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Nikki Barua
Serial Entrepreneur. C-Suite Advisor & Board Member. Author & Keynote Speaker. CEO & Co-Founder of Beyond Barriers.
Introduction
Nikki Barua is a distinguished serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and bestselling author, renowned for her expertise in guiding individuals and organizations through the complexities of change. With over 25 years of experience in the digital space, she has helped premier businesses enhance their cultures and capabilities, becoming a leading voice in the field of leadership development.
Professional Background
Nikki's impressive career spans various prestigious roles, including CEO and co-founder of Beyond Barriers, where she passionately works to empower organizations and their leaders to not only adapt but thrive in a rapidly evolving world. As a former Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at Team LPAC, and a Board Advisor at Switch, she has consistently leveraged her vast knowledge and insights to make a meaningful impact. Nikki’s previous experience also includes notable positions such as CEO of BeyondCurious, a consultancy that specializes in digital transformation, and Client Partner at Sapient.
Throughout her career, Nikki has exhibited remarkable resilience, overcoming significant adversity which has only fueled her ambition to achieve success both as a corporate leader and an inspiring entrepreneur. Her story of turning barriers into breakthroughs has been recognized and featured in major publications, including CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Forbes.
Education and Achievements
Nikki Barua is a lifelong learner, possessing three Master’s degrees from prestigious institutions. She studied Management Development at UCLA Anderson School of Management and earned her MBA and another Master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. Completing her academic journey with a Master’s degree from the University of Mumbai, Nikki embodies an insatiable curiosity and commitment to personal and professional growth.
Her accolades are numerous and reflect her extraordinary contributions to business and society. Nikki has been honored as Entrepreneur of the Year by ACE and recognized as a North America Entrepreneurial Winning Woman by EY. She was listed among the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century and is celebrated as one of Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Most Influential Women. Furthermore, her acknowledgment as a LA Woman of Influence by The Business Journals and a Woman of Entrepreneurship by the LA Lakers and Comerica Bank highlights her influential role in empowering women in business.
Advocacy and Impact
Nikki’s work extends beyond her professional roles. As a fierce advocate for diversity and inclusion, she is committed to making the world more inclusive and innovative. Her leadership and influence have generated a significant impact, inspiring countless individuals to break through barriers and strive for their highest potential.
Nikki's proactive approach to leadership emphasizes the urgent need for future-ready leaders who can navigate the challenges of today’s business landscape. Through her speaking engagements and writings, including her contributions to Thrive Global and her authorship at Beyond Barriers Book, she shares her insights and strategies for success, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and resilience.
Conclusion
In summary, Nikki Barua is a powerful force in the world of entrepreneurship and leadership development. Her commitment to fostering innovation, inclusivity, and resilience is evident in her work, making her a sought-after speaker and a vital resource for organizations seeking to enhance their capabilities. By empowering future leaders and championing diversity and inclusion, Nikki continues to inspire others to embrace change and achieve their fullest potential. Her story is a testament to the remarkable impact one individual can have in the world of business and beyond.
Highlights
Beginnings are filled with optimism. Whether it's the start of a new month or a new week, new beginnings motivate us to set bold goals and resolve to achieve them. Yet, research reveals that only 8% of adults achieve their goals. That’s a staggering 92% failure rate! Despite our best intentions, we sabotage progress and fail to achieve our goals when we rely solely on motivation. When the excitement of a new beginning fades, motivation wanes too.
The secret to achieving goals is DISCIPLINE. It's the determination to do what it takes even when (and especially when) you don't feel like it.
Here are 5 powerful ways to stay committed to your goal: 🌟 KNOW YOUR WHY Create a vision worth fighting for and identify the emotional reasons why your goal is important to you. Feeling a deep connection to your WHY helps you overcome moments of low motivation and willpower. 🌟 DEFINE YOUR FOCUS Break down your big goal into manageable, actionable steps with specific milestones. Eliminate distractions and avoid overwhelm by focusing only on ONE thing at a time. 🌟 DESIGN FOR CONSISTENCY Establish daily or weekly actions that align with your goal. Reduce the mental effort required to stay committed by allocating time on your calendar for these actions.
🌟 REINFORCE IDENTITY Every action you take reinforces your self-belief and identity. When you break your promises, you reinforce self-belief in your current limitations. When you keep your promises, you step into a powerful new identity.
🌟 PUSH YOUR LIMITS You don't know what you can do until you push your limits. Discipline is a muscle that gets stronger when exercised regularly. Raise your standards and do hard things daily.
Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is freedom. Don't let the CURRENT YOU steal from the FUTURE YOU!
#leadership #careers #success
Image Credit: neuronvisuals.com
"Everybody in the world has talent in something. Everyone can teach something or help with something."
I'm so thrilled I got to meet Wendy Diamond and learn from her. Tune into this podcast episode as we dive into Wendy's fascinating story about personal power and persistence.
My takeaway: To know Wendy is to love Wendy!
#leadership #entrepreneurs #founders
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.