Career Growth Advice from Lia Garvin, Career Development Leader | Career Tips for Women in Career Development

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 55
Featuring Lia Garvin

Episode Title: #55 Career Podcast Featuring Lia Garvin Ted X speaker and author of UNSTUCK: Reframe Your Thinking to Free Yourself From the Patterns and People that Hold You Back

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Lia Garvin



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Today's topic is so relevant for all of us. Thanks for tuning in. We're thinking about our careers, where we are today, and what we really want from our careers. Lia Garvin is the author of Unstuck, Reframe Your Thinking to Free Yourself from the Patterns and People that Hold You Back. Leaning into nearly 10 years of her experience working in some of the largest and most influential companies in tech, including Microsoft, Apple, and Google, she explores the power of reframing to overcome common challenges found in the modern workplace. Lia has been a TEDx speaker and is also going to present at the South by Southwest Conference later this year. She's an operational leader, speaker, and coach. Lia is on a mission to humanize the workplace through her writing, leadership coaching, and savvy program management skills. She brings an authentic and irreverent sense of humor to teams to help them examine the challenges, holding them back, and focus on what matters. Lia, I am so delighted that you are here today. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your career insights.

Lia Garvin (Guest): Thank you so much for having me.

Mary Killelea: Okay, frustrated, burned out, stuck. There has been a huge awakening by employees, specifically women, related to this conversation in the last couple years. I'm interested on your take and what propelled you to write the book?

Lia Garvin: Yeah, I think first, obviously, feeling all these things already myself. But then talking with a lot of other women across coaching, mentoring, even colleagues around people feeling stuck in their careers, whether it was getting that promotion, that raise, that next opportunity. And I was finding no matter how well we were doing in our jobs, how high of performers we were, or good of relationships we had with our managers, we were still running into the same challenges. And I started kind of mapping out what were the different areas that people were getting stuck. And I looked at feedback, talking about our work, decision making, and these different themes started to emerge. But there was a couple things that were going right, like what were the things that were working? And I started, it sort of centered around a common theme of reframing. And when we were able to look at a challenge through a new perspective, we were able to see, hey, wait a second, there's actually new possibilities here that I didn't realize. And so I think as more and more women in the last few years, especially as you say during the pandemic, have been feeling stuck, I think there's been a real desire to find something new and to make a big change. And it's been really inspiring to see, you know, as part of the great resignation, which disproportionately impacted women for many reasons around caretaking and the responsibilities, there's also been another reckoning with doing work that wasn't fulfilling and doing it and being trained in a way that wasn't working for you and not having the flexibility and feeling like you were constantly at odds between these different expectations. So I feel like it was kind of a culmination of all these things.

Mary Killelea: Perfect timing, perfect timing. And it's such a hot topic. And I do agree. I think the last couple of years has been such a reflective year and people are ready for something like this. What advice do you have for women who feel that their work, they're working their asses off, basically, yet second guess themselves, stress over all the details and, you know, watch other people get ahead?

Lia Garvin: I think the first thing I would say is to recognize when we're having these comparative thoughts and to stop and to say, what do I want for me? And what's important to me? And what I talk in my book, I have a chapter on comparison. And I remember, between social media and all the other things, we're constantly always looking like, hey, why does this person have that? This person's traveling, this person has a house, this person has things that I want. And I think we get stuck in this cycle and we forget to even ask ourselves, what even do I want? Like, do I actually want this? And so I think when we're looking at colleagues or people around us, we're thinking sort of thinking without thinking, oh, I want that to stop and say, okay, what do I really want? And when we ask, it's a simple question. When we ask that, we can say, okay, let's say it's a colleague that just got promoted. Let me say, what do I really want? Do I want that promotion? Do I want a title? Do I want more respect? Do I want more visibility in my work? Do I want to feel appreciated? And when we find the reason, we see that there's actually multiple paths to getting that thing. And I think when we attach to just one thing without thinking about the why, we can get fixated on something that we chase after and we get it and we're like, oh, that didn't really make me feel better.

Mary Killelea: That is so, so true. And even giving it the name of a comparative thought stops you in your tracks. So I love that. I love that. In your book, you talk about including some confidence exercises. What are some of those that we can talk about and share here today?

Lia Garvin: Yeah, along with knowing what we want, really getting in touch with what are our strengths and superpowers. And one of the extra things I share in the book is to write down what are, let's say, our top five strengths, things that people have told us we're great at, or things we've been recognized for, or things that we really want to celebrate about ourselves. To write those down and just acknowledge I have these things I can bring not only to my role right here, but to any situation. And if you think about approaching something like a job interview, when we approach that by thinking I have to convince this person, or I have to just like, make sure they think I'm good enough for this job, or what are they going to ask me, and we get nervous about that, we're forgetting what we want to bring forward. And I think when we tap into these strengths and superpowers, and we know them, we can have more confidence approaching conversations like that, because our mindset is then, okay, I really want to make sure these key things land. And now I know how to connect the dots between my great communication skills, or dot connecting skills, or whatever. And I know what I'm bringing forward instead of feeling like, oh, gosh, what if they asked me this, I might say, ooh, whatever kind of example comes up, I want to make sure this is the takeaway. And we feel more in control, and therefore, we can bring more confidence to those kinds of situations.

Mary Killelea: When you wrote the book and designed the different topics, did you have your younger self in mind?

Lia Garvin: I mean, yeah, absolutely. And my younger self shows up in many of the stories of what went wrong. And where I felt so frustrated. I mean, I share a story about one of my first negotiations that I didn't even know was a negotiation, or didn't realize. And I agreed to something. And it was shortly after, maybe even a year or two after. So, I would say a while after, I actually realized by talking to a colleague, that I kind of got screwed. And then I felt so embarrassed. And like, well, why didn't I know that? Why wasn't I prepared? And yeah, I think if we could do it all over again, a lot of times, it would be to slow down, I think is something we'd say, and think about, think about it more, and think about, well, what else do I want to do to be prepared for situation?

Mary Killelea: Do you have a favorite chapter in the book?

Lia Garvin: Right now, my favorite, as I've been thinking about it, is impact and reframing how we talk about our work. I, this is something I've struggled a lot with, both in really connecting the dots between what I do and why it matters to my organization, in the language I use, getting rid of things like just and we.

Mary Killelea: Oh my gosh, I'm so guilty of we.

Lia Garvin: Exactly. Right? Like you and your clone army are out here solving all the world's problems. So that was one of my favorites. And also because I coach a lot of women in tech around how to prepare for things like writing up a performance review, self-review, or talking about how to go into a conversation on feedback, how to have asked for a promotion or raise. And a lot of times people completely undersell themselves. And it's like, Oh, I just did this thing, it's no big deal. And I'm like, Hey, tell me what you do, what your job is, is if you're telling your best friend, your mom, someone that is so excited about your work, how would you describe it then? And typically I'm floored by what they say, all the wonderful things, the way they describe their work when they're not censoring it. So that's actually another confidence building tool I talk about is explain your work in an unfiltered way, and then see, do I really need to filter this? Because we usually don't, we think you're writing the resume, you're writing the job description or whatever, we get stuck on wordsmithing. And is this phrasing right? And we forget, actually, what's the story I want to land? And so talking about your work is one of my favorites.

Mary Killelea: I love it. I can't wait for the book. Are you going to do an audio version?

Lia Garvin: Yeah, I am going to. It'll be shortly after the book.

Mary Killelea: Okay, fabulous. Let's go into your journey in tech and lessons that you've learned along the way. Just to talk about some of the roles that you've had.

Lia Garvin: So I am a non-engineer working in tech. And I'd say that's the, that's been the biggest thing for me to work through is the posture experience around, should I have started my career earlier? Should I've gone into kindergarten or science? No one thinks I know anything. What am I adding here? And it took me a long time to really build confidence and own that, hey, my expertise is around people and teams and ensuring people feel like they're set up for success and inclusion. I don't have to be an engineer. That's that person's strength. And we complement each other. And I think this has been a lesson I've had to learn over and over in the variety of companies I've been working at and not feeling apologetic or overly trying to compensate, but saying, hey, these things go together. I'm going to really focus on this area, learning enough to get around, I would say the space I'm working in, but instead of approaching it like, oh, I should know more, sorry, or I just am this, saying I own this expertise. I am really happy I can bring this thing and you bring yours and together, let's figure out who else we need to bring to the equation. That's been one of the biggest things of the arc of my career. I think I finally am in a place where I'm no longer apologizing for not being technical. And I think even that phrasing is problematic. I actually have really technical skills around team effectiveness. And there's saying, I'm not an engineer, maybe, is the right way to say it as opposed to the deficiency lens.

Mary Killelea: I think that's so brilliant. And I hope people listening, there are people who are pivoting. There's such great opportunities in tech, but I think there's a lot of women who share that feeling of I'm not technical enough to add value. So that's wonderful. Okay, so you have an upcoming TED Talk. What are you most excited about? I mean, I'm nervous for you.

Lia Garvin: So the TED Talk was in January. It's coming out in a few weeks.

Mary Killelea: Oh, okay. So you've already done it.

Lia Garvin: So I did the TED Talk, yes. And it was, I would say, this is a recovering fear of public speaking person. It was the ultimate jumping out of an airplane situation. It was incredible. I mean, I had wanted to do a talk for a while, I had been working on my idea for a while, and to just face my fears and, I would say, reframe my fear on public speaking and what if people don't like it? What if I mess up all this stuff to, hey, I'm here to share an idea to help people. My talk is around reframing decision making. So help people with overthinking decision making. This is a thing many of us struggle with, probably most of us in some sense, when it comes to some decisions. And, and by reframing it away, it's not about me and if I stumble over a word, nobody cares. It was amazing. And I'm so excited for it to be coming out and sharing it with the world.

Mary Killelea: Congratulations. I look forward to that. Why are you so driven to support women in tech and diversity?

Lia Garvin: I would say as a woman in tech, I've seen how hard it is, how isolating can be how few women there are in senior roles. And oftentimes we're one of few are the only women in the meetings and teams are in and, and that can sort of constantly be creating a feeling of being other or excluded. And I think for people in other underrepresented backgrounds, whether it's race or age or disability, and it can, there can be even intersectional elements, right? You're one or more of those qualities. And so I think I have had a, lifelong sort of, I wouldn't say passion, like it was like, I was compelled to make sure people felt included. And I think it's interesting that it started with working in design, really making sure design had a seat at the table. But the way in which it was about teams and why seeing people not being included in decision making and saying, Hey, like, this doesn't work. And I feel proud that I've been able to get this more into the conversation and to help people understand that inclusion is something it's not a tax. It doesn't slow things down. It doesn't take more time. It's not something, you know, oh, if, if only we could not do that, that it's about how do we make every, like things are better because of it. We all win. Everybody wins when, when it's a focus. And I think more and more it's well understood things like psychological safety, right? It leads to better business outcomes. It makes sure inclusion and belonging ensures people stay in companies and the cost of turnover is really high. Right. I think it's makes sure people are engaged in the work higher quality work. So I think you can really more than ever attach, you know, if people need the business outcomes to prove it, that there you can attach that to it. But it's something that is not my core day job anymore to work on. And I just, I weave it into everything that I do, because I feel like, you know, working on team operations, if people aren't included, they will not work effectively together because they're not, their voices and perspectives aren't being heard. Like there's something missed. So my real goal is to incorporate inclusion as just the way we do work, how we approach anything.

Mary Killelea: Who in your life has been the biggest inspiration?

Lia Garvin: I've been lucky to have a lot of really fantastic mentors and colleagues and managers along the way. I would say primarily women in the different roles that I've been in that really either took me under their wing or helped me. One of them was the woman that told me I was getting screwed with my first salary. But that just showed me that there was a place for me and was someone I could be myself around and share how I felt or ask for support and really celebrated what I was bringing to the table. I think as a person that sort of, like I described, we're gonna have an overactive Spidey sense, so I kind of have a heightened radar for sort of things that are going awry. It's great as a program and operations manager, but it's also sort of a curse because you can come across as alarmist or you have problems with everything. And so there's a double standard, obviously, with women and sort of a perception of having thinking it could be looked at as complaining or whatever, like there's all this stuff, baggage there. And people that celebrated that radar, that it was a thing that I shouldn't just ignore. And I think that was the biggest, I would say, transformation in celebrating this thing of this is something that isn't being aware of what's going on is something that I can use to help people. And it's not something I should sort of, yeah, toss out.

Mary Killelea: Let's talk about your coaching.

Lia Garvin: Yeah.

Mary Killelea: Tell us about it.

Lia Garvin: So I coach individuals and visual individuals, teams, and I also do workshops with teams as well. And typically we work through things with individuals, career transition, often how to navigate some change that's going on in folks' life, how to work on things like imposter experience. So all sorts of issues that sort of show up, I think, for all of us in the workplace. In groups, I like to work with effective team dynamics and helping people sort of figure out how to build things like psychological safety so that people can share and can flagrously be talked about, without feeling like they're being judged or someone's thinking that they're something. So to build that safety. And then I work through teams on often, what are some norms that we can create around some of these issues? So communication norms, I think, in this sort of move to hybrid work, there's a lot of opportunity to set norms around meetings, decision making, things like that.

Mary Killelea: Wonderful. Let's go back to your book, because I really want to touch on fear and confidence. Will you share your thoughts from your book on that?

Lia Garvin: Yes. So this is a fun one, I think, because confidence is something, again, I think all of us struggle with. And I think there's a couple of reasons we get stuck. One, and maybe one of the main ones is perfectionism. And the feeling that, well, because of all these pressures, and there aren't a lot of opportunities, if I don't have it completely perfect, I might blow it and have a failure. And so like, it also ties in the fear of failure. But fear is a word that I mentioned a few times. And so I think there's a few things with confidence that have really helped me reframe. And first comes from the book, The Confidence Gap, which is a fantastic book around strategies around connecting to your values and different things that I also talk about the book. And it's a reminder that confident actions have to come before confident thoughts. And when you hear that, it's like, oh, yeah, right. I'm not always going to, if I waited until I was ready, I would never do anything. And just that reminder is such an aha, that, okay, so I'm not going to ever feel ready. So like, I got to go for it anyway. And that's where I was at with the TEDx talk, right? Like, okay, I practiced it enough. I'm never gonna be like, yes, put me on that stage.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, exactly.

Lia Garvin: Right? And so I was just gonna have to do it. And sure enough, when I was up there, I was like, okay, like, I got this, I can do this. And, but if I had said, no, I'm not going to try it until I'm ready, I might never have been ready. But now that I did it, I actually have the confidence to like, maybe do it again one day. But a strategy that I had thought through around fear was that that old game when we play out, what's the worst that could happen? And oftentimes, if we think, what's the worst that could happen, we spiral into all these ridiculous hypothetical situations that we would never would happen. So, what if I give an update in the status meeting, and my senior director's there, and he makes me nervous. And then I blow it. And then he tells his boss, and she says, I should be fired. And then I get fired. And then I moved back with my parents, and then they turn my room into a gym. And I'm like, sleeping in the basement. And I'm like, a loser.

Mary Killelea: Spiral, right?

Lia Garvin: Spiral, spiral. It's like, the question I have for us is like, would you let all of those things happen and never, ever course correct at any turn, it would just be like, yeah, bring it on next, next disaster. No. And so my reframe is, when we start spiraling to say, and then what to ourselves, and then the course correcting step. So like, let's say, okay, let's say I give that status report, and I totally blow it for my boss, and then what? Well, then I would probably follow up with my boss and say, Hey, I didn't get the message across right. I'd love to talk through it again. Okay. And let's say, and then you're like, you're already on another path, where like, it doesn't work that same way. And then we say, okay. And then what? Well, then my boss says, oh, thank you. I appreciate that you did that. And then I have the opportunity to fix it. We usually can't get very far because it doesn't spiral when we start course correcting. And I think it's something we can do with many of our fears and many of our overthinking kinds of sort of spirals, because they're typically as if we're on autopilot and we can't course correct in any way. So that's something I've worked through to, to sort of quiet some of the fears and build more confidence around, okay, if this happens, then I have a plan. And then I'll just do those things. And I'm going to keep going.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I love it. Tell me about the writing process. What did you learn from the writing?

Lia Garvin: One thing I learned from the writing that actually made me think a lot about my relationship with feedback. When I was in the editing process, I had the great fortune to work with an amazing editor that loved the love, the idea, love the tone I was trying to get across and, and was such a great partner. And she, and when she gave me feedback, never before my life, did I not get embarrassed or feel like, Oh, God, why did I write that? Or, you know, she must have thought, I don't, I think there was a couple of things that I had felt. I was so excited to be able to get these ideas out in the world, how people were referring to how people feel, like not stuck around these same topics. And I knew that that was the whole goal of her writing. So she could have written like, WTF, this makes no sense. Yeah, let's get rid of it. And it was, it showed me that I think a lot of times at work with feedback, we immediately personalize and say, it means I'm a loser, it means I'm not good enough. And if we actually stop and say, like, this is about the work, and we look at it external to ourselves, we can do the same thing that I somehow found with this book, which was like, you can get feedback about the work, work through it, and have it never sort of go into the zone of who you are as a person. Yeah. And, and it was eye opening with feedback for me, because it's been something I've really struggled on, of not personalizing or not feeling embarrassed that someone noticed something that I messed up on.

Mary Killelea: Why do you think women at work have a problem asking for help?

Lia Garvin: There's a big fear around being the imposter being exposed as not knowing enough or not being good enough, or being weak, or you shouldn't really be here. And I think there's a lot of need, especially again, for women with intersectional identities, be it race, gender, age, right? Where, where we have to feel like we have to make it seem like nothing fazes, we got this, we can handle all of it. And then it's causes a lot of times us to take even more and more on. And I recently read an article about women in the pandemic that don't have children and how there, there was felt like pressure of women with children are going through a whole other situation with caretaking, but women without children felt like they didn't have an excuse to turn off the computer that they had to work around the clock. And there was a sort of struggle that wasn't really getting a lot of focus of women sort of saying, yeah, I can do everything because I can't say no, I don't have, I'm not going through what they're going through. And so I think whether you have kids or not, we're all going through this thing of I can't ask for help because someone might think I can't cut it. And then I won't get that opportunity. And it's, you know, there's like a horrible, horrible problem with burnout increasing every moment. And I think that's the result of this that we don't, we're not really afforded the ability to stop and ask, even if our team says that's fine or a management chain, maybe we don't trust it, but we're worried. And so it becomes really a cycle that's hard to break.

Mary Killelea: What advice do you have for women in setting boundaries?

Lia Garvin: Yeah. One thing I talk about in the book around the chapter about accountability is you know, sometimes we don't set boundaries because we actually want to do the thing. It's just not, we then just take too much on like, well, I wanted to work on this project or take on this opportunity to do this thing, but we've said yes to too many things that it's not possible. I think one strategy I have there is we can say yes and still negotiate the terms. So if someone asks me to lead a project and I think, yeah, this is something I want to do, I can say, yes, I'd love to lead that project. I have XYZ going on this month. So I can start that next month and, and feeling okay saying, and this is a confidence piece again, feeling okay saying yes. We, I think it's not an either or it's rarely, you don't have to say yes and get it all done in this moment. And by setting the terms and saying we can still have a little bit of the best of both worlds. And I think then if we say yes, and I can do it this time, if someone says I really need it to get done next week we can say, well, here's, here's what I have on my plate. Let's talk about what we can negotiate between the stuff going on.

Mary Killelea: Why is it so hard? Why do you think it's so hard for us as women to ask for money or even to share what we make with other, with each other?

Lia Garvin: Yeah, I think a lot of us have heard messages around just put your head down and do the work. Good work gets noticed. You know, don't ask for too much. Don't rock the boat. And then when it comes to advocating ourselves, maybe we don't have a lot of practice doing it, or we don't we don't feel comfortable saying out loud what we need. I think there's a lot of, you know, research that said women have a much easier time advocating on behalf of someone else than for ourselves. And, but the cost of that, like you said, is, is often just getting paid less, getting the worst deal. And so one thing I try to remember with negotiating is if we're in a negotiation phase, we already got the job, like we already did the hard part. And to stop, recognize again, like look around and say, Hey, where are we at? Like, I already did the hard part. I already did the thing. This is not about convincing them I might like lose the thing at the last minute. No, this is about finding a mutually agreeable outcome for something that I already like kicked ass at already. I got already landed the thing. And again, I think this is around recognizing the evidence that is there. And which is that you already did the hard part. You're already at the last stage, this, this company, this thing, whatever it is already wants you. And to, I think recognizing those things starts to quiet the negative voices we have around, around advocating for ourselves. And then I think if we still have a lack of confidence around advocating for ourselves, one thing I think we always should be doing is just be as prepared as we can be doing the research, not just not just going on the internet and looking at what are competitive salaries or whatever, but having conversation with people in similar roles. Like you said, talking about money, I think that's really difficult to do. And we can feel uncomfortable because of whatever reason around relationship with money. But stress testing, some scenarios, finding someone that you feel comfortable talking to about it, hear yourself say I want X, Y, Z, like listen to it, get the muscle memory going. Cause if we've never said it out loud, it can feel uncomfortable, like even just hearing it the first time.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. What, what type of approach or advice do you have for women and building a career strategy?

Lia Garvin: That's a great question. I think first knowing that you may not have it all figured out and that's okay. I mentor a lot of women early in their careers and I think they're already thinking, oh, I gotta have it all figured out, like what's my plan? What's everything? And there's a little, there's quite a significant degree of flexibility I think we need to have in order to find the thing that we're great at. Like we may not know it right out of school or after even five years. And I think I think a career strategy needs to be fluid enough to accommodate it being okay. And that's not feeling locked in if something doesn't work out because I think we can feel like after not even long that there's a sunk cost, like I've already invested all this time, but I think when we're starting out to recognize all the time we still do have to figure things out. Um, and then along with that, I would say really trying to think about, but again, with flexibility and fluidity, the kinds of environments that, that you want to be in that you thrive in. And sometimes there's reasons we can't have that thing because there's other sort of values that are higher up on the list. Maybe there's let's say flexibility is a value you have, but leadership is too. And you have an opportunity that's not flexible that like allows you to do that. So then that value sort of sits higher, but we do want to have a sense of what are our general values because then we can go after opportunities that honor at least some of those. So I think that's necessary for any sort of career strategy.

Mary Killelea: You set some really big stretch goals, you know, writing a book, doing a TEDx. What's your secret to setting stretch goals and, and why do you do it?

Lia Garvin: I love that question because I absolutely, I love setting stretch goals and a stretch goal for me gives me a North star to keep, to keep working towards. And it's something that I can be excited about. And I think a lot of women right now are thinking about doing side hustles or building something outside, something that's just for them. And I think that's another thing that can prevent burnout. Like ironically, I mean, people ask like, how do I do a full-time job, toddler and this other stuff. It's because all their stuff fuels me, gives me energy. And I think finding something that's for you is, is so important and it can, it can actually help with all these other areas because it gives you confidence and it brings you joy and it satisfies those other values.

Mary Killelea: You nailed that. That's what this podcast is for me. Do you have any tips or let's just go with three tips, um, for women on networking?

Lia Garvin: Yes. Do doing it first. I think there's a lot of research that, that women can feel uncomfortable or like oh, I don't know. Networking feels like forest and cheesy. I personally, if I'm at like a networking event without a glass of wine, I can be pretty quiet. You can tell I'm not that quiet. I think first is finding what is the way in which networking works for you and then doing it. And so, first tip will be just make getting yourself to do it. Second tip is lowering the stakes. So, I've changed roles during working remotely. So I didn't have the office cafeteria or water cooler or whatever to meet people. And when I would be in a meeting and here's someone shares something interesting or someone that I wanted to connect with, I would send them a note after and say, Hey, I love that idea you shared. Do you have 15 minutes to have a coffee chat? And I would be proactive and I would actually make the effort to build relationships. And I think too, that's something that we can get in our way of saying, Oh, that person's busy. They don't want to hear from me, whatever, not to decide for them that they're busy, you know? And maybe some people will say, Oh, I don't have time, but that also, it's like, you haven't invested a lot. So that's my second tip would be to set small, just put yourself out there in small ways. And then the third would be to maintain relationships over time. Like we never know if the person that we worked with in a job and we were 22 is going to be someone we want to connect with later that we could help that could help us. Doesn't, doesn't matter. Right. And so if there's people that you really connected with in roles, keep in touch, send them a hello every six months or so, and just keep those connections warm because we really never know where folks are going to end up.

Mary Killelea: What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Lia Garvin: I would tell my 20 year old self to, um, that there's time to figure it out that, you know, it doesn't have to all happen overnight.

Mary Killelea: Love it. And what does to be bolder mean to you?

Lia Garvin: To get out there, to put your ideas into the world, to not decide for other people that, Oh, nobody wants this or I don't want my next braille. Right. All that stuff to like say, no, I'm not going to listen to that stuff and to just put it out there and to go for it because I promise you there are, we are so much more connected than we realize we are rarely going through something. Nobody else is probably never right. Somebody out there is going to connect with it. And the more we share, the more connection we build, the more we can support each other. So to go for it.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. Well, I can't thank you enough. How can someone get in touch with you to learn more?

Lia Garvin: Yeah. Check out my website at liagarvin.com. That's where you can learn about my coaching and workshops, speaking opportunities. Um, also check out my Instagram at lia.garvin. I have a YouTube channel, Reframe with Lia, where I share a lot of these ideas and smaller chunks or reach out on LinkedIn.

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining today.

Lia Garvin: Thank you so much. It was awesome.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at tobeboulder.com. That's the number two, little b bolder.com.