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The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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This is Beyond Confidence with your host w Park. Do
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you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you
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want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,
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and financial goals? Well? Coming up on ZVO parks Beyond Confidence,
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you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
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who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and
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are living the life they want. You will learn how
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relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.
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Moving your career business forward does not have to happen
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at the expense of your personal or family life or
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vice versa. Learn more at www. Don't Divpork dot com
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and you can connect with div ants Contact Dants, divpark
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dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host,
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div Parnk.
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Good morning listeners. Hope you had wonderful holidays and got
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some time to relax, recharge, recalibrate, spend time with your
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loved ones. Because these are the memories that carry us
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through the whole year. So what if the most important
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project you ever managed is you?
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And that's what we're going to be talking about today.
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Welcome Curtis Grey.
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Do you thanks for having me? My friend? Really appreciate it.
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Oh, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
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So Curtis, we usually.
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Start out at the big name. You know, in your
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childhood or youth, is there a person or a moment
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that left a post and mark on you?
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Oh, in my childhood. I think in my childhood, I
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would say that I learned early on how to have
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people recognize you, be visible to those folks, and people
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give you stuff. So when I got good grades, I
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kept noticing that people would want to give me money
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for those grades.
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Right.
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If you ever seen a movie Achille and the Bee,
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I was sort of that neighborhood kid because I was
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able to get the adults to marvel at me because
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I learned how to read early, you know, being taught
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by my grandfather with readers digest, and I turned that
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into I guess, my first entrepreneurial pursuit where I would
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read to the neighborhood kids and I would get cookies
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and milk, you know, growing up in North Philadelphia, so
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you know, I would say, yeah, those childhood memories help
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me understand the dynamics of relationships people and how to
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move people to basically, you know, give you things and
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see you as somebody that's valuable. And I'll end this
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part with this. When I would run around with my
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friends and let's say I broke a window, I don't
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know what it was, and I think it was those
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other things that I mentioned, but people would just say, hey,
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Curtis was just around the wrong crowd or hanging with
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those bad kids, whereas other kids would would get in trouble.
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So I think I was I was lucky. Now it
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could be good and bad, right, you end up getting
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away with things that you shouldn't, but yeah, early on,
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just the power of if you do the right things,
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good things come to you.
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M Yeah, definitely, so as you when you were a
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child or you did you have aspirations to go after
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a certain career.
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Absolutely, I wanted to be an Air Force pilot. So
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my uncle was in the Air Force, and out of
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all my uncles, I had a mailman uncle. I had
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another uncle who basically didn't work much until later in life.
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And then I had my Air Force uncle. And my
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uncle Junior had a place in I believe it was
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in the Rental Air Force Base in Illinois, and I
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got to go there and I saw how he lived,
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and I'm gonna tell you it was the biggest aha
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moment for me was he had a house with grass.
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I couldn't wait to go there.
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You know.
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I lived in North Philadelphia. Concrete jungle grass was the park.
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Even my school didn't have grass, so I didn't grow
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up around those free running areas. And now I go
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to this place on this Air Force base, and I'm
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just loving it so for me, and also seeing how
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my uncle behaved, he just had this discipline and aura
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about him that I wanted. I wanted all of that,
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so I wanted to be an Air Force pilot. And
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then Star Wars came out and then I wanted to
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be an Air Force pilot, and I wanted to shoot
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other planes out the sky. The crazy thing was, at
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that time, I wasn't realizing that I was shooting another human, right,
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I was just it was almost like a video game.
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But I never fulfilled that dream of going to the
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Air Force first and being like my uncle and being
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a pilot. I just, quite frankly, I didn't have the
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grades or the acumen to pursue that part of the dream.
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So I had to make some changes.
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Tell you had a dream, and that's what counts, because
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so many times people say I didn't go after that
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or something like that. But every dream its own experience
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and learnings from it that'd be carry forward. So I'm
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assuming that you took a detour and.
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What did you land.
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Yeah, the detour for me.
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Came right around high school and in my first year
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in college, I was working at the Philadelphia Electric Company
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and it was a gentleman there by the name of
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George Zamos, and PCs were starting to come out, right,
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So I was working in computers with these big monstrosities
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of massive discs for data and things like that, and
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personal computers came out, and he sort of mentored me
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in that space, and that started me in my career
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Around it, I became very, very fascinated. I was working
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with other engineers, was literally in school for mechanical engineering,
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and he he was a mechanical engineer, but he drove
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me towards the computer and then for several years in
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the computers. But then the next pivot came when another leader,
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gentleman by the name of Mike Black, asked me directly
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about my career because I was starting to take two
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separate paths, and he says, hey, are you looking to
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do a technical track or do you want to be
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around more people.
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Tell me what you're thinking.
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And as we talked through it, he said, the way
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that I see you, you would make a tremendous project manager.
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And that's how it all began. From a project management perspective.
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I pursued that and I've kept that and everything that
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I do is rooted in project management.
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And you talk about handling oneself as a project manager
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as well.
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Yeah, so you became project manager.
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Learned a lot because in a project management is having
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responsibility without authority. Yes you're responsible for it, and yet
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you gotta Sometimes it's like hurting the cats.
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Yes, it is.
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How people deliver things on time. And at the end
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of the day, you are the one who's held responsible.
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So what would you say were some of your lessons
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that you took from that experience.
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So you kind of laid it out there just now
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and at the end you say, you talk about all
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the responsibility that you have, and it is something about
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a project manager. You're I always say you're either a
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hero or a zero, and I just like those odds.
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Why it connected with me was it's the temporary nature.
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It's the opportunity to build something like everything that's around
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us somebody thought and dreamed of before it was ever executed.
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And that's how I like. I'm a dreamer and I
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like to dream what outcomes look like. And that's why
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I trademark the art and science of vision to reality.
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And so I learned. One of the lessons learned that
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I learned is the relationships are so important. They're important
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for negotiation. Like you said about leading without authority, you
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have to drive humans to do things that align with
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what you're trying to achieve. And if you can't inspire
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those humans to do so, you're going to be that zero.
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So I had to learn a lot about myself first.
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I had to learn a lot about people. I had
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to learn the science of negotiations. I had to learn
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how to communicate so that people understood what I was
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talking about. And all those things coming together, I would say,
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is part of the art and science. I had to
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learn the technical parts of project management, and it just
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it's something beautiful about an end product that you had
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a hand in, right, even if it wasn't your dream,
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you had a hand in making it real. And it
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just every time I do it. I don't know if
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you think about some kind of character that sort of
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gets stronger and stronger because every project that they did,
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it just built them up. That's how I feel. I
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just feel like I'm just this unstoppable force that keeps
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growing every time I'm able to bring value to an
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organization or to myself or others just from executing a
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project in a manner that either met or exceeded their expectations.
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Yeah, the key thing that I'm hearing, Curtis is that
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you're bringing value to others, You're bringing things to a
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finish line, you're helping the organization move forward. So definitely
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having that work ethics and dedication towards work goes long
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ways because you're not coming from a place of people
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politics or like oh you do this for me or
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I'll do this. You're going from away from it, whereas
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you're focused on like, okay, how can we move this project?
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How can we all come together and go there? So
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tell me about the hard time during the layoff.
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Oh Man, So I had just finished this major program
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with the University of Penn. I was so happy that
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I achieved my master's and executive management, and I thought
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this was going to be the key, right. I followed
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the Temple University professor's advice to get a designer label,
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which was University of Penn and the Wharton School of Business.
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And so I'm working at my company at the time,
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Bank One, and I'm thinking, okay, follows next as promotion,
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and that didn't happen. In fact, I had a couple
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of run ins with the leaders, and so I made
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a decision, and that decision was to leave the organization
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and start finding my way because I knew that I
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was bigger than where I was just given the education
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and relationships and the things that I've learned, I was
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ready for something new. And then I joined this organization
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called Student Finance Corporation, and I'm happy because they're hiring
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me to run their PMO. I'm no longer the project
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manager in the PMO. I am the person responsible for
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creating a PMO from scratch. And that was always my
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dream job, and as we speak now, I've done it
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three times over a number of years. But I couldn't wait,
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and I got started and I got the job, and
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then about four weeks into it, all of a sudden,
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they're laying people off and I'm like, oh, my goodness, right,
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I just got here and my safe And at the
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time I was, I was safe in the beginning. Two
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weeks later, I'm on the list. That was the single
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most rough it was. It was rough. It was really rough.
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And so what happened?
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You know?
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When I got the news, I went out with some
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friends that were laid off to We're drinking, and all
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I'm thinking is how I'm going to break the news
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to the family, right, what?
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What? What's going to happen?
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So I finally got the courage to share that information
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with the family and from there after, my son's reaction,
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are we going to be poor?
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Right.
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I laughed at that because he didn't really know what
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that meant, but he could tell that I was really
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devastated by it and I had to turn it around.
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And that single incident turned out to be the best
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thing that ever happened to me in my career.
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And that's beautiful that you are taking that incident as
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a blessing.
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Yeah, so, so many.
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Times what happens is, you know, when people get laid off,
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and so many layoffs have been happening throughout this year,
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and we may see the numbers differently, but people who
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get laid off, right, that's a major life altering event
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for them. So not everybody's a project manager. How can
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during that time or even during another time like in