Debbie O Neill's Linkedin Analytics

I got laid off from my $350K+ sales leadership job and suddenly, Dumb Deb was back. If you grew up in a big Irish family, you learned your role fast. I was Dumb Deb. • Not as academic as the others. • Teachers saying: "You’re not like the other O’Neills, are you?" • Stay agreeable. Don’t draw attention. Don’t get caught looking stupid. That became my operating system. So I did what made sense: I climbed my way into tech sales and eventually hit $350K+ a year, hoping that would finally silence the voice in my head. It didn’t. Because I was still that kid in the classroom: 🚫 Never challenging my boss - because what if they asked me to explain myself? 🚫 Bending over backward to be liked - because being agreeable was safer than being seen. 🚫 Pretending to be confident instead of actually feeling it. Then the layoff happened. And every fear I had was confirmed. • I wasn’t valuable enough to keep. • I couldn’t even fake it well. • I was right to doubt myself all these years. But at the same time, I was relieved. Because I’d been miserable for years. 👎 Nodding through forecasting meetings, pretending to care. 👎 Climbing the ladder, only to feel the same at the top. 👎 Too afraid to quit, so I kept performing like I wanted to stay. I couldn’t fake it through another interview. I couldn’t go back. I had officially run out of road. So for the first time, I stopped running. ✔ I worked with a coach. (Refused at first. Weeks later, I gave in.) ✔ I admitted I had no clue what I wanted - but I knew what I didn’t. (Another sales job. Another year faking it.) ✔ I stopped numbing out. (No more endless scrolling. No more stress eating.) And little by little, I rewired my entire way of thinking. ✅ I stopped fixating on what I lacked and owned what I was great at. (Connecting with people, making them feel seen, and helping them untangle problems.) ✅ I accepted that no title or paycheck was enough to make me stay. (Terrifying - but also a 100lb weight off my chest.) ✅ I finally asked myself: “What would I do if I could?” (And for the first time, I answered honestly.) 💥Today, I coach sales professionals who feel exactly like I did: Pretending to care about numbers and forecasts when they know, deep down, they care about something else entirely. ✔ We get to the root of it. (The fear, the proving, the internal filters you never question.) ✔ We stop chasing Band-Aid fixes. (A new job or title won’t fix what’s really wrong.) ✔ We rewrite the rules. (So your next move actually feels right.) If that’s you, let’s talk