Some guests survive a storm. Liz Lathan walked straight into one with her eyes wide open.

Years into building her career in the association world, Liz had earned her director title and hit the ceiling of a four-person shop. Then another executive director dangled the thing every ambitious person wants: come here, and I'll groom you to run the place. She said yes — and showed up to find the ”grooming” was answering the phone by the third ring and having the mail on the boss's desk by 1 p.m., under a leader who was fifteen years from retiring. Most people would call that a wasted year. Liz turned it into new skills, a free education, a coerced-resignation fight she refused to lose, and an accidentally-doubled paycheck that launched a Fortune 50 career across Dell and IBM.

In this episode she gets honest about the stuff we don't say out loud: title-chasing, toxic bosses, the nights she cried, the therapy, the imposter voice that whispers you were never as good as you thought — and why she's living proof it's lying. She shares the questions she wishes she'd asked, why you learn more from bad bosses than good ones, how to build a network that actually shows up for you, and the wellness truth nobody wants to admit (spoiler: it might be a glass of wine with friends, not a 5 a.m. cold plunge). Plus a lightning round, state-fair food debates, and the advice her dad gave her that still holds: trust, but verify.

Her rule for the hard days? ”You just keep going until you hit a wall — and then turn left.”

Connect with Liz Lathan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizlathan/
Club Ichi: https://www.clubichi.com/