amazing), a Tedx Talk, competing in a powerlifting competition or whatever else, one of the most common response I get is, “That’s on my list!” or “I’ve always wanted to do that.” My ideal client has big dreams, knows in their bones they have what it takes to do it, but needs to get into an environment in which they are instilled with confidence, accountability, fun, joy, play, and community. My ideal client has a creative project they’ve been working on it since the Titanic sank that they’d hey’d love to finally finish. My ideal client would love to travel and have amazing experiences but might feel overwhelmed at figuring out all the costs, logistics, and maybe there’s some fear about doing something they’ve never done by themselves. My ideal client has a big heart, is often called strong, and who shows up for the people they care about – and deep down they wish they’d get the same in return. My dream is to unite all of us that fit these descriptions, because I’m that person, too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://writtenbyfemi.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writtenbyfemi/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writtenbyfemi
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@writtenbyfemi

Image Credits

I own all my images.