Darine: Welcome to Stand Out from the Crowd.
I'm Darine, and if you are anything like me, you have probably been through a few unexpected twists on your journey.
My plan A was to be a diplomat, but life had other plans leading me to become an impact entrepreneur and champion for women's leadership.
Sometimes life has a funny way of throwing us curveballs, right?
I have always wondered why fit in when you were born to stand out.
In this podcast, I sit down with remarkable women leaders who have embraced their unique path, defied expectations, and created lasting impact.
We dive into their stories, explore their mindset, their resilience, and the strategies that helped them succeed even when life threw stones in their path.
Whether it's insights on personal growth, strategies to amplify your visibility, or tips to boost your well-being and overall productivity, you will find the inspiration you need to unlock your full potential.
Join me for conversations that will empower you to stand out in your career, in your life, and in everything that you do.
Because listen, here, we don't just follow the crowd.
We stand out.
Today, we are talking about a topic that hits close to home for so many women leaders, the idea that to lead, you must be always on, loud, visible, and extroverted.
But the truth is, some of the most effective transformational leaders are the quietest in the room.
That's why I'm thrilled to introduce today's standout guest, Seyi Kakomfo.
She is a global program leader with over 16 years of experience leading multimillion-dollar initiatives for organizations like the UN, Global Affairs Canada, and USAID.
She has also mentored hundreds of immigrant women in Canada, helping them to transition into new careers and communities.
And here is what makes her story even more powerful.
Seyi describes herself as being 80% introverted.
Yet, she has built a career of an incredible impact, not by pretending to be someone that she is not, but by leaning into her authenticity.
Darine: Seyi, welcome to the show.
Seyi: Thank you very much, Darine. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Darine: You're most welcome. How are you doing today?
Seyi: I'm doing very well, thank you.
I'm blessed. I can't complain. And so I'm thankful.
Darine: And if there is something that you need to know about Seyi, it's that she is always on the positive side of things, feeling blessed, and acknowledging the blessings that she has in her life.
And I believe it's beautiful. It's a wonderful quality as a leader, but simply as a human being.
Seyi: Thank you, Darine. Very kind.
Darine: So I'm curious to know a little bit about yourself.
You describe yourself as being 80% introverted. Yet, you have built an amazing international career, have made a big impact, a huge impact across multiple countries.
So what does it look like in practice for you as a leader to be an introvert, but still ensuring that you make an impact?
Seyi: Fantastic.
I would say that growing up, I was the only child for a little bit, for about five years. So that probably groomed my introverted side, because it was just me, right? And then came along my siblings.
But I've always been a talker.
I've always been someone who likes to meet people and talk with people.
But then I noticed that I often recoiled to my shell. I like to be alone a lot.
So it took a while when I grew older and took the test and realized that I was actually 80% introverted and only 20% extroverted.
And once that showed through, I then started to depend on my strengths as an introvert to continue to build my career.
So my career is in international development, and it entails stakeholder management, talking to people, networking, relating with people from all walks of life.
And I just realized that my extroverted self, 20%, could cater to that, right? It could cater to meeting people, reaching out, getting the job done.
And then I recoiled to my introverted side, where I did get the job done. So a lot of report writing goes into international development.
A lot of research and analysis goes into international development. So it looked like my ratio of 80 to 20, which perfected my career.
So what I did is when I had to meet people, I leaned on to my extroverted self.
And so it would be very difficult for people who have met me to believe that I'm introverted, because when I'm with them, I'm bubbly and lively.
As you know, Darine, we have done some work together.
so I can be pretty much open.
But then I recoiled to my introverted side quickly.
And that has been helpful to me in harnessing skills, in analysis, in research and report writing, because then I need to be quiet. I need to be on my own.
And I do that perfectly.
So over the years, one thing for me that has stood out is impact.
I come originally from Nigeria, even though I'm Canadian.
And you know, I'm surrounded by a lot of poor indices. You know, there're good indices, but then there're poor ones as well.
And so for me, I always grew up knowing that I needed to affect my community.
I needed to create a positive impact on whatever community that I find myself in. And so that's how my career was birthed. You know, it was birthed on impact.
It was birthed on purpose, you know, achieving and fulfilling a purpose in life. I am Christian. And when I say Christian, it means that I'm a follower of Christ.
And that also enables me to pursue my purpose.
To pursue impact, especially on humans around me and communities at large. So those have been helpful tools in building my career in the past 20 years.
Darine: And we are going to talk a little bit about, you know, how to find your purpose and being aligned with it, because we know it's important.
And I know that it has played an important role also in your career success.
But just to give a little bit of background about us to our audience, Seyi and I, we were deployed on the same mission in Ethiopia and Kenya.
And when we work on the field visit, what we call the field visit, it implies to meet a lot of people. So basically from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., we meet with stakeholders, programs, beneficiaries, and et cetera.
And at the end of the day, or midday, I would always say, Seyi, you know, I'm tired.
And we would have this conversation, because as introverted, and if you're an introvert, you can clearly recognize yourself, talking to people drains you.
So it's like at the beginning of the day, high energy, we are all hyped, and we will talk to people. And then, you know, first meeting, second meeting, third meeting, we're okay.
After lunch, at least for me, lunch is like the line for me. After lunch, it becomes very difficult for me to be as, you know, extroverted, as sharp with people, because all my energy was drained in the morning.
And so I would rely sometimes on Seyi, you know, to ask questions and be more involved during those meetings, because this is the reality of being an introvert, right?
It doesn't mean that you don't like talking to people.
It doesn't mean that you are shy, because being shy is something different.
It means that you have so many tokens at the beginning of the day, and every time you meet one person, it's like you give away one token, and then you no longer have any token, and you're like, okay, but I still need to function.
You also mentioned Seyi, doing the test.
So what test did you do?
I'm not aware of the kind of test that you're talking about.
Seyi: Okay, so these are personality tests. Okay.
They're online personality tests, you know, that help you realize more what your personality is about.
So I took a couple of them, and every time I took the test, it pointed to the fact that I was introverted.
Now, like I said, I can be a talker, right? So I do talk to people.
I like to meet people, but I realized that I get enough of it, you know? I just feel like I've had enough, and I need to go back to my shell.
So it was when I realized that, I thought to myself, am I getting older? Is there something wrong, you know?
And then I took the test, and I realized that I was actually 80% introverted all the time.
So, of course, I am married.
I'm a married mom of two. And my husband always says, you know, you like to be in your shell. You like to be in your closet, because he's extroverted, right?
And so that just answered it for me.
That was it. That was the missing point, that I was actually 80% introverted, you know, and I need to lean in on strength on both sides to get the job done.
And a recurring topic that, you know, stands out in every single conversation I have on this podcast is about self-awareness.
Darine: You know, self-awareness, knowing yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, and so you can leverage your strengths.
So once you identify that you were 80% introverted, how did you identify your strengths in order to leverage them?
Seyi: Fantastic.
So like you did say, I coach other people.
I started by coaching women, and then I shifted to a co-head coaching model, where I coach men as well.
And in coaching other people, I always tell them, "What do you have in your hands?"
That's the first question I always ask anyone that comes my way.
What are you good at doing? What do you do with so much ease? What can you do with your eyes closed and still do it perfectly?
So once I realized that I was introverted, I needed to, you know, take the same test that I always give to people or meet people.
What am I good at doing? What do I do with ease? I like to write.
I've always, you know, loved to write from when I was a child, you know, and that fits in well with the skill of documentation in the line of my career.
What do I like to do? I like to think, you know, when you come down to being at home, the kind of movies that thrill me are, you know, the detective movies where you have to figure out what's going to happen, you know, you have to think about what's next, you know, so that is in line with analysis, right?
I like to solve problems, and that's so in line with analysis.
When it comes to gathering information, that's where the talking comes in. I like to talk to people so I can get information that then I'll be able to analyze and document accordingly.
So I had to realize what my strengths were, and I've given you analogies of my leisure life and even my professional life.
Those were the strengths that I identified.
So once I identified that, I thought to myself, I don't want to be a project manager in or within the international development sector doing everything, because my career started off by doing everything.
I then started to leverage on the areas that I had strength in.
So stakeholder engagement, analysis, documentation or report writing, and I found that I flourished because I was doing things that I'm naturally, you know, endowed to do or I am good at.
And so that's what I always tell people that I coach. Find what you're good at.
Find that stuff that you already have in your hands and you do it seamlessly and do it excellently.
You know, you don't have to struggle when you do that, but when you go out of your comfort zone, then you have to struggle.
Then you have to do more, you know, to shine.
And that's the logic. So once I found out that I was introverted, it was then doing a mapping of the introverted strength against my own personal strengths and ensuring that it tied together to get, you know, the job done and life done.
And it makes a big difference.
Darine: It does. It makes life more enjoyable and work more enjoyable as well.
There is this idea that, and I know it holds a lot of women back, this idea that in order to be a good leader, you've got to be extroverted.
Where do you think this myth comes from? You have to behave like a man. You have to be extroverted. You have to be seen.
And I would like to bring a nuance here because I talk a lot about visibility for women leaders to make ourselves more visible.
But making yourself visible doesn't mean that you have to be extroverted. It doesn't mean that you have to be loud, right? It's two different things.
And I think it's important to bring the nuance here during this conversation.
But what do you think it is, or why do we believe we have to be extroverted in order to be a leader and a good leader?
Seyi: I think the world has standards and the world, you know, just builds nuances.
I, for one, as a Christian, know that God likes variety.
I mean, if you look into nature and you look into the world and life itself, you realize that whoever created that or is behind creation is a lover of variety, right?
But the world seems to think in a particular way. At least in my short time in life, that's what I found out. It's like this way or no other way, right?
So I feel like creation is going against the original plan.
The original plan is that there's variety, there's strength in diversity, there's strength in having difference, right? And you see it everywhere.
There's so many birds in the air and none of them struggle or compete to be there. Everyone is in his own ecosystem doing what he needs to do, makes the world a beautiful place and makes the earth, you know, wonderful.
So I feel like we need to learn from creation that there's not a one cup that fits all the way the world is.
And I feel like the world became like that because there needed to be standards, right? There needed to be a yardstick to measure people by.
Why don't you just let people be themselves? Why can't people just be who they were naturally created to be, right?
Why can't we have diversity that makes the world go round?
So for me, it's breaking the worldly norms and worldly standards and being who you were created to be.
And that's very strongly tied with purpose. Because purpose is fulfilling your innate ability. It's fulfilling what you were born to be, right?
When you find purpose, you basically are fulfilling what you were created for.
So for me, I would advise that we don't go to world standards, you know, as much as possible, but be who we were created to be.
Darine: Finding your purpose, finding the why we were brought to this planet, you know, and the impact that we were meant to have.
I hear a lot of people talking about it, but it's easier said than done, I want to say.
And for a lot of people, it's not easy to find that purpose. How did you find yours?
Seyi: Fantastic question. That's a question that I get asked a lot by, you know, people that I coach.
Everyone asks me, how do I know what my purpose is?
How do I know what I'm supposed to do?
Now, it's two tiered. I do realize that not everybody is religious and not everybody, you know, aligns with a religion.
So for me, like I said, one thing that must have helped me and the greatest thing or greatest help I had is that I am first of all, a follower of Christ.
And so if I'm a follower of Christ, there is a purpose in that followership and the purpose is to impact the world around me.
So growing up as a Christian and, you know, evolving to ensure that I follow that decision, I realized that I have no choice but to impact the world around me.
And not just impact, but impact in love, you know, impact by making a difference, right?
So for me, that was easy.
Once I realized that that's what I'm called to do, it was then how do I work out this purpose? In what ways can I work it out?
You know, as human beings, we all have different sides.
You have your professional side, which is your career or whatever it is that, you know, one does. You have your personal side where you talk about family, you know, friends and all of that.
And, you know, there could be other sides to you.
You could have a business side, a leisure side, you know, all those kinds of things.
So for me, it was on all of these sides, whether it be personal, professional, business or whatever I do, how do I begin to create an impact?
How do I make sure that when I leave this earth, I have positively influenced the world around me?
And, you know, when you say the world around you, it would just even be your vicinity.
So, you know, when I was growing up, things like being in the girls' guide, and that's the Scouts girls' guide, kind of groomed me for that because it was that you must respond positively to your environment.
You must keep your environment neat. You must be nice and kind to other people.
You must treat people with love and kindness.
You know, those things, being in the Scouts, you know, as early as seven, eight, nine years old, groomed me and my abilities to begin to think in that regard.
And of course, you know, when you live a Christian life or you try, you strive to live a Christian life, it helps you and reminds you daily, you know, that you need to do more in that regard.
So I'll say for me, that's how I identified my purpose.
Now, for people who are not religious and people who probably don't have that line of thoughts or action, I would say, what are you good at?
Everybody was created with strengths and everybody has weaknesses.
And, you know, I feel like creation has been really fair because you will find that a lot of times we have strengths that outweigh the weaknesses.
It's only that sometimes we take options and make bad choices, right?
For everybody, I'm talking about being born as a baby, you will find, I don't think there's any baby that anyone will say, oh, I don't like, right?
It's very hard. Babies are just, you know, welcoming to them. Everybody receives them.
But, you know, along the way, of course, life happens and things change.
So for anyone who is not on the religious side, I would say, find out what you're good at doing. Even if you're good at doing just one thing, you want to identify what that one thing is.
I always tell my mentees, once you identify it, you need to write it down.
OK, I'm a fan of writing things down, making a vision plane and running with it.
So you probably want to write it down, put it in a place where you can see it every day and you run with it.
So what are my strengths? Even if I have just one strength, it's a plus.
So if my strength isn't talking to people, then what are the kind of roles in my career or roles that I can do within my career that harnesses on that strength?
In my leisure life, what are the kinds of activities that harness the strength of talking to people?
In my business life, what kind of business can I go into? When talking to people, it's just easy, right?
So once you identify what you're good at, then it's easy for you to just live your life to the fullest, you know. And in doing that, you're fulfilling your purpose and making an impact as well.
Darine: And talking about impact, I'm sure this is one of the drivers that led you to create your own platform to coach immigrant women.
So tell us more about your platform, the resilience that you see in most immigrant women that could inspire women leaders.
Seyi: OK, fantastic.
So I do, I mean, I have a platform called the Trailblazer Women Hub where we have, I started that platform over five years ago, and I started it in a bid to give back to society.
I moved to Canada fully eight years ago, and originally I lived largely in Nigeria, save the times when I was in school in England or, you know, trying myself out in the US.
So being a newcomer to Canada eight years ago, I realized that a lot of the skills that I had or advancements that I had experienced in my career in Nigeria was not readily acceptable here.
It seemed like I had to start over. It seemed like I had to go back to the drawing board and start my career fresh.
Before I left Nigeria, I was already a senior program manager, managing multiple projects at one time, working in international development from one country to another, you know, and making a positive impact in all that I did.
So I just thought it would be easy to integrate into the labour market here. But I got here and I was shocked, you know, that it didn't work like that, especially because I moved here in 2017 and there was a recession at that time that affected the province of Alberta, where I was domiciled.
And it just seemed like nothing was working, you know.
So I thought to myself, what's going on here? Is it that everything I've done is not worked well? Or is it that Canada is just different?
And so, of course, over the course of two years, up until 2019, I struggled to integrate into the labour market successfully. I was successful exactly two years later.
And, you know, and that's what, you know, from that moment till now, my career in Canada blossomed.
So once I realized that there is a way to the market, you know, that's one thing we say in Nigeria, there's one way to the market, but there can be many ways.
But there's a particular way that is most effective.
And for me, it was like, how do I tell other people? Like, yes, there are many ways to get to the market.
There's a more effective way.
And from all of the lessons that I've learned and the things that I've been through, I wanted to make sure people didn't go through the same.
So I started The Hub.
And I just, you know, put the news out there. Being introverted, I don't like to be in public.
So I don't do social media.
You know, I don't like to put myself out there. So I started with a few women, you know, five people.
And I just found that they got so much from The Hub that they told other people.
There's a joke, you know, that I love to say. It's a joke around giving.
So an American guy went into a barbershop, got a haircut.
The barber said, well, don't worry. You don't need to pay for that. We'll put it on the house.
I'll give it as a service to the greatest country in the world, America.
The next day, the American brought five burgers to say thank you to the barber.
Then a British guy came, had a haircut, and he got the same message.
Don't worry about it. It's free. And it's a service to the queen.
And the guy was like, really? The next day, he was back with flowers for the barber, maybe five flowers.
An African came to the barbershop, got the same haircut. And he was told, oh, this is a service to the motherland.
Don't worry about it. And the next day, there were 10 other Africans waiting outside the barbershop to get a free haircut.
So I think that totally helped my platform.
I was dealing with immigrants, mostly Africans. I had people from Asia as well. I had Chinese.
I had Indians. I had people from Bangladesh. I was dealing with immigrants.
And it looks like immigrants just want to get the word out.
So as soon as I started with five people, those five people told 25 other people. And that's how it blows up.
That's how I end up with social media that I don't like.
Darine: You're telling the barber.
Seyi: Totally.
So that's why I was giving the barbering story, right? Because the immigrants just kept telling people, oh, you need to meet this person. She helps me out.
I've been able to integrate into the labor market from all that I learned on that platform.
And that was it. So that's how I built the platform.
And up to date, we've done, I could say, hundreds of women.
We've extended to men as well. And it all was for giving back.
So for the first four years of that platform, I was basically giving back.
Which meant that for anyone that came my way, I wasn't charging any fee.
But they didn't have to pay anything. They just needed to give their time and their energy into ensuring that they integrated successfully.
But in the past year, we have moved on to a paid service. So now for clients that I spend time with, they have to pay for the service.
Darine: There is something that you said that I think is very important before we come back to the question is word of mouth.
Word of mouth is still very powerful. And even though we know the dominance of social media.
And I do believe, even as an introverted myself, that we need to be on social media because we need to make ourselves known, our work and our impact in order to get recognized, decently recognized for the work that we do.
And also take ownership of our achievements. But it doesn't erase word of mouth from the equation.
And I'm so glad that you brought up that topic because I think with the dominance of social media, many people, men and women, but since we are focusing on women leaders, have forgotten that word of mouth is very important.
And so when we talk about visibility for women leaders, it's not only about social media.
It's about who you make yourself visible to?
So they can say your name in the right rooms when you are not there. And this is very powerful.
So part of the question was, through all the women that you have, men and women, but through all the women that you have mentored so far, what is the resilience that you have observed that you think they could leverage as women leaders?
Because as an immigrant woman, and I'm an immigrant woman too, to Canada, we went through a lot of things.
In order to be successful in this country, you have to be resilient, especially when you have no one to support you.
So we are resilient, but I feel like we are so caught in that we don't realize that this is resilience.
And so how can we leverage this resilience in order to enter the job market and to become the leader we were meant to be?
Seyi: Fantastic.
So again, it goes back to innate abilities.
When a woman was formed from the beginning, what I learned is women were to be helpers.
And if you're going to be a helper, it means that you have a lot in your toolbox.
Because if you're going to help somebody, it means you need to have more than the person.
So women are natural helpers.
Women pay attention to detail. Women can do multiple things at the same time.
And all of that makes a woman resilient.
Women can work well under pressure. Women can take pain more than the average guy.
And of course, that's clear when women have children.
I don't know that you can equate that pain to anything else. So these are all strengths of a woman.
A lot of women talk more than the guys.
Women are natural incubators. So it is, again, identifying one strength as a woman.
I mean, I've been married for 15 years now, and I realized that my husband cannot do multiple things at the same time.
He could do many things, but I could do 10 things at once, right? And that's an ability that women have.
Because I find that in other couples and in men and women alike around me.
So how do I harness that strength to become a lever within my space or within my field or career or whatever it is that I do?
Seyi: It is in identifying a strength. I really love the saying that goes, "Where purpose is known, abuse is," you know, "Where purpose is known, there cannot be abuse."
It is where purpose is not known that abuse is inevitable.
So you see, when you know what your strengths are, you would work it out to do well in it.
So for women, my advice would be to identify your strengths, identify what you're good at, and work in your space.
Don't try to be like other people, be yourself.
And, you know, you did mention being authentic at the beginning.
There's nothing, nothing beats being authentic.
It's important that everybody, you know, be authentic.
As immigrant women, we have, we come from all walks of life, you know, we're different, but that, you know, we can still stand out as leaders being different.
So some of the challenges I've seen, for example, in coaching women is how women are afraid, you know, they are, they've probably been in the background for a while.
And so they're afraid to come forward.
You know, women have a lot on their plates.
For many women, they're married and they have to take care of the home front.
Even for single women, you know, women are incubators, they care more.
So they have to take care of their siblings or their parents, or, you know, take care of their community.
So women have a lot on their plate.
And because they do, it's hard for them to shine, you know, as leaders, because they just have so many things that they are doing.
So for me, it would be to identify your purpose and work it out to ensure that you become a leader within your space, and that you are doing what you're good at.
Darine: It reminds me when I moved to Canada 15 years ago now, that I tried to assimilate, I tried to blend in.
I was very successful and I wanted to, but I was very frustrated by the fact that I couldn't speak English like a native.
Of course, my French accent, right? So I was very frustrated, ashamed of my French accent.
So that would hold me back from having conversations with people.
You know, so I tried for the first few years, it took me like a few years, trying to assimilate myself and to do things like a Canadian, because I wanted to be successful.
And it didn't work.
It didn't work.
And I would go home crying because it was like taking so much energy out of me, pretending that I was someone, something that I was not at my core, right?
And so, but still, I was very resistant.
And I was afraid, because I wasn't sure or I even didn't know if I could be successful in a foreign country, being myself, not being a local.
And so it took a little while and it took a certain level of awareness, you know, and courage and bravery.
It does.
And it takes a lot of energy, trust me, a lot of sleepless nights.
I went through it all to finally realize that the more I was being myself, and for me, it was like an act of rebellion.
I was being myself, but it was just an act of rebellion against the system, you know, maybe the box that I had created where I had to pretend to be like everyone else.
And so it was like an act of rebellion against myself, against my comfort zone or against, you know, the things that I believed to be true in order to stand out and, you know, assuming being myself and seeing the positive results out of this mindset shift.
And it makes your life more lighter.
I think we should learn from creation.
Like we said, there's so many birds in the air and none of them struggle or compete to be in that space.
So I think human beings have a lot to learn from animals.
You know, we just need to be ourselves, you know, because that's where we thrive.
That's where we blossom.
For me, it's just peace of mind, doing what I love to do.
And that's why I always tell people, what can you do with your eyes closed?
If they wake you up and they say, you know, you've got to do this now, you're ready to go.
If you find that, and then you are able to map it correctly within your career or your personal life, it's just a game changer any day.
Darine: Yeah, that's, that's very true.
And it drains you less.
Seyi: Totally.
It takes less energy out of your body.
Darine: And you're happy doing it.
Seyi: You're happy.
And life has got to be happy.
You know, I've heard that a lot of people fall sick because they don't have happy hormones, you know, they don't have happy vibes.
And so, you know, when you, when you're sad all the time, or you're downcast, it tells on your body internally.
So, you know, if you're doing something that you're happy doing, you also thrive, you know, in life, you thrive in your health, you thrive in your career, you thrive in your environment, and life is just a better place and you leave a positive impact.
Remember that we're all here to leave a footprint in the sands of time.
And you know, that's just the way to go.
For my little life, that's what I've learned.
If I learned something new, I'll let you know.
Darine: Nothing.
Seyi: That's right.
Darine: So is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners?
One thing they should take with them out of this conversation, what would it be?
Seyi: I do find joy in listening to people who have gone through life and are at the end stage.
So I'm talking about older folks who have lived their life and probably are retiring, you know, because they're older now and they can't do as much.
When I listen to them, one thing always stands out.
Everyone has regrets.
You know, it's amazing that everyone comes through with a regret and their regret is always that they didn't live out their purpose.
Their regret is mostly, "I went to work nine to five, chased the money, chased the positions, chased the promotions."
You know, "I just chased life and now I wish I spent more time with my family."
"I wish I spent more time doing the things that I love."
"I wish I spent more time identifying and fulfilling my purpose."
And that brings me back to the purpose question that, you know, I think it's important for anyone, male or female, whatever you are to fulfill purpose, you know, fulfillment brings satisfaction and satisfaction has excellent results.
It yields excellent results.
So for me, it'll be to anyone, find your purpose.
If you've not already found it and worked on it for the rest of your life so that even if you have regrets down the line, there'll be few, right?
So what's your purpose?
Is your purpose to travel the world?
Start to do it.
Right?
If that's what you want to do, leave a footprint in the sands of time.
Is your purpose to be the best in your industry?
Start to do it.
Have a niche for yourself.
Now, one thing about Canada that I appreciate in the last eight years is that Canada is niche focused.
You know, it's a country of specializing or a country of specialists.
So unlike Nigeria, where I originally come from, you can be a jack of all trades, right?
And do well in so many areas, but Canada focuses on niche marketing.
It focuses on creating or carving a niche for yourself.
And so it means that you could be within a certain sector or a field and carve a niche for yourself in that area.
You and I work together, Doreen, and we work together excellently, but you are big on gender.
You are big on ensuring that women are not left out of the story.
You're big on ensuring that, you know, there's a gender balance or a focus to any project that we work on, right?
Now, on the other side, that's not my strength.
You know, I could do more analysis.
Why is this project not working?
What can we do to make it work better, right?
So we are both in international development, focusing on different things, but creating an impact in the area that we work in.
So it means that you can thrive in many areas within a particular sector.
So each person has a job of identifying where can I do best and how or what skills, you know, so we've been talking about identifying where, you know, your strengths.
Now, once you've done that, you then need to identify what skills do I require in that given field or career.
So you already have innate abilities.
What skills do I require?
And earlier on in the conversation, I talked about personal and innate abilities, like meeting people, writing, you know, how does that now translate to my professional skill?
How can I use that writing in business to be the best in my business?
How can I use meeting people to travel the world, right?
So it's now doing a mapping of your innate abilities against the skills that are required for you to thrive and then ensuring that you merge or marry them to be the best at whatever it is you do.
So for me, human beings need to quit competing so much.
Of course, competition can be healthy, but we don't need to compete for the same space too much.
Find what you're good at, go for it, and be the best that you can be.
Darine: What a beautiful way to end that conversation.
It's like a punchline, mic drop moment.
Seyi: Thank you so much, Darine.
Darine: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review.
Your feedback helps us to continue to grow and bring more valuable content.
Until next time, bye.
