I'm Christy that for today's business.

Today we have Patti Dale Tai.

She is a national keynote speaker to leadership groups, business coach, career counselor, and CEO of a local law firm.

Patti Dale, so you've made it your career to help others careers.

Why is that important to you?

Oh, thank you so much, Christy, for having me on.

And I have had a fabulous career.

You know, your average career is about 90,000 hours, and I'm on 80,000 and it has been wonderful.

But not all 80,000 were great.

So I know where there are pain points in the work force and in the work world.

And I wanted to help people that walk through that pain.

Yeah.

And that's why I wrote the book.

And this is personal to you, too?

Very personal.

It means a lot to me to mentor and coach individuals or companies.

That's what gives me bright lights.

Yes.

And now you're also a bestselling Forbes author.

Your book right there, Ordinary to extraordinary or extraordinary?

Yes, exactly.

In this book, you talk about three stages in your career.

What are those stages?

And give us just a little nugget advice for each stage.

When our audience is listening and they're like, okay, I'm in that stage.

So give us a little nugget of advice.

Absolutely.

So I told you about the 90,000 hours.

So I think about the first stage is being when you're just getting going.

So that's 5 to 7, ten years.

It takes you that long to get really good at work.

But then you get into your groove and that's when you really begin to be a leader, to be able to instruct strategy, in my opinion, in business and continue out.

And then you get to your third stage, and that's the stage I'm in now, Christy.

And we call that the portfolio stage.

I don't just do one thing.

You mentioned chief operating officer at Stoll, Keenan Ogden, but I also speak on my book very often, on the board of our zoo here locally.

And I just have a lot of things I can put my hands in versus the just one that takes up the 80,000 hours.

Okay.

So for somebody, that is in that first stage, starting the career, what's a little nugget of advice?

What can they do right now today?

So I think general city in the workforce is a superpower.

Find out what your leader needs to do to be successful and make sure you help him or her do that.

Show up prepared every day and excited to work.

And you will go very far because attitudes make for the greatest growth.

Come with a positive attitude.

Come with curiosity and be generous.

Okay, let's talk about the stage where you, this happens for a lot of women.

You're reentering the workforce.

What's a good piece of advice for somebody getting back into the workforce?

Absolutely.

So, first of all, don't lose your confidence.

When you left, you got to bring everything with you, right?

So go back.

And I believe in documenting.

What were you great at and what did you love to do?

And get those stories pumping through you again, so that when you go on that interview, it comes naturally to you?

You don't have a gap that you left.

You're right there as if you were never left at all.

You're talking the talk.

Don't worry about technology.

Technology changes so often that all of us are behind all the time, right?

Right.

So just remember what made you so good when you walked out the door.

That's great advice.

Get that confidence going again okay.

For a little piece of advice for the third stage, the portfolio stage.

What would you say.

So first of all, baby boomers it's okay to let go of the ring.

It's a safe world out there.

And you too are taking all the skills that you've built up over your career.

The world needs you.

There are there are part time jobs.

There are consulting opportunities.

There are tons of community needs.

Write down what you loved most about your work, and then go find that place where you can give that back.

You have core competencies that are desperately needed in the world.

Don't stop.

And this kind of goes hand in hand with reentering the workforce.

But a lot of times in this career environment layoffs are kind of a part of most people's career at some point or a lot of people's career at some point.

What advice do you have for somebody dealing with a layoff?

It goes back to confidence.

I'm going to say do the same thing.

I told the other two to do.

Write down what you're really good at.

Get comfortable repeating.

Have stories people remember stories.

Have stories about your work success.

Get out that network, dust off your network.

And everybody needs to keep their network very, very, very fresh and start looking for those that might have the opportunity to recommend you might have a job themselves, or might know where to send you to look for a job.

Stay busy.

Make it a 40 hour a week commitment that you are going to work that network and work yourself back into the great place you deserve.

Okay, you talk a lot about network and mentoring, so let's start with network.

How do you do that?

What is say I want to get out there.

I want to start networking, but I need to take that first step.

Right.

What do I do?

I think the best thing is to go to a not for profit and join a board or a committee on a not for profit, because they are the community experts.

They have to be community experts and watch what they do and learn.

When there are functions in downtown Louisville.

Go, go to them and it's okay to not know a soul there.

Christi.

Walk up to the person who is the host.

Introduce yourself and then ask them to show you around.

It's not comfortable, but you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable when you're getting out and networking.

But it's a valuable, valuable thing to do.

And Louisville has a million things going on at all times, you know that?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

This is such good advice.

I wish we could just keep going and going.

But just one last piece of advice for anybody in any of those three stages.

Wherever you are in your career, is there one thing that we can all do today to help our career?

So I would say that you need to know yourself, and that may sound simple, but go back and think about what are your aptitudes, what are your core competencies.

Because if you aren't using those, you will be frustrated.

Those are how you do your best work.

Know you best.

Yes.

Thank you so much for being here