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Coaching the BIPOC Community
11 Plays4 months ago
🎙️ In this episode of PRIME SPACE, Elias welcomes Dorisse Shakir-Ullah, ACC — accomplished coach, award-winning leader, and founder of Career Forward Coaching — for a compelling conversation focused on coaching within the BIPOC community.
Drawing from over four decades of service at the FBI, where she became the first Black Muslim woman to lead as an administrative officer and hiring manager in a top field office, Dorisse now dedicates her life to helping others rise. Through her coaching, she creates spaces of trust, empowerment, and growth for her clients.
💡 In this episode, Dorisse offers essential insights for coaches who want to work more effectively with BIPOC clients:
🔑 Key Takeaways:
- Why understanding a client’s core identity — their values, strengths, and sense of self — is foundational to meaningful coaching.
- How to help BIPOC clients navigate systemic barriers while nurturing a strong internal compass.
- The importance of intentional strategy and helping clients think expansively about career possibilities.
- Why creating a space of spiritual, emotional, and cultural safety matters in every coaching conversation.
- How mentorship, service, and lived experience can inform a powerful, equity-centered coaching approach.
Dorisse's coaching is deeply guided by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s enduring question: “What are you doing for others?” Her response: coaching that uplifts, affirms and expands what’s possible — especially for those historically left out of the conversation.
🔗 If you’re a coach seeking to serve diverse clients with authenticity and impact, this episode is essential listening.
Connect with Dorisse at Career Forward Coaching and on LinkedIn.
#PRIMESPACE #BIPOCVoices #InclusiveCoaching #CareerCoaching #DorisseShakirUllah #CoachingForEquity #StrengthsBasedCoaching #DiversityInLeadership #EmpoweredCoaching #CoachingCommunity #CareerForward #CoachingWithPurpose #EliasScultori #CoachingTips #CoachingMatters
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Transcript
Introduction to Prime Space and Guest Doris Shakirgula
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Couttori.
00:00:14
Speaker
So hello, coaches.
00:00:15
Speaker
Today I have a guest.
00:00:19
Speaker
And you know how much I love bringing guests to our podcast here.
00:00:25
Speaker
And I have the pleasure to have a conversation here with Doris Shakirgula.
00:00:33
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And she is an ACC coach.
00:00:37
Speaker
And there is a uniqueness about Doris that I wanted to bring to the conversation here.
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And I think that you're going to notice this as the conversation
Meeting Doris and Her Compelling Presence
00:00:50
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develops here.
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Speaker
But before I go on, let me just say hello, Doris.
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Hi, how are you today?
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I am joyful to have you here with us.
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Speaker
How are you?
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Speaker
I'm doing well.
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Thank you.
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I'm very blessed.
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And I want to say thank you for the opportunity, Elias.
00:01:08
Speaker
I really appreciate this.
00:01:10
Speaker
I remember, you know, I've met you before and listeners, I met Doris through ICF New Jersey.
00:01:19
Speaker
Doris is a member of the ICF New Jersey.
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She now has a board position at ICF New Jersey.
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She's the
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the co-director of member engagement and very active with ICF New Jersey.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I remember meeting Doris many years ago when I was still living in New Jersey.
00:01:38
Speaker
But recently I did a workshop for ICF New Jersey and here's Doris.
00:01:45
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And I remember having a conversation and seeing her smile.
Trailblazing Career in the FBI
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And I said, I need to have a conversation with Doris because
00:01:52
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There is a lot behind that smile that I think that needs to shine in this world and we need to learn about.
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So thank you so much for being here.
00:02:05
Speaker
Oh, thank you for having me.
00:02:06
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I really appreciate it.
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And hi to everyone out there.
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So Doris, as I said, is an ACC coach.
00:02:14
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And one thing that I think is very beautiful about her background is that she was the first Black Muslim woman to serve as an administrative officer and hiring manager in the top 10.
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pan
Growth and Mentorship Journey
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FBI field office.
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That is a big deal, Doris.
00:02:35
Speaker
What is that about?
00:02:37
Speaker
I don't even know.
00:02:38
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Yeah, that was a very quiet secret.
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Yeah, I was at
00:02:45
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in charge of the professional staff with the FBI Newark, New Jersey field office.
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That was my office for 41 years before I retired in 2022.
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And I have to tell you, I started as a typist in the FBI and realized shortly after a year that I wanted to do more.
00:03:13
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I just didn't know what more meant.
00:03:16
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And I started really looking at different ways that I could not only continue to grow, but continue to be a service because that's what I'm about when you get to know me.
00:03:30
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And so that's what I did.
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I worked my way through different positions until leadership called me.
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And that was a conscious choice because I felt people needed a voice and opportunities.
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And I wanted to be a part of that.
Mission-Focused Career Coaching
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There was a mentor that I had, Marjorie Mersejewski, who really had a big impact on my life, on how I set about going strategically through career choices.
00:04:06
Speaker
And also how coming from a small town in Jersey City, born and raised, never left the two blocks that I lived on.
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I learned to grow and I grew a lot, not only in the FBI, but I grew a lot based on the mentors that I had in my life.
00:04:28
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And it's beautiful to hear that story because then, you know, and I hope that throughout this conversation that we are going to have here, that we are going to notice, and I hope listeners that you are going to notice what Doris just said, this life of service, that in the commitment that she has with her clients today and the mission that she has.
00:04:52
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And also, I love this concept of the mentors, the people that you had that supported you to move forward.
00:04:59
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And now you are being the mentors and the coaches and the role models to other individuals coming in front of you.
00:05:10
Speaker
The other thing that I want to mention is that Doris is also a recipient of the Leading Women in Business Award from NJBiz.
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This was an award that came last year.
00:05:23
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So congratulations there, Doris.
00:05:25
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That is a testimony of the work that you are doing for the community and all that you're bringing to your clients as well.
Keys to Resilience: Strengths, Spirituality, and Values
00:05:34
Speaker
Thank you.
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, thank you very much.
00:05:38
Speaker
I always said that my favorite quote, and you'll hear me quote often, is by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, what are you doing for others?
00:05:50
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That was his most urgent and persistent question.
00:05:54
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And that has always been a North Star for me, not only in the government, but once I retired, I wanted to continue that.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so once I decided I'm going to
00:06:10
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To leave the Bureau, I sat home for about a week and thought, okay, I need to do something to continue to serve and what could I do?
00:06:21
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And I wanted to give back.
00:06:23
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So that is what helped me become the founder of Career Forward Coaching.
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in order to do a lot with helping people find their strengths, find their their values, find their personal brand, because that is what sustains us when things get tough.
00:06:46
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You have your spirituality, but you also need to understand who you are at the core, because that's what got me through a lot of tough times in the
00:06:59
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in my work, professional life and personal.
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My faith always will come first.
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I appreciate that.
00:07:10
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One thing that is coming up for me as I have this conversation with you here and prior to us hitting the recording button is how much you're grounded in a mission, how much you're grounded in the why you are a coach,
00:07:28
Speaker
That coaching for you is not simply creating a business and getting clients, but all of this that you do is for service.
Empowerment and Personal Branding for BIPOC Clients
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That is so beautiful.
00:07:42
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And I want to emphasize that and put the spotlight there because how important it is for us to know our, you know, using Simon Sinek here, to know our why, right?
00:07:54
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And to know, like, why am I doing this?
00:07:56
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Why am I here in coaching?
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What brings me to this?
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And remind ourselves, because I think that sometimes as we continue to develop our careers and sometimes even with very experienced coaches, we forget or we lose touch of these foundational points of what is coaching about.
00:08:19
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And it's beautiful to see that you have this understanding.
00:08:23
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very evident and present in the way you coach and you work with your clients.
00:08:31
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Thank you for that.
00:08:32
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I want to emphasize here one thing about your story, Doris, because you are...
00:08:39
Speaker
Primarily the title that you use is career coaching, but what I love about that is that you approach career coaching through the view of personal branding and the idea of like, who are you first?
00:08:54
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Let's look at who you are as an individual so that you are able to then apply that and decide what steps you want to take in your career.
00:09:05
Speaker
The other aspect that I love here, the other two aspects that I love here, is that you work a lot with veterans and the government.
00:09:14
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And there is one aspect, and I think that we discussed this a little bit prior to recording the episode, is that you see that somehow members of the BIPOC community
00:09:29
Speaker
are attractive to working with you.
00:09:31
Speaker
And let me explain here, what is, first of all, Doris, what is BIPOC?
00:09:37
Speaker
Great.
00:09:39
Speaker
It is Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
00:09:44
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Thank you, because a lot of people will not know what that is.
00:09:48
Speaker
So Black, Indigenous, and people of color, that's what BIPOC means.
00:09:52
Speaker
So it seems that people in that space are attracted to work with you primarily.
00:10:02
Speaker
So I would love for you to share with us here a little bit about...
00:10:07
Speaker
What do you see or what are the needs that you see within this community that it would be helpful for every coach who happens to work with members of the BIPOC community to keep in mind?
00:10:26
Speaker
That's really a good question, please.
00:10:30
Speaker
When I think of me coaching BIPOC community, first of all, I love that space because they do not always get the opportunity to get coaching.
00:10:44
Speaker
They do not have the same access to coaching.
00:10:48
Speaker
And that was one of the reasons why I started a lot with pro bono work because
00:10:54
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whether it was the Sierra House, which is a transition home for women, whether it was the enjoyable growth of, it's actually called EPOC, enjoyable pain of growth.
00:11:12
Speaker
It was an academy that was online for high schoolers that were about to think about leadership and moving forward for college.
00:11:24
Speaker
And then the program with the Salvation Army really just helping youth development with access to coaching, not mentoring, because they were receiving mentoring from the coaches of the basketball team, et cetera.
00:11:44
Speaker
But when it came to coaching, it was that question, who are you and how can you help your future self say thank you down the road?
00:12:00
Speaker
You do that by getting to know who you are.
00:12:04
Speaker
And being able to understand your strengths, understanding your values, understanding those things that in tough times you have your spirituality, if you believe.
00:12:19
Speaker
But if not, you still have the inside, that core of who you are.
00:12:26
Speaker
Because when, with the government, I found early that we could not wait until they were in college
00:12:36
Speaker
to recruit.
00:12:37
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We had to start talking to them first in high school, and then it went to middle school because the drug test, the polygraph was part of your core, your code of ethics, your word, your bond.
00:12:55
Speaker
And they needed to understand that.
00:12:59
Speaker
So as we started
00:13:02
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coaching around personal branding, that was the question.
00:13:09
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What can you do to make your future self say thank you?
00:13:17
Speaker
And that's where we started.
Context and Individuality in Coaching BIPOC Clients
00:13:19
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:13:20
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I mentioned to you earlier as well, you know, I'm teaching a course on diversity, equity, and inclusion within the space of coaching.
00:13:29
Speaker
And it's a course for coaches.
00:13:31
Speaker
And one of the things that we are addressing in the conversation with the class is this idea that we coach the individual and we honor the person as who they are individually.
00:13:43
Speaker
Every person is unique and we approach our clients in a unique manner.
00:13:48
Speaker
Every individual is unique and doesn't matter the boxes that they come with.
00:13:54
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However...
00:13:56
Speaker
On the other side is that we cannot deny that this person that shows up in front of us, they come influenced by those boxes.
00:14:06
Speaker
They come influenced by their contacts and the labels that society has given to them for anybody, any group.
00:14:15
Speaker
And that's why I have this series of culture and coaching in the Prime Space podcast, because I think it's important for us to understand context.
00:14:27
Speaker
And how context influence that particular person in front of us.
00:14:32
Speaker
And the more we are aware of the influence of context, that that opens our listening to certain nuances of what that person is bringing.
00:14:42
Speaker
That if we don't apply the context, we will probably dismiss and miss context.
00:14:49
Speaker
important points of that particular individual.
00:14:53
Speaker
So one thing that you said earlier was this idea of the limiting of their own experience or the hope as well that might show up working with the BIPOC community.
00:15:06
Speaker
I would love if you could expand on this a little bit more for us to understand this a little better.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
When we talked earlier, I talked about
00:15:20
Speaker
When I coach, even though they may be PIPOC, I will start out, they're still a human being, but experiences will shape us just like they've shaped me and just like they will shape anyone.
00:15:38
Speaker
As a coach, I cannot just dismiss that at all.
00:15:44
Speaker
And I try to not only use empathy, but I try to understand that
00:15:51
Speaker
how we could help them move beyond that and think about not limiting themselves because of circumstances.
00:16:07
Speaker
Opportunities don't have to be big.
00:16:11
Speaker
It's the momentum that you need.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so when I coach people,
00:16:18
Speaker
the BIPOC community, I look at first them as an individual.
00:16:25
Speaker
And then we look at what makes that individual, how can I help them move forward?
Hope and Strategic Thinking to Overcome Challenges
00:16:37
Speaker
Understanding that there will be circumstances that may cause them to feel
00:16:49
Speaker
a fear or a limiting belief that it cannot be done.
00:16:58
Speaker
And we work through that, right?
00:17:01
Speaker
Because the question is always gonna be what would happen
00:17:07
Speaker
if it did work out, which is what I had told myself, if money time was not an issue, what would you want out of this experience?
00:17:19
Speaker
And I try to help when I coach to come from that perspective, because I know I grew up in Jersey City, born and raised, as I said,
00:17:33
Speaker
did not get to college to finish it.
00:17:36
Speaker
However, I still achieved being the first Black Muslim American to be running a top 10 FBI field office.
00:17:52
Speaker
And that came through
00:17:55
Speaker
squashing the fears because I have them.
00:18:00
Speaker
I didn't always get the positions that I put in for, but I didn't say the game was rigged.
00:18:06
Speaker
I tried to strategically figure out ways that I could build.
00:18:10
Speaker
And I try to bring that to my clients.
00:18:13
Speaker
Intentional thinking, strategically thinking,
00:18:17
Speaker
being thoughtful about your career and not looking at things as boundaries, but expanding beyond that.
00:18:31
Speaker
That's so beautiful.
00:18:32
Speaker
This concept that there may be some challenges because of the context, because of the boxes, because of the labels.
00:18:44
Speaker
But you supporting the coach, the client, into not giving up hope and not blaming here or there, but doing their work, keep working and finding other strategies in how to approach the situation.
00:19:02
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regardless of the context.
00:19:04
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What is it?
00:19:04
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Who are you?
00:19:05
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Who do you want to be?
00:19:07
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What is your goal for yourself?
00:19:09
Speaker
And yes, we have a situation around.
00:19:11
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We have this context that we have to work.
00:19:14
Speaker
We work with, but let's work together.
00:19:18
Speaker
towards that.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I so appreciate that you are not only a coach, and perhaps this is why people are attracted to you and working with you, Doris, because you are a role model.
00:19:30
Speaker
You did this.
00:19:32
Speaker
You made that work in your own life, in your own career, and now you're helping others to do that.
00:19:40
Speaker
So, you know, unfortunately, we need to wrap up our conversation here, Doris.
00:19:46
Speaker
You're going to come back
00:19:48
Speaker
for other episodes because there is oh my gosh just the little conversation that I had before the session before the recording and now in the recording I can see there is so much behind this beautiful smile and we want to bring here you back to the community Darice as final words
00:20:09
Speaker
What would you like our listeners to remember if they are working with a client in the BIPOC community?
00:20:17
Speaker
What should they keep in mind?
00:20:22
Speaker
To stay open.
00:20:25
Speaker
Stay open to the individual that is either sitting before you or on the screen.
00:20:38
Speaker
We're always told about biases and making assumptions, but I say don't discount also what they may be going through.
00:20:51
Speaker
There may be other questions that you may have to ask, right, in order to really, truly understand what it's not a matter of, well, I didn't do it because I didn't do it.
00:21:08
Speaker
Explore, be curious, because there are times that the situation that they may be in didn't allow them the opportunity maybe to finish an assignment, quote unquote.
00:21:26
Speaker
They want to be seen.
00:21:28
Speaker
Sometimes they just want to be heard and listened to before we even get into the coaching piece.
00:21:38
Speaker
You want to have a relationship with that person, not just transactional.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I've always looked at coaching that way as well.
00:21:52
Speaker
I want to know what it is that I could do to get to know them better so that I understand where they're coming from.
Closing Thoughts and Encouragement to Listeners
00:22:03
Speaker
And it's not just let's hurry up and get to the goal because it's just not always that simple.
00:22:10
Speaker
Thank you.
00:22:10
Speaker
Thank you for that.
00:22:11
Speaker
So a reminder of respecting the individual, looking at the person as an individual, but not forgetting the context that comes together with that individual.
00:22:21
Speaker
Thank you so much, Doris.
00:22:24
Speaker
And as I said, I'm looking forward to a next conversation, Doris.
00:22:27
Speaker
Thank you so much, everyone.
00:22:29
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.
00:22:32
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with others.
00:22:35
Speaker
Visit our YouTube channel.
00:22:38
Speaker
and subscribe to the YouTube channel as well.
00:22:40
Speaker
Lots of resources for you over there.
00:22:43
Speaker
And I will see you next time.
00:22:45
Speaker
Take care.
00:22:46
Speaker
Take care, everyone.
00:22:48
Speaker
Thank you, Elise.
00:22:49
Speaker
I appreciate it.