We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Petraglia recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lauren, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from my first career life in my early to mid-twenties.
I was working for a local government agency within 9 months of graduating with my undergrad in health and exercise science and was ELATED! I was always conditioned to be a 9-5 er and was so excited to find the place I planned on spending the next 20+ years, or at the very least get a great foundation. I remember walking into the building and I was beaming with ambition. I wanted to help people. When I went to school I always wanted to be someone people could count on in any health-related capacity and knew I’d find a way to do that here.
The first year really was great, but as soon as my supervisor found out I was seeing another woman in a different department down the hall, the way I was treated switched DRASTICALLY. They didn’t know my sexual orientation fully, and I truly didn’t think it was necessary information for them to know (it’s not).
After this point my supervisor began to get my coworkers to team up on me to harass me, bully me, give me conflicting information, and take me out of the office space to catch me off guard to be reprimanded.
This continued until I became sick, I had depression I was given SSRIs for (which were then doubled in strength down the line), and hives I would break out from daily that could not be controlled even after seeing several different specialists. The closest we could do is get them to calm down enough to get through the workday with a medication that had extreme drowsiness and wasn’t allowed to drive when taking it. My fiancé had to drive me to work every day.
When I couldn’t take it anymore I went to HR who told me to work through it.. which I had been doing with my therapist and now team of doctors for over a year.
It was then I knew no one was going to help me.. I could drown and keep being the victim they wanted and risk getting worse or I could take a huge risk.
I quit.
My resilience showed up in this scenario by exhausting all of my options until I had no other choice, I wouldn’t continue to risk my health. I knew if I could push through this situation for as long as I did, I could start over.
After I left this job I started from the ground up in a completely different field. I turned to the online space, took a course, learned skills that were never necessary before, and began to actually help people like I wanted. Just in a completely different capacity than I ever expected. Virtual Assistant here I come!
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Hi my name is Lauren, your new Tech Virtual Assistant/Online Business Manager for your growing business!
I am a New Jersey-born and raised cooperate world escapee with a strong background in healthcare. After finding myself and marrying my loving, supportive, wife I knew I had to find myself in my career as well. I left that “old” way of doing things behind once I discovered I could help clients (and myself) better by utilizing my determination, accommodation, and resourcefulness in a new capacity. I’ve also recently expanded my team so now you get three of us for the price of one : )
I am a self-starting Virtual Assistant/Online Business Manager who helps streamline, strategize, and execute daunting backend tasks for burnt-out business owners so that they can have more free time, and drive to finally scale the results they have been waiting for.
Here’s what I can do for you:
Administrative tasks:
General Administration Tasks
Email Management
Data Entry
Research
Calendar Management/Scheduling
General Personal Assistant Tasks
Invoicing
Task Management
Light Website Management
Community Management
Project Management
Sales Page Set Up + Optimization
Content:
Assistance with Social Media (Posting and Interaction in Accounts)
Content Editing
Content Repurposing
Events:
Event Planning/Coordination
Graphic Design:
Light Graphic Design/Advertisement
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The most impactful skills on my journey were my soft skills, such as, resilience, determination, and resourcefulness.
To be honest everyone has soft skills. The trick is to think about which ones you have and how they’re a strength to you. Once you know that you can play on how to make it tangible. There’s no one size fits all, what works and is convenient for others may be a huge pain to you. It’s all about optimizing your specific strengths.
For example, just know that you can learn a hard skill, like how to use a specific platform or research a specific topic if you have the soft skill of resourcefulness.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
My biggest challenge is my own ego. I get imposter syndrome regularly and compare where I’m at with others in the community, but the way I’m able to quiet it down is to think about where and why I started.
When I think about the place I was in when I quit my job and had nothing financially to contribute to my household I think about how proud of me I’d be, if I knew I’d be in the place I’m in now back then.
Contact Info:
- Website: bit.ly/LNProduction-VA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren_lnproduction/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-petraglia-lnproduction-va
- Other: Free consult scheduler link: https://hello.dubsado.com/public/appointment-scheduler/616f2323565c3910361a23e9/schedule
