Deborah Szajngarten

My success comes from a lot of things. It comes from never feeling like I was good enough and only having to work harder to prove that I could be good enough. Eventually, I was like, who am I proving this to? And then one day when I realized I was trying to prove it to myself, I started being kinder. Then it shifted from having to prove I could be good enough to myself, to how do I take what I've learned and give back to the world and do it in a way that feels good to me. I would say the first 15 years of my career was about proving to myself that I was good enough. And then after that, it shifted, and it turned into, how do I make the world a better place and use the skills I have while still learning and growing and enriching myself to leave behind something much better than I left it. There's also this energy around opportunities - every time something amazing happens, it happens because I always put the work in. I always try. There are times where I need change and I'm working at it, and nothing's changing, and I get discouraged. And then all of a sudden something happens, and there's this energy around it, like the molecules are floating in the air. You know that the next thing is coming, and it's just figuring out what and when. When it comes, it just feels right and takes off like a rocket ship. That's happened to me a couple of times in my career, and I'm getting better at identifying it. I'm also getting better at identifying when it's not right. Twice in my career, I made a choice to go somewhere when my gut told me not to, and my gut was right every time. In one case, they threw a ton of money at me. In another case, they were like, but you're so good at what you do, come do this for us. I didn't pay attention to should I do this. Just because they want me to doesn't mean I should. In both instances, it wasn't right, and I should have listened to my gut. All the signals were there. I needed to pay attention. Really listen to that, even when you don't like the answer. Really listen to it, even if they're throwing a bunch of money at you.

There's a couple of things I would say. Always put the work in. Don't ever think that just because you have the potential, that it means that you've earned the spot. You always have to work for the spot. You always have to put the work in, and that never goes away. It's especially important in the beginning when you're kind of cutting your teeth, but it's even more important as you grow in your career and you get to a point where you're like, I already put that work in. But there's a whole other set of work to put in in the next round. So whatever you take, if you say yes I'm gonna do this, give it 100% of yourself. That's the first thing. The second thing is, know your worth. And don't allow people to gaslight you, or to make you feel smaller than you are. Know your worth and always stand your ground by taking the high road. As a manager of people, where I've had a lot of really big teams and worked with a lot of young people, the girl that comes in and has an amazing attitude and I'm like, this is the problem we need to solve, and she comes to me with a solution and says this is what I'm thinking, and we talk about that solution - the fact that she's thinking about how do I solve this problem and coming to me with solutions, that's the person I'm gonna invest my time in, because I know that that person is thinking about growth, growth of the business, is all in, they're a team player, but they're also a strategic thinker. And that comes from day one. You can't come in and reinvent the wheel everywhere you go. You have to come in and look at the way things are running first and see how the lay of the land is, because there may be a reason why things are done the way they're done. But if you can find a better way, propose it and try. Think of yourself as, I'm here, I'm getting paid to be here to do this job, how do I do this job to the best of my ability? That's not the same thing as you have to answer the phone 24-7, you have to be on call all the time. Sometimes you work a weekend, but hopefully you have a manager that says hey you worked all weekend, why don't you leave early tomorrow, or you have a doctor's appointment, stay home. Know your worth, don't allow people to take advantage of that. But at the same time, give 100% of yourself to everything you do. If you do that, and you do it with integrity, you'll never have trouble sleeping at night.