How to Stop Waiting for Permission and Build Your Own Legacy Table
Build your own legacy table
Building a lasting legacy as a Black woman or woman of color often means walking away from a table that was never designed to hold you. On this episode of Women of Color: An Intimate Conversation, Deneen L. Garrett opens the Legacy Series with Isimemen "Isi" Aladejobi, CEO and Founder of Fulfilled — a transformational coaching program that has helped hundreds of Black women and women of color land dream roles, secure six-figure salary increases, and generate over $7 million in new salaries collectively. Isi's own story starts with a failed organic chemistry class, a dream that belonged to someone else, and a decision to stop chasing a table that didn't exist and build one instead.
Key Takeaways
- Stop chasing dreams that were handed to you — misalignment between what you say you want and what you actually pursue will always cost you.
- Building your own table starts on the inside: identity, mindset, and inner work come before resumes and job searches.
- Legacy isn't just financial. When a woman heals and becomes who she was made to be, it changes her marriage, her parenting, and the generation coming behind her.
- You don't have to do this alone — investing in coaching and community with other action-takers shortens the distance between where you are and where you're called to be.
The Cost of Living Somebody Else's Dream
Isi's father raised her to become a doctor, teaching her to read and do long multiplication at three years old and building a rigorous academic path around a dream that was his, not hers. It took failing organic chemistry — twice — for her to admit the truth: she didn't want it. "So many women are given dreams because this is what looks good, this is what sounds good, this is what everyone else is doing," Isi shared. That failure wasn't a setback. It was redirection — the moment her real journey of transformation began.
The lesson shows up again and again in her clients: you cannot chase something with your actions while your spirit is saying no. Deneen named this in her own story too — applying for corporate roles she didn't even want, then wondering why the offers never came. Misalignment doesn't just feel bad. It quietly sabotages the outcome.
Why the Roadmap Never Existed for Us
When Isi came out of college with two job offers she barely had to apply for, she went looking for whoever had taught her to do that — and found no one was teaching Black women that process. Empowerment spaces were plentiful; step-by-step strategy wasn't. So she reverse-engineered her own success into a framework, tested it on her first client, and watched her land a job and then a $15,000 raise. Fulfilled was born from that gap.
Her clients now land multiple job offers, six-figure offers after years of unemployment, double promotions, and $100K salary increases — over $7 million in new salaries collectively. But Isi is clear that the resume is the last step, not the first.
The Inner Work Comes First
"We don't even touch your resume," Isi said. "We work on mindset first — you're not leveling up because you're not her yet." Through her Golden Triangle process, clients excavate the limiting beliefs planted by teachers, bullies, and systems, and get honest about what they actually believe about themselves versus what they say they want. From there, her Joyful Job process helps women discover roles and paths they didn't know existed — the intersection of gifts they'd buried under years of "practical" choices.
Isi doesn't call herself a savior. She calls herself a midwife. "There's gold in you," she says. "I'm just here to move the dirt."
Legacy Is Generational, Not Just Financial
The part of the work Isi says excites her most isn't the salary increase — it's what happens after. When a woman does the inner work, the transformation doesn't stay contained to her job. It shows up in her marriage, her parenting, her confidence in every room she walks into. "Kids repeat what you do, not what you say," Isi said. When a mother heals, she starts parenting from a whole place instead of a lack mindset — and that is what building a legacy table is actually for: pulling up chairs for the women who come after you.
Three Things to Start Today
Asked what she'd tell every Black woman and woman of color to do differently, Isi named three:
- Build a real relationship with God and let it reprogram your identity. Knowing whose you are is the foundation everything else stands on.
- Stop lying to yourself about what you actually want. Put some respect on your own name and get honest about your gifts instead of dumbing them down.
- Get in community with action-takers. Not just any community — people who hold you accountable and won't let you keep spinning your wheels.
Conclusion and Next Steps
You don't have to wait for someone to build you a seat. As Isi puts it, the woman who's waiting needs to sit down and write out exactly what waiting and misalignment have already cost her — and what they'll keep costing her if nothing changes. That's usually enough to wake her up.
To hear the full conversation — including Isi's story of praying and fasting her way through a college major change, and the moment she chose truth over her parents' approval — listen to the full episode and subscribe to Women of Color: An Intimate Conversation for more.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to build your own table? Building your own table means creating your own roles, income, and opportunities instead of waiting for existing systems to make room for you — the way Isi built Fulfilled when no one was teaching Black women a real roadmap to career and income growth.
What is Fulfilled? Fulfilled is Isimemen Aladejobi's transformational coaching program for Black women and women of color, focused on mindset and identity work before resumes and job searches. Clients have landed multiple job offers, six-figure offers after unemployment, double promotions, and $100K salary increases, generating over $7 million in new salaries collectively.
Why does inner work matter more than the resume? Because misalignment shows up in interviews, in confidence, and in the roles you even consider applying for. Isi's clients do deep mindset work first so the version of them searching for a role is the aligned, confident version — not the scared or misaligned one.
How does one woman's transformation become a legacy? When a woman does the work to become who she's meant to be, it changes how she parents, leads, and shows up in every relationship — creating generational healing, not just a bigger paycheck.
