It’s been about a week since I spoke at the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce Professional Women’s Luncheon about Career Empowerment. Talk about getting out of my comfort zone. Speaking about empowerment got me fired up to keep that momentum going (vision boards, anyone?) and hopefully, the event got the attendees motivated for 2019 as well. I got so much positive feedback afterwards; these are a few points that seemed to hit close to home for people:

• “When I graduated from college, I’ll be honest, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Not that I admitted that to anyone at the time.” I was really honest with the audience about this and a lot more. Let’s be real, we don’t always have it all figured out. But as I said, we don’t always say that out loud because we think that everyone else has it all figured out, so we should too.
• “Please stop apologizing.” After sharing my own story about quitting my job to be home with my oldest daughter when she was sick as a baby, I reminded the audience stop saying sorry. Stop apologizing for taking time off to be at home with your children or for changing careers or trying the entrepreneurial life and failing; what you’re really doing is devaluing that experience. Be proud of your path.
• “Tell everyone.” I could have done another TED talk on the power of your network but for this talk, I focused on the power of your network to keep you accountable. “It’s like marathons – if you tell everyone you are going to run one then you have to actually run one because everyone is going to ask you about it. My network has been unbelievable in terms of supporting me. They’ve reminded me when times have gotten tough that I could do it and they’ve had my back.”
• “At some point, I had to rip the band aid off and go all in. I have never taken a bigger risk than the one I did in June when I quit my full-time job to pursue career and admissions consulting and the start-up life.” Now, here’s where my vision board comes in. For that year plus when I was working full-time while building Best You and helping build Kruted, I was mostly just keeping my head above water. Now that I’ve quit and have more time to focus on what were once my side hustles, I can do a lot more than just keep my head above water. Getting up on stage in front of 300+ people was a huge accomplishment for me and I’m already brainstorming what other goals I can conquer in 2019.

Happy Holidays! Here’s to an amazing 2019!