How to Overcome Career Disappointments with Lauren Sergy

Are you feeling trapped in a career that no longer sparks joy, wrestling with the haunting question of “What’s next?” Perhaps you've nailed interview after interview, only to be overlooked for someone the hiring manager had in mind all along. Or maybe you're simply tired of defining your worth by a job title that’s out of sync with your true passions. You’re not alone.

This potent episode of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo features a conversation with communication expert Lauren Sergy.  Dive deep into the discomfort of career stagnation and self-doubt that so many professionals like you endure.

After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...

• Rethink your professional identity and shape it around your passions.
• Discover unexpected career opportunities using your innate talents
• Leverage rejection as a redirection

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About the Guest

Public speaking and communication expert Lauren Sergy has helped thousands of people become more effective leaders by developing critical communication skills such as persuasion, public speaking, and executive presence. She has worked with clients and audiences in Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe including 3M, Cargill, KPMG, T-Mobile, Grant Thornton, and many more. Lauren has taught business communication courses at the University of Alberta and Concordia University of Edmonton, and frequently provides guest lectures at many other post-secondary institutions. Her first book, The Handy Communication Answer Book, was featured on Library Journal’s Best Reference Books of 2017 list. Her latest book, UNMUTE! How to Master Virtual Meetings and Reclaim Your Sanity is now available via all major online booksellers.

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Transcript

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Danielle Cobo: Welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Kobo. Today, we're going to be talking about, I believe, a situation and challenge that we all face. It's this pursuit of climbing the corporate ladder or the pursuit of having success by a certain time frame. And this feeling of Discouragement and frustration, or maybe dissatisfaction or unfulfillment when we get to the top.

And today's guest, Lauren Sergy can relate to this a lot. She spent years continuing to get these educational degrees and was set on this one path for her career, but then found herself. Not feeling fulfilled and feeling dissatisfied and like so many of us feel that way I know I can relate so I'm sure some of our listeners can as well But I am so excited to have you on the podcast Lauren to kind of share with our listeners your story 

Lauren Sergy: Well, I appreciate the opportunity to share Danielle.

It really is my pleasure 

Danielle Cobo: okay, so I want to dig in a little bit because There is a lot of people out there that can relate to your story where they are on this path to this is what my career is going to look like. And it's all drawn out. And maybe that path was inspired from our parents. You should be a doctor.

You should be a lawyer. You should be a teacher. Maybe it is something that we've come into after going to school and we've just found our way. But many of us... And I believe even through the pandemic, many of us kind of fell in this feeling of going, this is the path I was meant to be, it's not where I thought it was.

I thought I'd be happier. I thought I'd enjoy it more, but they're not feeling that way. Share with us your experience. 

Lauren Sergy: the experience was that of being what I fondly call now the world's worst librarian. And I was not the world's worst librarian because I wasn't good at it. I was, I was very good at it.

And when you think of librarianship. Don't just think of, the children's librarian behind the checkout desk that you knew as a kid. It's an enormous, enormous field. It would be like calling everyone who works in a hospital a hospitaler. There's lots of different types of librarians, and I was always really interested in, the administrative work in the back end and the business side of it.

And the reason why I wasn't Good at it was not because of the librarianship aspect and it certainly wasn't because of lack of passion for the industry. It was because I discovered that I couldn't tolerate the politics and the bureaucracy involved. And that's funny because I've always kind of found myself doing what I do now, especially at home.

In very political and bureaucratic environments, but that was as an outsider coming in, providing advice and insights and everything else. I can navigate that very well, but being in it myself and being kind of a subject of the bureaucracy and the political culture and everything else inside libraries, it was a really terrible personality fit.

And I found myself. Chafing against the process of getting to where I wanted to go and just feeling this really deep personality mismatch. I didn't want to play the game to the degree that they wanted me to play and I felt like I didn't fit in. But I could never really pinpoint how I didn't fit in. So I was aspiring to management.

I'm like, woo. Like now management, here we come. Maybe one day I'll get to be CEO of a library system or something like that. that sounded great to me.in order to be a librarian, you have to get a master's degree. Great. Got my master's degree. And then it's good if you work in a few different systems.

So I. Worked in a system for a year and just about wanted to poke my eyeballs out. And then I went and did something else for another year. And then I came back to it and I worked in academic systems for a while. And then I decided to work in, library associations for quite a while. And meanwhile, I kept saying, okay, what am I missing?

I'm applying for all of these management track jobs, but I'm not even landing interviews. What's going on? So I said, okay, what education do they want? I will get the education. I will get the additional management certificates and diplomas and just accumulating everything that I could to get to this place that I wanted to be.

And then I did start to get interviewed for these positions. But the interviews were very, very odd. in one particular case, they always would ask, how do you deal with difficult situations with employees? They want to know how you would work with people. In one case, the question sparked a very, personal story and a really sad one about an employee that I had kind of acting managerial position over, and the fellow had died due to health complications while I was on the job, and I actually, like, I teared up.

And I, bit of a tear, had to my eyes during the interview. After the interview, they said that I came across as a little bit cold and aloof. And I'm like, what? And at that point, I was just left saying, What do you want from me? Because I don't get where this disconnect is. And what I felt terrible about was that for a long time, I blamed myself, and I'm sure that many of your listeners can relate to this.

There's a lot of ideology and strong morals and ideals in librarianship, and I'm like, Do I just not have that kind of ideology and that kind of fire and that kind of passion and these kind of morals like took it as a personal failing that I couldn't seem to crack this and then after that interview and then after a following one where I discovered that they hired the interviewer for the job.

I sat back. Yeah, even my boss came up to me and he said, if you want to take some time to go and scream in the bathroom, I understand. Yeah, that's 

Danielle Cobo: the time to go and scream in the bathroom and be very confused as to why are you even interviewing me if you're 

Lauren Sergy: going to take the position. Yeah. And then I stepped back and said, Hey, Lauren, maybe it's not you.

And maybe it's not a problem with the industry either. You don't have to be mad at them. Maybe it's just not a fit. So what do you like to do? Like, where else can you take this? Start looking beyond the confines of these walls. You said 

Danielle Cobo: something where it was, what's wrong with me? What more do you want from me?

And instead of asking an organization or a hiring manager or a particular position that you're pursuing, instead of asking, what more do you want from me? What if we flip that script and said, what more do I want in you? Because an interview is you're interviewing them as much as the organization is interviewing you.

It's got to be a mutual fit. It is not, I'm coming in here I got to prove myself. I'm the best fit because the organization has also got to prove themselves that they're a good fit for you. And that's not always the case. And when you work in these organizations, I too came from an organization, it was a Fortune 500 organization, a lot of politics involved.

And it was to the point where if a position opened up, they often knew who they were hiring before the job posting even came up. If they even posted the job. And it was a matter of who you knew. And are you willing to walk the corporate line of what they want in a manager? Don't push back. Don't speak up.

It was more or less, can you follow the directions that we're giving? And oh, in our company, it was as almost though the sales reps were the ones that chose the manager versus the directors choosing the manager and trying to see what was the right fit for the team. I always say it was like the hens running the hen house.

Lauren Sergy: You know, that's such a good observation, Danielle, that very often they do already know who the candidate is going to be, they already have it in mind. The job posting itself is frequently, especially, and again, and very hierarchical, very bureaucratic organizations, the job posting is a formality.

And that's a really, in Any organization that has these large hierarchies, corporations, post secondaries, libraries, government, where you get these strong structural systems, that unfortunately is the reality. Humans are a social networking species and we go with who we know very often.

And that can be a tough pill to swallow. 

Danielle Cobo: absolutely can, and know for the organization that I worked for, I was a hiring manager. And oftentimes, I had an idea of who I wanted to hire before the job posting that came up, or it was a recommendation from somebody in the organization. It is a formality that even though I knew who I wanted to hire, I was required by HR to still interview people.

So here I am. Scheduling interviews with people that I know I don't want to hire and are wasting their time and wasting my time just for the formality of having to post the job online and having to interview people, even though I knew exactly who I wanted to hire for the position and a particular position I had been pursuing this individual for over a year.

So I knew who 

Lauren Sergy: I wanted. Yeah, and that's, disheartening, not just for the candidates, but for the hiring managers as well. This really does put everyone in a tough decision because I don't think that anyone except possibly the most psychopathic among us go in being like, Hey, today I get to turn down five hopeful people, right?

Danielle Cobo: Like no one ever to do it in doing this. Yeah, and to a degree, you have to say, okay, when do you say enough is enough? I can't do this anymore, or I just don't want to do this anymore. The bloom is off the rose. you get to this point where you're asking, what more can I do? But then you soon realize, eventually realize, that it's, Not what more do you need to do?

When do you get to that, when did that shift happen? Where you started to say, maybe this isn't the direction that I'm meant to go. 

Lauren Sergy: Yeah. That shift really came about after those, two interviews. The one where they told me I was too cold and aloof despite the fact that I literally cried in the interview.

 and the one where they ended up hiring the interviewer. Those two happened very close together and that was kind of the last straw. And in the interim, while I was in the library field for, about 12 years, if I do my math correctly. So I was in there for a while. And in the interim, I had set up a side business coaching public speaking.

I had always been a good presenter. I had always been able to be very persuasive in my talks, and I would get other people at library conferences saying, Hey, Lauren, that was a great presentation about databases or whatever it was that was trying to convince them was very exciting, and they had to try out immediately.

 that was a great presentation. Could you come back and teach my staff or come back and at the next conference, tell us how to present like that. Tell us how to speak like that. In 

Danielle Cobo: the sense of being able to present databases and actually get people excited 

Lauren Sergy: about it. Yes, present anything. Can you show us how to give exciting presentations?

Because they're like that was even from pure entertainment factor. That was really good. And so the thought occurred to me. This is while I was working in post secondaries. If they are asking for this, there's probably other people. And I know I knew I could. That was almost a no brainer. Oh, yes, absolutely.

I can show you how to do this. And the thought occurred to me that. There's probably other people who want that help. So I had started taking on on the side private public speaking coaching clients and it was going well. But at first, I only ever intended that to be a side business because I was going to be in library administration.

And at that point, after those two interviews, I thought. Maybe that's what I do. This is what everyone keeps coming to me for. It's not for the databases. It's obviously not for the management stuff, which I knew I would be very good at. it is for this communication stuff. Maybe you double down on the communication.

So I started it. Building that business and the thought in my head was I was very afraid to leave the library industry, very afraid, at least up here in Canada, you can earn a good living in librarianship, similar to a teacher, you will often have fairly stable employment, you will often have a pension, like there's a lot of nice things that come in with working in that industry.

 I was scared to leave it for those reasons. This was pre pandemic, but I thought, okay, well, let's, try running these two horses at the same time and see which one comes out ahead. And one of those horses was winning. the business was growing, but my career was not and so it was over the course of about a year that I said, okay, I am going to continue working with this organization, which was wonderful.

I had amazing employees. They knew that I also had my side business as well, and we're very encouraging said, I'm going to continue in my role. 100 percent because that's what I do. But all of my free time is going into this business, and I'm going to see if I can grow it. And if I can enough, I will leave.

Libraries and pursue that full time. So it was slow and measured and it felt almost like I had to mentally and emotionally detach myself from the idealism from the dreams that had in my previous role. You know, I imagine that for people who are in a really, Morals heavy, you know, those careers that have halos around them, like being a doctor, saying, I'm not going to be a doctor anymore, that would cause an identity crisis, and saying, I am choosing to leave behind this industry that I love, that I respect, where my friends are, it created an identity crisis.

I felt I was bad for doing this, but the business kept getting better, and the work was way more fun. So, I just kind of buckled under and said, no, this is where you're putting your chips. 

Danielle Cobo: It's interesting that when we're in a career for a long period of time, it becomes a part of our identity and it becomes a part of who we are.

And in fact, when people often ask us, Oh, what's your name? What do you do? Or the first way we describe who we are, it's what we do in our career. But when you strip away that title, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'm in medical sales, I'm a librarian, whatever that title is, who are you really? Yeah. And a lot of us, that's a hard question to ask.

Lauren Sergy: We may not know the answer to it, especially if the answer is a little bit nebulous, if our career comes with a title that has recognition power it's easy to say it probably feels good to say it, an in joke in the library sector, which I keep an eye on. I still love it is that, you when you say I'm a librarian, no one really understands what that means.

And it's, It's true. See, I still say we. its own insular little world. But when you say I am a librarian, people instantly have a picture in their head. that gives you a bit of a handle. And usually for me, it would get a rise out of people because they're like, you're not what I expect a librarian to be like.

I'm like, that's because you have no idea what librarians are actually like. We're a strange, subversive lot, really quite wonderful. but now doing, when I was creating my business saying, well, I'm a, communication consultant and, presentation skills trainer, people would kind of cock their heads to their side and say, what?

That's a thing? What do you mean? And they would look at me with a great deal of skepticism. And then I'd have to like, try to articulate it. I help people talk more better. Then they would usually start to understand that. But it, never felt like there was a convenient handle for me to give to people to kind of encapsulate what this new identity was.

And that was something that I really struggled with for some time. if you ever say someone says, well, what do you do? I run my own business. And then they immediately look at you sideways because you know that they're thinking, ah, crap. Is she about to pitch me on an MLM? I got that.

Hopefully not. I got that a few times so then I was afraid to tell people that I run my own business. So it took a while of wrestling with what do I call myself? how do I give myself a professional handle that other people can understand? Took a while wrestling with that before I finally came up with, being a communication specialist.

And then people said, Oh, okay. I can kind of picture that. Well, what kind of communication? What kind of stuff? And the questions were less cautious and more curious, but there were a few years there where it just felt like I didn't know what to call myself. And again, you get that identity crisis, and it can take a while to get over that.

I had that 

Danielle Cobo: identity crisis. I had tied my identity to my income, to my title. I was a fortune 500 senior sales manager who earned region manager of the year. But I was unfulfilled, not happy. And it wasn't until I left the toxic and work environment where I was in, when I finally, at first it took a long time to find that identity again, I was lost, I was confused, but when I finally found what excited me, where my passion and my purpose was, and it happened in a similar situation that you experienced is people kept coming to me.

And saying, how do I develop a career? how do I create a career plan? I'm so overwhelmed at work and I just don't know how to balance the work and my professional life or personal life. And how do I still thrive even though I feel like I'm overwhelmed and exhausted from everything.

 that's a great quality to look for when you're feeling like you've lost your identity, when you feel like you're lost in your career, ask yourself, what is it that people continue to ask you for advice for? Because that right there is your unique strength, skill set, 

Lauren Sergy: x factor.

Yep. what are people consistently coming you for help with? That's where it lies. And it's funny, because I'm sure that you felt this too, where sometimes you don't recognize it. At first, you don't necessarily know it's hard to see what our own strengths are from inside our own head because we're used to having them and we're used to seeing them as a given.

 have you ever experienced this Danielle where you assume that this thing that you find easy, you find it that way, because it's easy and other people also find it easy and then it's surprising. We're like, oh, You need help with that. Seems pretty straightforward.

Yeah, I'm happy to help you out. And then you discover it's not easy. You're like, this is what a strength is. I did not know It's really hard to see our strengths ourselves because we're living in them all the time. So when you open yourself up to hearing it from other people, then it starts. I, think your past can become more clear.

Danielle Cobo: Absolutely. I thought that everyone when they experience a challenge or they experience a setback that they just kind of said, okay, that sucks. I'm going to find a way to move forward. That's something that's always. Been ingrained in me. I always say I was raised resilient. I became gritty and I, thrive through courage, and I didn't know what my strength was until people continue to say, like, you're a very resilient person.

 you are like what grit looks like. I was like, really? people just. I don't know. Setback happens. Just find a way to keep going forward. Like, don't become the victim of the circumstances.  you can't be stuck and continue to be there. That's not a fulfilling life. You got to find a way to learn, to grow, and to move forward.

And people continue to ask me, I'm like, how do you do it? And that's one of those moments where it's such a innate characteristic within ourselves that sometimes we don't see the beauty and what that strength is and how people want more of it. Or how you can help them 

Lauren Sergy: develop it. one of my favorite activities I received from another coach and I know that it's a common, activity in various coaching practices, but it was so helpful when I was starting to really intentionally build up my business.

 I sent emails to, I think 20 people, 20 of, trusted colleagues and friends, that sort of thing, and said, I'm trying to identify my professional strengths. Like, I'm trying to identify my secret sauce. can you tell me why you like hanging out with me? What sort of stuff you always look to me to help you out with?

And what sort of problems like, what sort of things you admire in the way that I handle them? Those were hard emails to send. Because it feels like you're going out and saying, can you please spend 10 minutes just praising me in text? It really does feel that way. But it's important that you do the, it's a lot of vulnerability to ask that.

And I preface it with saying, I am not looking for false praise. I'm not even really looking for praise. I'm trying to get a handle. On what it is I am objectively good at through someone else's eyes, because it's hard for us to recognize it ourselves. here is it. What do you think I'm good at?

Why do you like hanging out with me? What problems do you find I'm really helpful with? You tell me, instead of me guessing. And all of them wrote back, every single last one, and the responses were wonderful because they were objective. They understood what I was trying to do. And they gave me just excellent answers in really straightforward language that didn't feel fluffy or fake.

It felt actionable. It was one of the first times that I was able to look at compliments and objectively receive them as truths. Because before if someone said something nice, before I was really getting intentional about what are your strengths, what are you good at. everything just felt like flattery.

And that's a trap that I'll still slide back into. Oh, you're just saying that. Oh, that's so kind of you. it's easy to slip back into that track, but phrasing it that way and receiving these kinds of answers. I think it was because I asked them in plain language and I received plain language responses was incredibly helpful.

And that. Absolutely helped with the resolve to say, you can let go of your previous career dreams and your previous career identity and go all in on this one. You can do that because you are not defined by how well you did in this other industry. That's not what defines you as a Maybe it did in the past, it doesn't anymore.

And it won't in the future. And it was those sets of emails that helped me do that. That's a great exercise 

Danielle Cobo: to work through a very helpful and it's so scary. It's very scary. In fact, I did something similar when I left the organization that I was with and I went on Facebook. Which is funny that I went on Facebook of all places because I had just turned off my social media for three straight months because there was some toxicity in the workplace and I just, I completely shut down.

 I wanted to hide in a corner. I was getting a lot, I was receiving a lot of judgment on the way that I looked and how I showed up and what I was posting. And I was like, I'm just going to shut it all down. So it's ironic that I went up to Facebook. That's the first thing I asked. And I said, If I've impacted your life at any way, please share.

Or, and another one was, if there was three words to describe me, what would it be? And the way that question of, how, that was a question and reframing in a different way of what people come to me for advice. that was the responses I was getting and then the words to describe me is how I learned that resilience and grit and courage and empowering and motivating was kind of my core characteristics.

I was like, really? I don't know. I just thought it'd be helping people out. for those of you that are listening, this is yeah. some powerful exercises that you can do when you're identifying what your unique strengths are. What are these, like, x factor, this is your superpower.

But in the book that's coming out, Unstoppable Grit, there's an entire chapter. On designing your dream career and I take you through about six different exercises that one builds on to another that takes you through how to identify what does your dream career look like and how does it align with your passion and your purpose and your skill sets and your strengths so that the direction that you're going in think of it that You can take pivots along the way within your career.

It's not one clear path forward. there's pivots along the way. And sometimes it's a radical change from going from a librarian to a communication specialist. Sometimes it's from, working in medical sales to doing professional speaking and podcasting, but it could take a pivot along the way.

And there's an entire chapter that takes you through so many exercises to help you really define who you are, who you get to be, and what is a career that's going to fulfill you. 

Lauren Sergy: Exercises like that are so, so useful, Danielle. I'm glad that you included so many of them in your book, because one thing that I think professionals struggle to do is to look at their skill set and cross apply it to other disciplines.

I am a big fan of cross training. I am a big fan of, and I've always, it's just kind of something that my brain does. If I see in one area, I usually try to think, okay, how can that be changed and applied and moved and To fit in this other area, and when we get stuck in a identity again, when we're really looking at ourselves as in your case, the fortune 500 sales manager, the superstar in this big corporate environment, all of that, we often don't.

Pull apart what makes us an expert in that field and say, okay, how is that applicable to a broader context? So the stuff that made me good. As a librarian is the same stuff that made me good. As a public speaker, and as a communication specialist, but the context in which the skills are applied are different.

So when we're looking at our strengths, very often, people will get really stuck on their technical skills. Like, I know how to do X, Y, Z. I know All of this about ABC, but then you need to pull it apart and say, okay, what is the underlying thing that gave me that technical skill? And what's the underlying thing that got me interested in that?

And you have to keep digging down the layers  until you find that bit. That you can port to any other career that you might be looking at or any other future path that you might be interested in, because when you're changing over your professional identity, you're not leaving everything that you learned You are not starting over or starting from scratch. I hate those terms because it's never true. No one starts over. And if you think you have to why. You probably learned some really good stuff from where you're at that can help you where you want to go. When I'm working with people who, are really nervous about their abilities as a public speaker, most people assume they are no good at it.

I never look at their speaking skills. Ever. We list all of their personal skills and professional skills and those strengths and say, okay, how does that apply to the thing you're talking about? Because it's not the act of speaking that people are, for the most part, like until your top echelon, public speaking, you almost do it as a, form of entertainment.

It's not actually the act of public speaking that people are going to be interested in. It's your topic. It's what's inside your head. So, let's focus on those skills and don't worry about the public speaking stuff. And you can say that when you're going into a new industry, what's all of this stuff that I can bring over from my old industry?

I'm not going to worry about what I don't know in the new industry yet, because that'll come. That'll come. But I can be really useful now with what I've got. And I think that helps to make that identity leap from one thing to another without feeling like you're adrift. I see that 

Danielle Cobo: a lot in leadership. a leader will say, well, I want to pursue that manager position, but I don't have industry experience.

And I will say leadership is leading people, not products. As a leader, you hire experts on the products and it's important to know, and you'll learn it through the experience that you're with the organization. But leadership is leading people. And a lot of leadership is psychology because you're addressing people's emotions and you're supporting them on an emotional level.

But that philosophy of, I can't pursue that position because I don't have the industry experience. It's an opportunity to ask yourself, what skill sets have you developed within your current role that are going to transfer into the role that you're pursuing? It's always about transferable skill sets.

Lauren Sergy: Always, always, the leader doesn't need to be the technician, they don't, they probably shouldn't be the technician, because if they are, then that's where all their attention is. Can someone with a huge amount of technical skills become a leader? Yes, but there is another skill set at play there.

And what made you great in this one area, yes, you are going to use elements, but figure out what those little elements are, because you're also going to be stretched. one of my favorite books on this, that addresses this directly is the E Myth. 

 Is a well known book for entrepreneurs, specifically for people who are either moving into running their own business or who are moving up in leadership that's really geared towards entrepreneurs who are making the leap from being a technical expert.

One of his examples is the baker. The baker is a brilliant baker. She makes amazing stuff. Everyone comes from all over the place to buy her pastries, and one day she decides she's going to open her own bake shop. And now she's not baking anymore because she has to run the shop. So is she still a baker?

And how does she run the shop? Because what made her an excellent baker is going to be a little bit different. yes, you do transport those skills, but you also do have to shift that mindset as well. And that's why I say look beyond the technical skills, dig deeper. Interests gave you those technical skills.

What type of thinking gave you those technical skills? Why when you were in that job as a technician and being a sales professional Is a technician being a librarian is a technical thing? But there's going to be personality traits and interests and ways of looking at the world That made you good in that technical role and that's what you then grab onto And take to your new role and say I can still use this 

Danielle Cobo: Oh, such valuable words of wisdom.

So valuable and so impactful because this is something that we all get to be asking ourselves, no matter where we're at within our career, where we're at within owning our business is we get to ask ourselves. Where do we feel the most fulfilled in our career, our life, and what are those unique skill sets that we have?

And how do we go about finding what they are? And it's not always what our own perception is. It's really taking the time to ask other people's perception so that we can get a good grasp on what makes us unique so that we can align our passion and our purpose towards our long term goals, that we can align what we enjoy doing.

And how the aspects of a particular role that we enjoy doing and having that be part of the career that we pursue and not so much hold it to the title that we have. Or the industry that we're in, but more along with where do we feel the happiest? 

Lauren Sergy: Yep, absolutely. where do we feel that sense of calm, that sense of competence, that however you define that happy feeling, where do you find that?

 when does it show up most often? what are you doing when that shows up? Because it may or may not be related to your job right now. Yeah. and then you can start looking for it everywhere. 

Danielle Cobo: I think that's a question, we're going to leave you guys with, our listeners is you get to ask yourself, what is it?

Ask yourself these questions or take the advice that Lauren had given ask the people that are closest to you. And ask yourself or ask them, what is it that you come to me for? How have I supported you? And it's not so much asking for that praise, it's more or less trying to really identify what makes you unique.

 and what are some skill sets that you have that are unique that then you can apply to the career that you're pursuing or the career that you're in? So ask yourself for those of you, and once you do, I invite you to tag us if you decide to share it on any social media, tag us, we'd love to hear from you as well.

See how this episode helped you in identifying those qualities. So thank you so much, Lauren, for 

Lauren Sergy: joining. Thank you, Danielle, for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Have a 

Danielle Cobo: great day, everyone.