Learning How to Lose, Get Back Up and Maximize Growth

Season 5, Episode 9

Guest: Huong Nguyen, CEO & Founder, Shiloh Events

When you get knocked down, what do you need to do in order to get back up and move forward? Huong Nguyen, CEO and founder of Shiloh Events, discusses the power and growth opportunity that experiencing failure presents. 

Listen now:

Listen to more Dare to Interrupt podcasts: www.MeetingsToday.com/Dare-to-Interrupt.

Meet Our Guest

Huong Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Shiloh Events, a full-service agency that specializes in managing large-scale corporate events for global brands. 

With an MBA in marketing and over 15 years of experience in the events industry, she has a proven track record of delivering captivating experiences that enhance brand awareness, engagement,\ and loyalty. 

As the leader of a dedicated team of event professionals, Huong oversees all aspects of event planning, execution and evaluation, ensuring high-quality results and client satisfaction. She also leverages her expertise in digital marketing and community relations to amplify the impact of events through social media, content creation and influencer outreach. 

Huong's passion for events stems from her belief that they are powerful tools for storytelling, connection, and innovation.

Connect with Huong: 
LinkedIn
Instagram: @shilohevents_huong
Website

More About Our Host

Courtney believes that transforming past experiences into impactful conversations through raw, authentic storytelling challenges the status quo, connects people from all walks of life and results in great change for the world.

Courtney is the youngest member to have ever been elected to Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) International Board of Directors.

She is the recipient of Smart Meetings’ Entrepreneur Award, MeetingsNet’s Changemaker Award, the Association for Women in Events (AWE) Disruptor Award, the MPI Chairman’s Award and MPI RISE Award.

Named Collaborate and Connect Magazine’s 40 under 40 and a Meetings Today Trendsetter.

Recognized as one of the event industry’s most impactful change-makers, Courtney serves on the Events Industry Sexual Harassment Task Force, AWE’s Board of Directors, MPI’s Women’s Advisory Board, is a Meetings Mean Business Ambassador and is the co-founder of the award-winning movement, #MeetingsToo.

Courtney was named as a 2020 Meetings Trendsetter by Meetings Today.

Connect with Courtney:
Website
LinkedIn
Instagram: @courtneyonstage
Twitter: @courtneyonstage
Facebook

Transcript:

Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI program Otter.ai and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.

Courtney Stanley
Hello everybody. This is Courtney Stanley, and welcome to another exciting episode of dare to interrupt, the only podcast made by women for women in the world of events, hospitality, tourism and beyond. 

We hope you feel empowered as you listen in on honest, unfiltered conversations with leaders who are considered to be the most influential, inspiring and innovative women in business today. 

Throughout their careers, these leaders have dared to interrupt conversations, their own comfort zones and sometimes even societal norms, to hustle toward their greatest levels of success. 
I am so, so excited to welcome today's guest to the show. Here we have Huong Nguyen, CEO and founder of Shiloh events, welcome hung How are you?

Huong Nguyen

Great. Thank you so much, Courtney for having me, and thank you to the audience for tuning in. I'm so grateful and humbled to be here with you all today.
Courtney Stanley

Oh my gosh. We're so excited to have you here. You're one of my newest friends in this industry, and I'm so happy that I get to chat with you today and just share a little bit of your story with our community. 

So I'd love to just start out by having you share a little bit about your company, Shiloh events.
Huong Nguyen

Absolutely. Well, first of all, when I first met you, Courtney, I knew instantly that our energy would vibe and we become immediate besties. And since then, I've learned a lot from you and your personal stories, and so that has been a great inspiration to me. So, thank you. Thank you. 
In terms of Shiloh event management, Shiloh is a word that means peace in Hebrew, and when I started it in 2013 what I wanted to do was to bring peace to the event planning industry and industry that was filled or that is filled with a lot of stress and chaos. You know, uncertainties, moving targets is very dynamic and multifaceted. 

And so, I knew that if I wanted to be unique and be a value add to the industry, I didn't want to do what everybody else was already doing. I wanted to create a brand that would not only talk about bringing peace, but actually, actually create it and bring it right like that, where my clients would experience the peace on site, and not just the clients, but guiding the clients to create peace for their attendees as well. I just felt that that was really important to me. 

So, Shiloh is an Event Management Agency. We partner with enterprise tech companies such as zoom, LG, Hitachi, Samsung, those are the names that you would probably recognize. We also work with startup companies that don't have a big in house event management team or a field marketing team. 

So, they hire out, you know, an agency for the that kind of support, and we become an extension of their team. We align with them in terms of their business goals and objectives, and we help them create go to market plans, and then we execute on those plans. So essentially, we're a service company that focuses on specifically event and marketing initiatives.

Courtney Stanley

That's awesome, and you've been in business for 11 years now. Did you do anything big for your 10-year anniversary?

Huong Nguyen

You know, not physically big, but for our 10-year milestone, I decided that it was the right time for me to step out of my comfort zone and speak and share all the things that I have learned ever since starting Shiloh, and also prior to that as well. 

Prior to starting Shiloh, I was working at NASA for three to four years doing their, you know, external, outreaching marketing events. And then from there, I went to service now and got my MBA simultaneously. And after my MBA, I started Shiloh, and had been head down, focusing on client retention, doing a really good job innovating with them. And at the 10-year mark, I felt, you know, it was time for me to see what else is happening out there in the events industry. I had never been a part of the events community. I mean, I was, I am an event planner, I am a marketer, but I haven't tapped into the community. 

So, I did so by, you know, starting to share my insights on LinkedIn, and since then, people have really gleaned into it and appreciated it and resonated it. And I was like, You know what? I'm going to I'm going to continue to invest into the events community, even more, because investing in the community, I'm investing into the future me, right? I'm investing into my colleagues, into my peers. And peer to peer learning and peer to peer connection is where you know some of the most richest, like some of the most richest moments you'll ever have in networking, because sometimes networking can be really surface level. 

But ever since I started speaking out the 10-year mark, I realized that the events industry, for the planners and the marketers, at least, we need a platform where you could go deeper. 
A lot of us work in silos, especially contractors or even agencies. We work in silos, and we never really know what everybody else is doing. And then even being like, you know, reaching out to competitors, it's like faux pas, and like, nobody's, you know, willing to talk to other competitors, or, you know, competitors are nervous to talk to me, and now I'm totally fine to talk to my competitors, to my own competitors in my region. 

I'm friends with a co-founder of another event management agency that are servicing the same type of clients I am, and we share notes, and that's okay. It's okay to share notes, you know. And so that's something that I've, you know, found to be very, very valuable for me as I stepped out,

Courtney Stanley

I think that's awesome. And I love the I love the concept and kind of the way of living where you focus more on collaboration and connection and community, instead of focusing on, you know, scarcity and competition. I want to back up for a second, because it was really interesting to me that you chose the word peace for your company. 

Where does that come from? For you personally? Why was that word and that idea and that concept so important to you?

Huong Nguyen

Yeah, interesting. So, getting really personal, I am a huge believer in Christ. You know, I was just laying down on my couch and asking God to direct me in where he wanted me to be and the purpose that He wanted me to serve as a Christ follower. And I was like, Okay, God, like, I just got my MBA. What do you want my purpose to be? And right in front of me was a poster that said it was a poster, and it was called all the things, like, all the names that he's called, so all the names of God. 

So, it's like, Yahweh is one of them. Abba is one of them. And then right in the middle of the poster is Shiloh. And I was like, that's an interesting name, Shiloh. So, I looked it up. And, you know, in Hebrew, it actually means a place of peace. And so when people come to Shiloh, my goal is to exchange their stress, to take their stress onto my shoulders, or onto my team shoulders, and exchange that for peace. 

So, they're coming to a place of peace. So really personally that that word indicates that, you know, I am just following my calling and fulfilling my purpose as a believer of Christ, and then, even then, like, you know, religion is not a big part in the company, but individual faith, to me, is really important. I obviously, I don't preach that to my clients, right? It's not something that I lead with, and I'm very respectful of other people's faith. But for me, personally, at the end of the day, when I lay my head down on my pillow, that's who I give thanks to.

Courtney Stanley

I know, before we hopped on here, we were just kind of sharing the difficulty of busyness and just kind of the chaos of the work, you know, the travel that everything that comes with this, this particular industry, how do you stay rooted in that purpose that you were just talking about, and really keeping it the center of your work when things are so crazy and so busy, and you've been at this for over a decade now? 

So, do you feel like it's been kind of difficult to keep that top of mind, or are there things that you do that really make sure that you keep that the focus of what you're working on?

Huong Nguyen

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, girl like, the struggle is real, right? We all struggle with our calling and constantly doubting ourselves. If we're in the right field, am I doing? Am I where I would need to be? Right? Is this meant for me? And the first question I always like, or the first thing I always remind myself of that I encourage a lot of professionals out there to do, is be firm and be secure that what you're doing is your passion. 

You have to be passionate about what you're doing like at the core of who you are, it has to be, you know, it's not a job, but is a calling. So if you're passionate about art, go into art. If you're passionate about cooking, if you're passionate about tech. 

For me, I am very passionate about the events industry. It's not something that I have to muster up and fake. It's something that is just I was born with it. I'd always wanted to plan events when I was little. I've always wanted to plan birthday parties. If there was a school prom that that would be my name, I would be chairman of the committee. Like, if there was any kind of rally, I would totally be there. And I have a natural interest in entertainment, a natural interest in being curious about how AV works, or wanting to get my hands into the FMB grid and ordering food. 

I'm a foodie, right? So just tapping into that natural like the internal build of yourself, like, what are you most passionate about? That then becomes the choice that you make constantly, over and over again, to be committed and dedicated to that job. So for me, because I'm passionate about events. When times get rough. I mean, sure, it gets tough and like, I, you know, there are moments that I'm like, I need to vent, but at the end of the day, I love it. I really do. I rather be here than anywhere else. I rather be here than in hell, Hell's Kitchen, because I'm not a cook. You know, food doesn't really trust me to cook, but I totally would rather be on the trade show floor, managing Freeman, managing Encore and like, you know, wondering where the where the monitors are, and figuring out this is like a 32 inch monitor slot or an 80 inch monitor slot, right? 

So, it's like, at the end of the day, the magic comes alive, because I'm living in my passion. Um, yeah. And so the, the second thing, in addition to passion, is also, you know, asking yourself, of like, what's your capacity? We were talking about burnout prior to pressing the record button and knowing that capacity, like, you know, what's interesting? Girl, like, for me, I had never heard the word capacity until probably two years ago, my mindset, and it's just because of how I was raised. My parents weren't there for me. I had to raise myself. I don't know that the definition of boundaries. I didn't really learn that until a couple years ago. 

My boundaries, what the hell are boundaries? Like, I'm just going to either do it or don't do it right, or, like, capacity. Like, I don't know. I guess I'm just going to work until I'm tired. Like, it right? What's the capacity or like, I'm just going to multitask. I'm just going to get stuff done, right? Just get it done. Like, for me, that's always been my survival mechanism of just doing whatever it takes to get it done. But lately, as I'm learning about the word boundaries and capacity and being burnt out, I am more aware that as you get older, there are limits to what you can do. 

You know, when you're younger, you think you can jump off a building and fly right or go to the moon, but then the older you get, not because you're jaded or because you're disappointed and like filled with failures and hopelessness, but it's more with wisdom you actually become wiser, that you realize you can do more by focusing on, you know, by redirecting your focus on three to five priorities that you can do well in, versus spreading yourself thin. And like doing 10 things, but like doing mediocre work, and that's wisdom and so and so for me, to prevent burnout, I tap into my passion, and I know I now know, I'm learning what my capacity is. I still have a tendency to overdo things, because that's just me. I'm a workhorse. But not everybody is a workhorse. 

So, you really have to, like, attune with your body. Listen to what the body is telling you. Are you know is, are you getting pressure in your head? Okay, ask why are you getting certain pressure? Are you getting sick? Like, okay, what are some things that you know that have led up to that? Because if you're not attuned to your body and listening to what your body is telling you, then you get to that point where, oh shit. Like, I'm like, I'm going to faint.

Or, you know, in your situation, like, you know, I'm not going to be able to be mentally present when I'm in a meeting, so that I can't really show up and speak the right words and give the clients exactly what they need. And then they're going to start to question you whether you're competent and you never, ever want to get there. And then even, you know, moments with your family, you're not mentally present, you're on the phone. 

So, passion and capacity, aka boundaries, is are the two things that I would highly recommend people getting anchored in.

Courtney Stanley

Yeah, and for the audience, just to fill you all in, because we had a little chat before we got on and hit record, there was a time in my life and in my professional journey where I was so overwhelmed and stressed out and burned out and working for A toxic leader that caused a lot of emotional and mental distress. 

There was a point where I had a moment, my body had a moment, my brain had a moment to rest, and that was the moment that my body decided to just completely shut down. And I ended up passing out. I was at, you know, my family home. It hit me out of what I felt like was nowhere. 

So, it's interesting to see, you know, kind of how the body will give you all these warning signs and will play catch up with you when you give your body a moment to rest and to break. And a lot of times, that's when people do experience things like catching a cold or just feeling completely fatigued. 

And so I appreciate that you're talking about not only your own experiences with this, but also the newer conversation that you're now a part of about capacity and boundaries. And this is this may or may not lead us into this next question that I have for you. It might be something completely different. But even though you love the events industry and you love the work, you love the community, what do you feel like is one thing that you would change about the event industry as it exists today.

Courtney Stanley

Let me see the one thing, hmm…

Huong Nguyen

I think it's, let's okay, there's most. To pull side to the coin, right the coin of, I'm a vendor and a supplier, and that's where you know you're a third-party supplier, your agency side, your AV whatever, and then the other coin of your the buyer. 

So, the buyer is like an in house marketer, or someone who has all the decision making. If, for me, if I could change one thing about the buyer side is knowing that it's not all about driving revenue, it's not all about the attendance headcount, but focusing on the human experience. And the human experience varies in many ways. It's not just the attendees, okay, like, it's speakers, it's sponsors, it's event staff, and particularly, that actually segues into, like, one of my next project that I'm working on is bringing more visibility into the human interactions that are happening on site, and like, basically bringing more empathy to the events that is not, you know, you check in, you get a registration badge, you get food, you go to the session, then you're out, you know, or the staff that's working, and they're just standing there, you know, scanning your badge, but creating moments within the event for the attendee journey and the journey of everybody else, a moment where, oh, like shit. This is a real life, human experience. 

This person that you're interacting with just flew here, and who knows what situation that they're in that they took time out of their day to speak with, to speak to this audience, or the attendee that you know, showed up, you know, as a director, and she has to then gather that insight to share it back with her team. 

So, having more empathy, moments of empathy. And I don't know exactly how to solve for that, but the one thing that I am advocating with my clients is being more experiential. And that's, you know, honestly, a lot of people can say it's a fluff word, you know, like, what is really experiential, hands on demos, like activations, but for me, the way that I want to encourage us to think about experiential is the emotions. It's okay to have emotions on site. It's okay when attendee is frustrated. I actually want to tap into that and like and I think one of the biggest moment that we can really, truly connect is when the emotions are heightened, right? 

It's we're, we're being vulnerable, and it's okay to, like, embrace difficult emotions at these shows. And I don't think we're doing that. I think we're playing it safe. I think, you know, like, for an example, you know, let's say, when we're coaching our speakers to share certain things. We want to make sure that they're, you know, we want to coach them in certain ways. But there's we want. 
For me, I want to give them freedom to share what is passionate about you. But yeah, it has to be aligned with the company messaging, but be vulnerable share about your personal history with this product, or what are the all your own personal failures that your learning curves as you're learning you know as you're adopting our product, that other attendees could also resonate with, right? 

So, being able to take the experiential not just through physical touch and the eyesight and census right all the senses, but tapping into that other dimension of experience, and that's emotion, then on the other side of the coin for agencies and third party providers, I would want to change more collaboration I mentioned earlier that, prior to me being out there and speaking, I didn't really collaborate with other agencies, like there's just this competition for some reason, and I want to, I want to take down the walls of competition, and because when we can unite, there's more innovation, right? 

And it's okay if my client ended up not choosing me and going with Opus or GPJ. And that has happened before Courtney. That has happened, and I don't believe it. I had to have it. And I'm like, Oh my God, that's painful. But what's funny is, I was walking the floor of ETL event tech live, and I met my competitors, director of sales. I met the director of sales at a larger agency, and we became close friends. 

Now she's texting me, and I'm like, Hey, I'm bidding on this. Are you bidding on this too? And then she's like, No, I'm not bidding on that. And then she's telling me what she's bidding on, right? And we ended up bidding on some events together, and I ended up losing, and she ended up winning, and vice versa, and we congratulate each other, and that's totally fine, like, I don't, you know, I don't want there to be any walls within the third parties, because it doesn't, you know, it doesn't yield benefit to the clients and also to us, right? So anyway, so those are two things that would change. Well, I think

Courtney Stanley

Those are really great things to talk about. And I think going back to your discussion around really seeing the beauty and the opportunity and attendees expressing their emotions vulnerably on site. Or anybody, speakers, attendees, staff, yeah, anybody. I think that that's such, I think that's such a beautiful desire for. To showcase more of and also just to give people, in general, more permission to be human.

Huong Nguyen

Yes, yeah, yeah. Attendee cry at a conference. Courtney, yes, yeah. What was the reason I made them cry?

Courtney Stanley

I'm like, not kidding, though, but it's, it's only because sometimes my keynotes, so I in the keynotes that I present, they're very rooted in vulnerability, and we do vulnerability development training, so I have made many attendees cry over the years through these moments of creating vulnerable space. Yes. So yes, I have, I have seen and also made many attendees cry. 
But as an attendee myself going to conferences, I don't think that. I don't think I've really seen another attendee cry at a conference, just kind of like walking the halls, you know, I've never seen that kind of emotional moment.

Huong Nguyen
Yeah, I have seen my own staff cry because, both good and bad, that they're too burned out, and they cry, but not on site, but like I've seen. I've seen my own employees cry out of like a huge relief that it's over, and then when the client comes up and thanks them, then they're, like, tearing up, like those, those cries. I haven't seen an attendee cry. I want to see I want more of that. That's our goal for 2025

We're going to make more attendees cry, whatever it takes, or, like, even excitement, like where they're going to the registration desk. Like, you know, I've seen that. I've definitely seen attendees come to our reg desk and just giving us, like, big fat hugs that like they've really had a good time. It's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. So just a safe space. Basically, what I'm saying is we need more safe spaces. 

Courtney Stanley

Yeah, Iagree. I completely agree with that. And something else I want to dive into a little bit with you, and this is based on our initial conversation, just really diving into who you are as a person and some of your stories. I know that you love talking about the power and the opportunity that experiencing failure presents, and that's something that you're very passionate about. 

What do you feel are some of the biggest failures or hardships that you faced, and how did you personally handle them, and what was that journey like and that outcome?

Huong Nguyen
Yeah, I can speak from a perspective of an agency like it's very difficult to put your work or your best foot forward in a bid, and then losing it's so hard to feel because you're like, I really want it, and I did everything that they asked for in the RFP, I was very detailed, and just you weren't good enough, you know, you there were other options that either were less expensive than yours, or they had a better connection or more resources than You, and then you lose. 

And so I've had to learn to lose and lose well and accept that losing is okay. Win some and you lose some, right? And in moments of loss, in a bid, what I do now I've learned to do is like, not be like, Oh, dang it. I lost. Okay, thanks. Thanks Thanks for letting me know that you've went with another vendor by right. But I have learned to swallow my pain and my pride and my shame to then say, Hey, thanks for letting me know if you have any feedback. You know I would love to hear how I could have done that bit better. 

Or ask them either once they share their feedback, but ask them like, hey, if there's other opportunities that you have within your department or other departments that we would be a good fit for, we would, you know, we would love to bid on those as well. And I found that when I asked for feedback, they actually share with me that the end of the day is not really what we could or couldn't offer. But number one, maybe someone on then this happens all the time. 

Courtney and I totally agree with it, that someone on their team have a relationship with someone else on the other agency side, you know, and they they're they're good friends, or they build a strong network, and that's fine, because my clients do that with me. They choose me over larger agencies because they we have a good relationship, so I can't blame them for that. And then other times they'll be like, oh, you know what? Maybe you, you don't, you know, maybe you can't scale to this large, you know, citywide that we're working on for 20,000 people, but you could probably do some of our, like, smaller programs of like, you know, 1000 people, 2000 or even our executive program. 

So, I'm like, sweet, so we end up getting our foot in the door and through, you know, smaller programs. So sometimes losing is not the end all be all, but like accepting that failure is not an enemy, is a friend. It's a friend that you can like leverage for other opportunities, but also a friend that you can learn from. Right? Failures teach. Says a lot of things about ourselves, not just business opportunities, but your characteristics, how you respond to failure, what has gotten you into that moment of failure? And like, being able to, like, be humble and reflect on those failures. And honestly, I think failure is a tool and, like, it's more of a sword for us, and it actually is a hindrance, or like a stumbling block, right? I think failure is one of those sword that you carry, and it gets sharpened every time. 

And you, every time you experience something, you pull out the sword of failure, and you learn from that, and you're like, Okay, I'm stronger now. And you, you know, you basically take what you've learned to be able to face that next, that next challenge, right? All the wiser and all the better mentally like stronger for it.

Courtney Stanley

So, yeah, I completely agree. And there's a saying that goes something like, you either win or you learn. And I love looking at it that way, because for me, moments that other people might see as failure have been probably the most character building moments that I've had in my life, whether it's personal or it's professional. 

So, I really do believe that failure is necessary for growth and development, whether it's personal or professional. So when you get knocked down, what do you feel like you need to do in order to get back up and move forward?

Huong Nguyen

Yeah, that's a very important question, because the truth is, we will get knocked down in many different ways that we did not anticipate. Let me know you didn't get accepted to a job, right? Or you get fired, or you made a major mistake that lost the company money. 

Or, okay, hey, you got sick, you know, like majorly sick that required you to be in the hospital for multiple months at a time, right? Or maybe, you know, in my situation, if I'm going to be really honest with you, maybe you got cheated on, and you realize that your husband, your was cheating on you with multiple women. That was, that's what happened to me. 

You know, I was focusing on my business and raising my kids, and out of nowhere, my ex was like, Yeah, I've been cheating on you for the past three to four years with multiple women. And that's a form of being a knockdown, yeah. I will say yeah. 

And so it comes in many different ways, and I think those moments are just moments of pause, like, let's just Okay, let's just pause. All right. That happened to me. I tripped and fell, or, you know, something like someone stabbed me in the back. Let's just pause. Don't react yet, and reflect. Reflect on how it makes you feel. Reflect on what the other person did and why, perhaps, if you can process it, or even why you didn't get that job, reflect on what your role in it is, and that's really, actually more important than someone else's role is, what did you do? What was your part in that situation? 
In any situation, either it be job, friendship, breaking up, whatever, what's your part in it and taking allowing yourself space to really like, feel and process through any emotions that come up. So let's just take, I mean, you know, for professional purposes, let's take me losing a bid, right? 

Because I spoke about that earlier. Um, so here's an example. We had a long time client that's been with us for five years, the client point of contact and their entire department moved to another enterprise company, and they took us with them. So we ended up getting that contract as well. So for the short time being, we had company A and company B now company the point of contact from

Company A that then moved to Company B left a bad taste in Company A's mouth, so then company a hired a brand new department, and that new set of point of contact that moved into Company A, then now have a bad case of mouth with us, because obviously, like, we have a good relationship with their predecessor, right? 

And so they ended up not working with us anymore, and I lost a client that has been with me for five years, because of that, not my fault, but because of just politics, internal politics. And so I was very bummed about it, and I took a moment to, you know, metaphorically, cry about that loss and that huge revenue. It was a quarter million dollar of revenue every single year that I had lost. Yeah, I was, it was about $250,000 of revenue, girl, revenue and services.

So, I lost that. And, you know, it. It's it took a long time to accept, and I sent the new point of contact and email to thank her for seeking you know, for giving us that one year that she worked with us. And if she ever needed anything again, I would always be here for her. And then I offered her value. I said, Hey, like, since we're not working with you anymore, here are all of the files, right. Here's everything that we took notes on and the lessons learned and some key points that we had heard from your attendees that would make this program better. 

So, I gave her value on the way out, and hopefully that, you know, put some goodwill in her for future reference. But the point that I'm making is, like, what I do to get back up is, you know, allowing myself a space to reflect and learn from it and not be bitter, because bitterness in your heart will totally eat you up. I can tell you, you know, maybe, maybe take some time off, go on vacation, or, you know, tell you one of those, like advice that you probably have already heard. 

But I'm going to tell you right now one of the most invisible cancer that you could probably get in moments of downfall is bitterness and bitterness against the world, against yourself, against the people around you, and even against a job that it definitely kills at your ability to come back at the computer with a fresh mindset. 

So, if you can take that and, like, keep that emotion that bitter, like, obviously recognize your emotions, but not allow that to take root in, you know, the tree that you're growing, then you will continue to flourish, even in moments of failure. So, bitterness is something that I would highly, I would call out as something to be watchful for.