Discovering Your Life’s Purpose: Laurie Nilo-Klug Of Post College Journey On How to Align Your Goals with Your True Self
An interview with Dr. Bharat Sangani
Get to know you who your true self is and what you need to be that — In order to align your goals with your true self, you need to first know who your true self is and what your true self needs. You can do this by exploring your current interests and revisiting childhood interests. Children tend to be more in tune with their true selves. So, ask the people who raised you what activities you gravitated toward when you were a child. There might be an activity that you completely forgot about. Or there might be an activity that you remember, but stopped doing because of societal pressures.
Finding and living in alignment with your true purpose can be a transformative journey. Yet, many struggle with identifying their life’s purpose and aligning their goals with it. In this series, we aim to explore how individuals discover their purpose and create a life that reflects their authentic selves, leading to greater fulfillment and success. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Nilo-Klug.
Laurie Nilo-Klug is the Founder of Post College Journey, a company dedicated to helping college students line up a job with graduation. She guides career coaching clients through a self-discovery process that helps them develop career paths that align with the life they want to live. Then, she uses her background in marketing to help clients prove to employers exactly why they need to be hired.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
After being (f)unemployed for a year following graduation, failing interview after interview, and wondering why the offers weren’t just flowing in (despite my resume overflowing with internship experience), I realized where I was going wrong. I changed my approach to job-hunting and finally landed a job that felt like a dream.
Turns out, the key to landing the job you want isn’t just about a perfectly polished resume or attending every networking event. The key is knowing which jobs apply to your goals and how to apply the best of who you are to your application and interviews. In other words, it’s about being able to apply your true self to your job hunt.
It took some time, but I was able to turn my story around and get a job I loved. Now my goal is to help others do the same (and do it quicker with more ease). I do this by teaching students how to use their time in college as a playground for career exploration. While it’s normal to not walk off the graduation stage and straight into a marketing job, I’m here to support students so they can give it their best shot.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person that you are grateful for, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Not a particular person, but a particular program. I didn’t know what true support felt like until I was in the Student Development Administration (SDA) Program at Seattle University. My husband and I are currently rewatching the TV show How I Met Your Mother. There’s an episode where Lily and Ted are concerned for each other’s happiness in their romantic relationships. Lily thinks that Ted and his girlfriend don’t have enough in common and that it causes too many disagreements. Finally, Ted explains to Lily that he actually is happy. Expecting pushback, Ted gets ready to defend his stance. But Lily simply responds by saying that she believes him. Stunned, Ted says “Wow. Is This what support feels like?”
Most SDA students have goals to grow their career in Higher Education. This makes sense because it’s the study of the higher education system and how administrators support students develop during their time in college.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- Curiosity — When I do something, I almost always think, “there has to be a better way.” This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because getting curious about how to do things better sparks innovation and creativity. When I first started as a career coach, my main source of income was from 1-on-1 coaching sessions. However, when I realized that most of my clients were women of color who might not need my services if they had received different support while they were in college, I knew I had to change my business model. Now, Post College Journey partners with colleges and universities to provide career support at scale.
- Empathy — Empathy allows me to be soft. This softness allows me to create a safe space for my clients and students to set their career goals high. I am not here to tell you what you can’t or should do. I am here to help you uncover what you want to do, why you want to do it, and the tools you already have to achieve your goals. Additionally, all of my services and products are derived from feelings of unease and a desire change that for myself and others.
- Persistence — Entrepreneurship requires the ability to fail, learn, and try again with just as much excitement as the first attempt. For example, the free resource I offer on my site, called the Career Roadmap, has a conversion rate of 60%. But it wasn’t always this way. Since starting Post College Journey in 2020, I’ve had to test dozens of free resources to finally find the one that is most helpful for the audience I’m trying to reach.
Ok, fantastic. Let’s now turn to the crux of our interview. Was there a defining moment or experience in your life when you felt a clear sense of your purpose? How did it influence the goals you set from that point forward?
I’d say that there have been two defining moments. The first was when I realized that I wasn’t excited about future career paths in marketing. The second was when I realized that my 1-on-1 career coaching business model needed to change.
I’m going to go out of order here because I can expand more on the first defining moment for a later question. For this question, I’ll expand on the time I realized that my 1-on-1 career coaching business model needed to change.
I was talking with a client — she was just a couple of years out of college and hoping to switch from a customer service role to a marketing role. When we talked more about her transition from college to career, I flashed back to my first post-college job-hunting experience. Then, I thought more about my client base (all women and most were women and first-generation college students). I reached back out to my previous clients to dig deeper into that transition year and wondered if they’d still need my services if they’d received different career support while in college. I felt I had to change my 1-on-1 career coaching business model because, with this realization, I felt like I was profiting off folx with marginalized identities that they should have received while they were in college. This is what led me to get a Masters degree in Student Development Administration and how my business changed to partner with colleges on providing additional career support earlier in their college experience.
What practical steps can someone take to begin uncovering their life’s purpose if they feel lost or unsure about their direction?
The easiest place to start is with things that interest you or make you feel happy. Think about how you like to spend your free time (or how you would want to spend your time if you had it). Then look at how you actually spend your time and see if you can swap out time spent doing things less important for exploring your interests. One place I can often find time by looking at my screentime breakdown.
How do you differentiate between external pressures — like societal expectations — and the inner calling that aligns with your true self?
What I find is that people are able to differentiate between external pressures and their inner calling. This is because you experience a lot of unhappiness when you are living according to societal pressures that don’t align with your true self.
Where people tend to struggle is deciding to pursue their inner calling despite external pressures. This can especially be hard for folx with marginalized identities. For example, for first-generation college students and/or children of immigrant parents, there’s often a sense of wanting to make sure all of the sacrifices your family made to help you get to where you are worth it. This is why it’s important for people with marginalized identities to network with people who have the same identities.
Another reason deciding to pursue your inner calling can be tough is that there’s a fear of rejection and ridicule. But for this, I like to think of a quote from Becoming by Michelle Obama. “If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
Can you share an example of a time when you adjusted or abandoned a goal because it no longer aligned with your deeper sense of purpose? What did you learn from that experience?
In college, I drew a picture of what I wanted life after college to look like. I wanted to work in a fast-paced environment. I wanted to live and work in the city. I wanted to reach a point with my finances that allowed me to enjoy city life (for me, this included boutique fitness studio workouts and eating out). When I achieved that, I was stoked. I vividly remember walking to work one morning feeling ecstatic and thinking “I can do this forever.” But after a short while, I started asking myself “what now?” and when I looked at options ahead of me, I wasn’t excited anymore. I started to worry because if I wasn’t going to work in marketing anymore, I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do.
Eventually, I realized that I loved my job because of how I helped people. Rather than just looking at marketing jobs, I started looking for jobs where the definition of success for that job was helping other people succeed. I asked myself how I leverage my knowledge to help others succeed. This is how Post College Journey started as a twenty-something lifestyle blog. Initially, it was about proactively sharing my college to career experience so that people going through that same experience knew they weren’t alone. Eventually, women started asking me to be their career coach. That’s how I started officially career coaching.
What advice would you give to people trying to pursue their purpose while managing the demands of day-to-day life, such as work, family, and other responsibilities?
There are a few of things to remember:
- You can’t pour from an empty cup — You need to make sure your needs are met first. Luckily, the first step to discovering your life’s purpose is doing some self-discovery. So, you can start with figuring out what you need to care for yourself.
- Something is better than nothing — Set aside time to do some self-discovery. This way, you can create a “north star” for yourself and then create goals that will get your there. Then, use this time to pursue those goals. Remember that something is better than nothing. So, if you can only find time once a week or once a month, be okay with it. Like I mentioned earlier, I like to look at my phone’s screen time breakdown.
- It has to get messy in order to get clean. Keep cleaning. — You know how we all have a place where we put things that don’t exactly have a home (a junk drawer)? Re-aligning your goals is kind of like deciding to reorganize that junk drawer. You have to take everything out of the drawer to see what’s in there, categorize things, decide what needs to stay and go, then finding designated homes for each item. The whole process is a mess and can be overwhelming until that last step. Keep going.
What are “5 Ways to Align Your Goals With Your True Self”?
- Get to know you who your true self is and what you need to be that — In order to align your goals with your true self, you need to first know who your true self is and what your true self needs. You can do this by exploring your current interests and revisiting childhood interests. Children tend to be more in tune with their true selves. So, ask the people who raised you what activities you gravitated toward when you were a child. There might be an activity that you completely forgot about. Or there might be an activity that you remember, but stopped doing because of societal pressures.
- Find time — Look at how you currently spend your time. Use google calendar to block out how you spend your time. Get honest with yourself. When I did this, I saw how much time I spent commuting so one of my top priorities became moving into the city. This broke down into financial and career goals until I was able to move closer to work.
- Take stock of the activities, moments, and people that make you feel alive — This way, you can make room for more of these. For example, I replaced social media scrolling with knitting, reading, or catching up with family. I did this by only being logged onto Instagram on an old iPhone that stays on my work desk. The first week or so, I’d reach for my current phone and immediately try to open Instagram, realize I couldn’t, and reach for my knitting needles.
- Surround yourself with a good support network — For most of my life, I didn’t feel like I completely fit in the friend groups I had. There was always some part of me I felt like I had to mask or filter. This is exhausting and means you have less capacity to put toward your goals. You can meet people through work, workout classes, and meetup group. It’s also helpful to know that you don’t need to find support in just one group of people. For example, my support network includes peers from grad school, friends from kickboxing, my partner, my sisters, my parents, my cousins, and a therapist.
- If you feel drained by the end of your workday, address it — You spend most of your week at work so it’s worth it to find a job that makes you feel fulfilled. You can do this by sorting your role into things that make you feel energized versus things that make you feel drained. Or, if you’re a student, think about the homework assignments you’ve completed. Were there any assignments that you found interesting? Your answers can help you .
How can our readers further follow your work?
The best way for folks to keep up with my work is to download the Career Roadmap (https://postcollegejourney.com/careerroadmap/). This will get you on my email list where I send weekly career-building and job-hunting tips. But you can also follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-anne-klug/), Youtube (@postcollegejourney-careertips), and Instagram (@postcollege.journey)
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
About The Interviewer: Dr. Bharat Sangani is a cardiologist and entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience, practicing in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Dallas, Texas. Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, he specializes in diagnosing, treating, and preventing cardiovascular diseases, including heart disease and hypertension. In 1999, Dr. Sangani founded Encore Enterprises, a national real estate investment firm. Under his leadership, the company has executed transactions exceeding $2 billion, with a portfolio spanning residential, retail, hotel, and office developments. Known for his emphasis on integrity and fairness, Dr. Sangani has built Encore into a major player in the commercial real estate sector. Blending his medical and business expertise, Dr. Sangani created the Life is a Business mentorship program. The initiative offers guidance on achieving balance in health, wealth, and relationships, helping participants align personal and professional goals. Now based in Dallas, Texas, Dr. Sangani continues to practice cardiology while leading Encore Enterprises and mentoring others. His career reflects a unique blend of medical expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and dedication to helping others thrive.
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