Paula Out of Africa, Part 4: Luxor and the Legacy You Create Every Day

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Description

By the time I reached Luxor, I thought this trip had already given me everything it was going to give me. Kenya reminded me to slow down and rediscover wonder. Cairo made me think about legacy and the importance of telling our own stories. Hurghada reminded me that joy is not a luxury. Then Luxor connected all of it in a way that settled into my spirit.

Standing in the Valley of the Kings, surrounded by stories that had survived for thousands of years, I couldn't stop thinking about how intentional it all was. Every image, every color, and every symbol had been chosen to communicate something about who these people were, what they valued, and how they wanted to be remembered. They did not leave their stories to chance, and neither should we.

In this final episode of my Paula Out of Africa series on Branding Room Only, I'm sharing what Luxor taught me about gratitude, legacy, and the choices we make about how we show up. From the story of Hatshepsut to the realization that none of us should leave our stories to chance, this part of the journey reminded me that legacy isn't something we leave behind someday. It's something we're creating every day through the choices we make, the stories we tell, and the lives we lead.

Chapters

1:34 – How gratitude shapes your personal brand and the way people experience your character

3:33 – Why gratitude changes the question from what else you can get to how you can honor what you have already received

4:02 – The Luxor excursion Paula nearly skipped and why “hope is not a plan” changed her decision

7:25 – Arriving at the Valley of Kings and feeling the weight of standing on sacred ground

9:09 – What the intentional storytelling inside the tombs revealed about branding and legacy

12:31 – How Hatshepsut shaped her own identity, authority, and place in history

14:49 – What Hatshepsut’s story reveals about women, leadership, visibility, and taking up space

16:18 – The moment Paula realized no one could make her small unless she participated in her own shrinking

18:34 – The message Paula brought home from Africa about remembering who you are and what you are building

Mentioned In Paula Out of Africa, Part 4: Luxor and the Legacy You Create Every Day

Paula Out of Africa, Part 1: Kenya, Wonder, and the Brand You’re Becoming

Paula Out of Africa, Part 2: Egypt and What Your Personal Brand Preserves

Paula Out of Africa, Part 3: Hurghada and Why You Should Stop Postponing Your Joy

Paula’s Luxor and Valley of Kings Photo Album

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Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.

PGE Consulting Group LLC empowers individuals and organizations to lead with purpose, presence, and impact. Specializing in leadership development and personal branding, we offer keynotes, custom programming, consulting, and strategic advising—all designed to elevate influence and performance at every level.

Founded and led by Paula Edgar, our work centers on practical strategies that enhance professional development, strengthen workplace culture, and drive meaningful, measurable change.

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Transcript

Paula Edgar: Welcome to Branding Room Only, the podcast where your personal brand gets a front row seat. I'm Paula Edgar and if you're here, it's because you know your brand isn't just about what you do, it's about how people experience you. In each episode, you'll hear stories, strategies and lessons from leaders and influencers who built their brands and made their mark. And I'll share the tools you need to do the same. Let's go. Hi everybody, and welcome back to Branding Room Only. This is the final episode of my Paula Out of Africa series. And I have to tell you, I wasn't sure how I wanted to tell this story. Not because I didn't know what happened. I have to say, I knew exactly what happened. I just wasn't sure I knew how to explain what shifted inside of me. Because this wasn't one of those experiences, where I came home and thought, well, that was just a great trip. And that was it. I came home feeling like something had settled into my spirit in a way that I know is going to stay with me for the rest of my life and changed my brand. If you've been listening to this series and I hope that you have, you know that every stop gave me something different. Kenya reminded me to slow down and rediscover wonder. Cairo made me think about legacy and the importance of telling our own stories. The Red Sea reminded me that joy is not a luxury. Joy is part of a meaningful life and I honestly believe it's part of a memorable personal brand. But Luxor, Luxor connected all of those lessons together. Before I tell you what happened there, though, I want to start with something that kept coming up for me throughout this entire trip and that is gratitude. I've been thinking a lot lately about how gratitude impacts your personal brand. And I don't think we talk about it enough, like joy. We spend so much time talking about confidence and executive presence and visibility and networking and all of those things absolutely matter. But one of the things people notice almost immediately is whether someone is grateful. Do they acknowledge the people who helped them? Do they remember the opportunities they were given? Do they appreciate the people who opened doors for them? Or do they walk through life acting as though they accomplished everything completely on their own? I know that gratitude builds trust. People are naturally drawn to people who appreciate them. They're more likely to mentor them, recommend them, collaborate with them and invest in them because gratitude communicates character. On the other hand, when someone consistently takes people for granted or acts entitled, people notice that too. They may not say anything, but they quietly become less willing to keep opening doors. As I reflected on this trip, I realized how many people made it possible. My clients first, because I was able to pay for the trip, so thank you to my clients. My husband encouraged me to go and quite literally helped me to organize every day of the trip with packing cues, because he knows that is exactly the kind of thing that makes me happy and I need. My family supported me while I was away. The National Bar Association and shout out to President Ashley Upkins, created this incredible experience. Our guides on each of the segments of the trip shared not only facts, but stories and context. Every driver, every hotel employee, the people who organized it through the travel agency, every person who answered one of my many, many questions, contributed to what became one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. When you begin looking at life through the lens of gratitude, you stop asking, what else can I get? And start asking, how can I honor what I've already been given? That mindset stayed with me when we reached Hurghada. So if you listened to the last episode, you know that I loved our time at the Red Sea. We had finally reached the relaxation part of the trip. We were sleeping a little later, we enjoyed the beach, we talked, laughed, we took pictures, we prayed, we were present. Then someone mentioned that there was an optional day trip to Luxor and the Valley of Kings. On paper, it honestly didn't sound that appealing. I was like, hmm. It meant getting up before sunrise, leaving the resort around six o'clock in the morning, hello, sitting on a bus for somewhere around three and a half to four hours each way and spending the day exploring Luxor and making that same drive all the way back that evening. In other words, it meant giving up an entire day of rest. I remember sitting in my hotel room going back and forth. Should I stay? Should I go? Would it be worth it? I did what I do most of these days. I started Googling. So I looked at pictures and watched videos and I read reviews and tried to figure out whether this excursion was worth the money and the time. And then somewhere in the middle of all of that searching, I realized that I was asking the wrong question. The question wasn't whether Luxor was worth it. The question was, Paula, when are you coming back to Egypt? And my answer to myself was, Paula, I don't know. I hope I come back. In fact, after this trip, I fully intend to come back and bring my family, because I felt such a connection to Egypt. But hope is not a plan. And I realized that if this ended up being my only opportunity to visit Luxor and the Valley of Kings, I didn't want to spend years wondering what I had missed, because I chose one more day at the pool, or at the beach. One thing I learned about myself over the years is that I almost never regret saying yes to experiences. If I regret anything, it's usually the opportunities that I talk myself out of, because they seem inconvenient or expensive or require a little extra effort. So I said, yes, y'all. And I can tell you that it became one of the best decisions of this entire trip. Here's the funny part. I have loved Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas for years. I know that sounds random, but stay with me, y'all. One of my favorite Vegas memories happened… I go to Vegas every year. I love Las Vegas. But many years ago, I checked in on September 11, which is a day that's always emotionally complicated for me, because you'll know that I lost my mother on that day, in the terrorist attacks on 9-11. When I got there, obviously the folks at check-in didn't know my personal experience, but they had oversold my room category. And so instead of giving me the room that I booked, they upgraded me to this incredible honeymoon suite. And I remember feeling so grateful, because what could have become an inconvenience, became this unexpected gift that I received on a day that is often really challenging for me, because of grief and memories and, you know, outreach that people make only on that day and just missing my mom. So ever since then, well, before then, but ever since then, I've had this affection for the Luxor in Las Vegas. So shout out to them. So imagine my surprise when I arrived in Luxor, Egypt and found myself thinking, wait a minute, they really did their homework. Like, obviously I knew that Las Vegas had borrowed from ancient Egypt, but walking through the Luxor made me appreciate, like the actual Luxor, made me appreciate just how intentional the design choices had been in the Luxor Hotel. There was a strange sense of familiarity when I was at the place in Egypt, like, oh, I feel like I've been to this place before, because I kind of had, but not, you know? So when we finally reached the Valley of Kings, everything changed. The first thing that I noticed wasn't one particular tomb or monument. It was the landscape. There's something about the mountains, the heat, my God, the heat, the stillness and the silence that immediately told you that this wasn't just another tourist attraction. It was sacred ground. You know, I'm talking about that feeling I wanted to get in each part of Africa. I got it there. People had been coming on this part of the land for thousands of years and now here I was walking into a place that I'd only ever seen in books and documentaries and in the Vegas recreation. So we collected our tickets and we split into groups, because we were big groups. We were split into groups. And one of the attendants handed each of us a little piece of cardboard. And at first I was like, what is this? I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized it was supposed to be a fan. It was hot enough that someone had thoughtfully decided that every visitor needed a way to create their own breeze. And let me tell you, I used that little cardboard fan every chance I got because, whew, entering those tombs were hot, but before entering the tombs, being outside in the tourist space, we were reminded that if we wanted to use the restroom, we would have to pay. I laugh because all week long we had been, or the full time we were in Hurghada, we'd been carrying around toilet paper and wipes that we'd been given in our welcome bags. And not like toilet paper roll, but like a little, you know, kind of tissue packet. And I thought to myself, apparently bringing your own supplies does not get you out of the dollar restroom fee. Anyway, travel has a funny way of reminding you that every place has its own rhythm and its own customs and rules. So, okay, we enter the first tomb. I was not prepared for how I was going to feel. You walk down these passageways that were created thousands of years ago and all around you, the walls are covered in hieroglyphics, vivid colors, symbols and stories that somehow survived the rise and fall of civilizations. I found myself slowing down almost immediately, because I didn't want to rush through it. I wanted to absorb it. The challenge is like a lot of tours, right? So you can really stand there and be in your feelings about the spirituality of it all. But I did want to absorb it. As I sat there looking at those walls, one thing kept repeating itself in my mind. Nothing in those tombs was accidental. Every image had been chosen. Every color meant something. Every symbol communicated an idea. Every carving told a part of a larger story. And then it hit me. The pharaohs were not leaving their legacy to chance. They weren't hoping that someone thousands of years later would correctly guess who they were or what they stood for. They decided. They intentionally created the story they wanted future generations to inherit. And standing in that tomb, y'all, I remember whispering to myself, this is branding. Not branding in the modern sense of logos and websites and social media, but branding at its most fundamental level. This deliberate decision to say, this is who I am, this is what I value and this is what I want the world to remember about me. And thousands of years later, me standing there, I realized it had worked. It worked better than probably any of them could have imagined, right? Anyway, as incredible as the tombs were, there was another part of the experience that stayed with me just as much. Our guide explained that years ago, they used to accompany visitors into the tomb and explain every wall, every symbol, every story as you walked through. But eventually, the archaeologists and preservationists realized that having the guides talking so much inside the tombs all day long was changing the environment. That extra moisture from people's breath, the increased traffic and simply having more people lingering inside those spaces were beginning to affect the artwork, so they stopped. So now you, like I told you, walk through largely on your own. And I was like, oh, that's disappointing. But then I realized that was exactly the opposite. It wasn't disappointing. They were protecting the legacy. They were willing to inconvenience today's visitors so that thousands of visitors tomorrow could visit and have the experience and experience the same beauty. And think about that for a second. How often are we willing to sacrifice immediate convenience for long-term impact? How often are we making decisions today, because we're thinking about what people will experience years from now? So standing there again, I kept thinking, they cared enough about preservation that they changed the entire visitor experience. And that also felt like a branding lesson. Not every decision should be about immediate gratification. Sometimes you're building something that just isn't for you. Sometimes you're preserving something for people who you've never met. That thought stayed with me as we continued exploring, but there's one story that completely stopped me in my tracks. That is the story of Hatshepsut. I hope I said that right. Hatshepsut. King Hatshepsut. Now, she was the woman king. I had heard her name before, but hearing her story and understanding her story while standing in Egypt was something completely different. This was a woman who stepped into leadership during a time when it simply wasn't expected. They were kings, right, not queens. Rather than allowing other people to define the limits of who she could be, she made a bold decision about how she wanted history to remember her. So in many of the depictions during her reign, she presented herself with the body and regalia of a king, while still identifying herself as a woman. She wasn't pretending to be someone else. She was expanding people's understanding of what leadership could and should look like. So again, I was like, oh my God, she understood branding, not because she had a communication strategy, but because she understood identity. She understood titles. She understood that if she allowed everyone else to define her, they would define her too narrowly. So she intentionally shaped the narrative herself. She decided who would see her, how would she be seen, how she was going to lead, what symbols would represent her authority and how people would remember her. So I learned something else and this goes to the point of remembrance. After her reign ended, there was an organized effort to erase her, to erase the pharaoh that was the female king. Statues were damaged. Her name was removed from monuments. Pieces of her story were intentionally destroyed, because some people simply could not accept the idea of a woman exercising that level of leadership and it being documented and preserved. Now, when I heard the guy telling us this, I actually smiled. And not because it was funny, but because it didn't work. Right? Thousands of years later, we're still talking about Hatshepsut. Thousands of years later, people travel from all over the world to learn about her leadership. Thousands of years later, I'm sitting here recording a podcast, because her story reached me. That's extraordinary. It also reminded me of something that women leaders know all too well. History is full of people who have tried to minimize women's contributions, question our ambitions, second guess our leadership, or suggest that we somehow take up too much space. And yet, we keep showing up. As we're walking there, I thought about this king and I found myself thinking about women who I admire today. I thought about Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson. I thought about Vice President Kamala Harris. I thought about the women I've had the privilege of serving alongside in bar associations throughout my career. I thought about my other women who I lead with on the ABA's commission on women as a commissioner. I thought about women leading law firms, businesses, nonprofits and families, often under a level of scrutiny that their male counterparts never experience. And if I'm being honest, I thought about myself. And not because I'm comparing myself to an Egyptian pharaoh, but because I know what it's like to have people underestimate you. I know what it feels like to have people question whether you belong in a room. And I know what it feels like when people become uncomfortable, because you are visible, ambitious, capital A, outspoken, that's me, or successful, hey y'all. I've also learned something. You can't spend your life trying to make other people feel comfortable with your life. You can't. I mean, that's why I have this podcast. If you do that, you will spend your entire life getting smaller. So standing there in the Valley of Kings, I felt something settle into my spirit. You cannot make me small. You may disagree with me. You may misunderstand me. You may decide that you don't like me. You may even try to diminish what I have built, but you cannot make me small. And the only way that that happens is if I decide to participate in my own shrinking and I think you know this, I refuse. And so it wasn't a new revelation. It was just a cementing. I felt grounded in that moment, in that space. And that realization, again, connected every part of this trip for me. Kenya was wonder. Cairo is legacy. The Red Sea was joy. And the Valley of Kings was legacy isn't simply what happened after you're gone. Legacy is created every single day by the choices you make about how you show up. And that's what personal branding has always been to me. People think branding is about being seen. No. Branding is about being understood. It's about intentionally deciding what you stand for, how you serve, what impact you want to have and then living consistently through your actions, your values, et cetera and consistently enough that other people experience those things, instead of you just having to talk about them. And as I stood in those tombs, stood looking at the monuments, another thought hit me. And honestly, it made me a little bit emotional. This podcast exists for the exact reason, the same reason. One day, I hope my children will listen to these episodes. One day, maybe my grandchildren will, maybe my great-grandchildren. I hope that they will hear my voice and they'll hear how I thought. They'll understand what I believed. I hope they'll know what mattered to me. And that's why I do this. Not because I love hearing myself talk, but because I believe our stories matter. I believe our voices matter and our experiences matter. And how you show up and what you do intentionally matters. So I don't want somebody else telling my story after I'm gone, when I have the opportunity to tell it myself today. I want them to remember what I said about me. That's exactly what the ancient Egyptians understood. They didn't leave their story to chance and neither should we. So as I came home, people kept asking me, how did Africa change you? At first, I struggled to answer, because there wasn't one moment. It was the accumulation of all of them, the stillness of the savannah, Nairobi's hustle and Cairo's hustle, the spirituality of the Red Sea, the intention carved into every wall in the Valley of Kings, all of it whispered the same message. Remember who you are. Remember where you come from. Remember the ancestors who came before you. Remember what you're building. And whatever you do, don't make yourself small. There are people in this world who will try to convince you that your dreams are too big, your voice is too loud, your ambition is too much, or your vision is unrealistic. Don't join them. Don't join them. Build the business, write the book, launch the podcast, go for that role, ask for that assignment, run for office, take the trip, tell your story, leave something behind that reflects who you are. Branding is legacy. It's deciding your life, your values, your work, your service and your voice are worthy of being remembered. I want to thank you all for joining me on this Paula out of Africa journey. Thank you for traveling with me through Cairo, to Kenya, to the Red Sea, to the Valley of Kings, more than anything, thank you for allowing me to share not just what I saw, but how it changed me. Until next time, y'all, keep engaging your hustle, keep understanding your truth, your value and never let anyone convince you to become smaller than the person you were created to be. Stand by your brand. Bye. That's it for this episode. I appreciate you hanging out with me on Branding Room Only. Now, please do me a quick favor. Head over to ratethispodcast.com/branding, so more people can join this conversation. And make sure to stop by PaulaEdgar.com/events to see what's next. Whether I'm live, online or in person, I'd love to see you there. See you next time in the Branding Room. And until then, stand tall, shine bright, and always stand by your brand.