589: Leaving Education and Burnout Behind for a Journey to Meaningful Work

Sandra Cloud 00:01

So much of it has been trusting my body, trusting my gut, trusting that when I'm fearful or anxious, that's just an emotion. But my heart is actually telling me what I'm interested in, my heart is actually telling me what I want to do.

Introduction 00:22

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:47

Riddle me this, what if being too good that your job is the reason you need to escape? Maybe you do the work three times faster than everyone else, so you are just being given more and more and more and more. Or maybe you're constantly getting praised by leadership for being the highest performer, but it's making the team resent you. Maybe you're an educator whose relator strength causes your students to adore you and want to be around you, but you're beginning to feel overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Sandra Cloud 01:18

I was building so many relationships, and I was leaning so hard on that, that it was burning me out. I was not practicing my other strengths, and I was just beating the heck out of that relation strength. And I just thought, "this is not sustainable."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:35

Sandra had been working in education for 12 years, and for a time she absolutely loved it. She was getting to use all of her strengths, she was really thriving in a role. However, over time, she realized her growth plan was not in alignment with her administration's plan for the future. Additionally, the role that she had been placed in was no longer allowing her to live her strengths and utilized all of her tendencies. So she was having that feeling, you may know that feeling, that pigeonholed feeling, and it was causing her to be burned out. When Sandra reached out to us, she knew that she was done in education, but she wasn't sure what she should do next. And in our conversation here in a moment, you're going to get to hear how she went from thinking the solution to her problem would be finding a new job that fit her, all the way to realizing that she might even want to start a business that she'd had in the back of her mind for years. Sandra's story, well, I think you'll find it has great examples of discovering what it means to do meaningful work in a way that's unique to you. And you're also going to hear how she asked for severance from her education role, how she overcame her long held limiting beliefs about entrepreneurship, and how she added a really meaningful mission to her new company in order to make the impact that she really wanted in the world. Okay. So if you're someone who is wanting to get out of education, maybe even start your own business, but certainly find more meaning in your work, you're gonna be interested in Sandra's story. All right, here she is explaining where her career began.

Sandra Cloud 03:17

I did not love my educational experience. I felt like when I was in school, I probably could have done a lot better than I did, but I never felt like school was doing anything. It wasn't teaching me anything that I was interested in, or not a whole lot that I was interested in. I moved to a smaller school my junior year, and for the first time, experienced positive peer pressure to get really good grades. And so then I did, then I was part of the National Honor Society, but it was really the culture, not the substance of learning. So fast forward, I'm a young mom. I've got an almost two year old daughter, and I'm about to give birth to a baby. My marriage is in shambles, but I don't really know why. And then I end up being a single mom of two little girls, and from early on, I had really strong opinions on what learning was. I felt that we were born learning, we came out of the womb, that's the first thing we did, was try to figure out how to get comforted. And from then on, all that happened was that we kept learning, and the people around us cheered us on. They thought we were delightful and wonderful. We would take a first step and fall down, and they'd be like, "Yeah, good job. You're amazing. Good job. Try again." And then we get to school, and they start giving us red marks, and we start feeling stupid because we learned something that was not the point of the story, even though we still learn something that wasn't what was on the test. And so I began to feel like I wanted my daughters to experience a love of learning for as long as they possibly could. So I homeschooled them. I felt like we learn what we want to learn when we want to learn it, that we're all capable of it. And I love, you know, I am learning every year. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but we love to grow vegetables. I'm learning about growing flowers. And I just felt like all of life should be school. So they learned how when they were four years old. They learned how to do their own laundry, and they learned how to, you know, they unloaded the dishwasher with me, and we cooked dinner together. And so all the things that make up a life were considered school. So I was a single mom, so we didn't get to do a lot of, you know, lots of families go on great vacations, and we didn't have any money, but I tried to make it as I tried to give them as much agency as possible over their learning.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:51

Yeah, very cool. So that was your introduction into education.

Sandra Cloud 05:57

Yes. And then we got to the end of their eighth grade years, my oldest daughter, and I'm like, wow, I don't know what to do now because I knew High School counted for credit. I didn't know if I wanted to deal with the accreditation in Oregon, and I didn't really know what to do. And that year, I got an email about this charter school that was opening up. They were hoping for 100 students, along with my daughter, ended up with 150 the first year, and it was a unique approach to education. It was all about empowering the students that they weren't supposed to be cookie cutter. That they were... they had their unique strengths, and they wanted to encourage them. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I believe." Yeah. And then I had just, I had gone back to school at age 33 and finished my bachelor's degree while I was single momming and homeschooling. And so later, two years after my oldest daughter started, it was time for my youngest daughter to start at our PA, and they offered me a job, and I've been there ever since 2011 until last year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:00

That's a great story, first of all. And second of all, one of the things I'm curious about then, you know, you eventually decided you wanted to leave education. What caused you, or what led you to have that realization that you wanted to leave?

Sandra Cloud 07:19

So, at RPA, because it was a charter school, I didn't have to have a master's. So I just have a bachelor's degree, and I was able to teach business classes. We did that part time. And for... So RPA now has around 900 students in grades sixth through twelfth. When we started there, it was 150 students in grades ninth through twelfth. So it's grown enormously. Yes. And I got to be part of that growth. So every year, for years, every year, my job would change, and at one point, one of the assistant directors called me the Swiss Army knife of RPA, and I was just, I'm like, I loved it. I loved solving problems. I love being needed and being able to be helpful and knowing a lot about everything, so that when somebody comes with a question, I can help them find an answer or move forward in the ways that they're stuck. And then at some point, you stop being an entrepreneurial endeavor, and you start being a business. And the last business problem to be solved was marketing. And so I just sort of got stuck in marketing. I love entrepreneurial concepts, and I'm interested in marketing as it relates to those things, in terms of, like, it's taught me a lot about thinking like my customer instead of thinking like a business owner, which is super important, as you know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:46

As it turns out, yes. If you don't understand who your customer is, then it's going to be challenging to be able to serve them in different ways.

Sandra Cloud 08:54

Exactly. And so I got a lot of training in that, and it was super helpful. I always found myself drawn to entrepreneurial conversations. So I, you know, I taught entrepreneurship, I taught branding, and marketing, and classes like that, and that was half of my job. And then the other half of my job was to do the marketing and community outreach for the school. And I did that with excitement the first few years, and then I could feel boredom setting in. So I tried thinking, well, "What would be cool for us to do?" And a lot of those cool ideas were often beyond, maybe what our customers were ready for, at least that's what the director's opinion was. He's a very smart man, and it's his baby, and he's probably right in some ways, but I just found myself not interested in trying to make people think things that they don't already think. I am interested in helping them solve real problems for themselves. So I was probably, you know, at one point, he said, "I probably had visited with almost every family in the school. I would have really honest conversations with people. Here's what we can offer. Here's what we can... And so, is your student able to handle these challenges?" And because we looked like a small community college, and it was an amazing environment for the right student, but for a student who needed more guidance and where to be and needed to have all of their time filled, we didn't do that. And so it was great to have real, honest conversations with people and set them up for success if they decided to be part of us, or turn them, you know, say, "You know, we're probably not the right choice for you", if they didn't feel like their student was a fit. But pretty soon, I mean, 2020 was hard on everybody I know. We had additional personal things going on in our world. My daughter was diagnosed with MS. A freak storm came through our farming community and just destroyed, I mean, destroyed things, knocked a friend's house down, and twisted irrigation lines around each other, and our dog died. My mom, they told us my mom was not going to live much longer, it was just...

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:01

That's a lot.

Sandra Cloud 11:02

I mean, it is. Everybody had their stuff, right? But it was just walking that life kept going, and then there's all this other stuff. So obviously that was very wearying. And all teachers can attest to what 2020 did to education and to everyone's mental health, teachers and kids. And so coming out of that, we noticed quite quickly that we had students in front of us who had been changed and not necessarily always for the better. There's just a lot of changes. And I mean, I could go on. But so I realized pretty quickly that I was not refreshed by the end of last August. Last August came, and usually, you know, you got summer off, and you kind of get your energy back, and we had a lot going on last year as well, and I just got to August and thought, "I don't know if I can do this." And then one of the lessons I've learned to ask is, "Well, what would make this easy?" And I thought, "Gosh, if somebody would come in and vacuum, mop and clean my bathroom, that would make it easier for me. It'd be a mental load off of me." And I couldn't find anybody to do that. I started thinking, "Maybe I should just go do that, but I don't want to clean houses." But then I was like, "Wow, I could replace my salary, actually, pretty quickly." Huh. So it just kind of stuck in my head, and I kept noodling on it and kept thinking, "Well, what could I do?" You know? And then this girl came up to me one day. She's probably like, four foot seven, tiniest, sweetest little thing. She doesn't trust very many people, but she trusted me, and she would come and stand in front of me. And I know all teachers know exactly what I'm talking about. There's these students who will come and stand in front of you, and they're just waiting to get loved on. That's all they want. But they don't know how to have a conversation. They don't know how to, you know, ask about somebody else, or, you know, any of those conversational skills, so we're left to just sort of pull out of them a conversation and let them know that they're loved and cared about, and ask questions. So she walked up to me like she often did, and I couldn't breathe. I lost my ability to breathe, and she'll never know. I mean, I was able to kind of keep it covered up, but she'll never know that she was really the thing that made me go, "I've got to get out of here." So I was like, "Oh, look, what time it is. Oh, you have class. Cool. I'll walk you there." And I walked her to her class, and I just kept walking and for blocks and blocks and blocks. And it took me, I don't even know, 10 blocks before I could even catch my breath again. And realized, huh, I mean, I'm not going to diagnose myself, but I'm pretty sure that was close to a panic attack. This is not good. I need to leave. And so that's what started the process of me leaving.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:54

I can appreciate that on a lot of different levels. A panic attack is also what caused me to realize that this has to be different. There has to be a different way. There has so many different things needed to change, and that was the catalyst. So definitely can appreciate that on a lot of different levels. Here's my question for you, though, aside from, you know, acting as a catalyst for you to make a decision that, "Hey, look, this needs to change." What did that lead to for you next?

Sandra Cloud 14:34

Well, I started thinking, "I need help with this because...", and it's hard. I'm a pretty introspective person. I have a lot of interpersonal strengths, and so I knew I needed somebody pretty skilled to help me with this. It wasn't going to just be go to a therapist. I've, you know, I've done therapy. I'm appreciative of what it gave me when I needed it, but this was a different purpose, and I didn't know, I just didn't know what to do. I've done a million self assessment tests, and so I needed some help. And so I came across Happen To Your Career in a quote on a website, and it was the title, Happen To Your Career. I'm like, "Wow. As a woman growing up in the 70s, my career has always happened to me. It was just what happened to work for me." And to think that I could happen to my own career was kind of a mind blowing moment. So I checked into, you know, you've got that 8-day free course on the website. And as I started into it, you know, and I always do those free courses with a grain of salt, because usually I'm like, "No, I'm more skilled than this. This is far from me. I don't need this." But the approach was so different that I'm like, "If this is their free material, I need to get a coach. Because if this is their free stuff, it's making me think differently. It's challenging some of my perceptions. And I think I'd like somebody to kind of walk with me as I continue to explore this." So I contacted HTYC, got connected with Ben. And as I was doing that, you know, one of the first things that, I think, it might even be in the free courses, is to do the Strengths Assessment. And I'd done that in 2018, and looked at the results, and kind of went like, "Okay, I don't know what to do with this." It seemed obvious to me, and it also seemed like I was surrounded by people who had similar gifts and skill, I guess, strengths, and so I'm like, "Well, I don't know." So I kind of just put it away. It was one more self assessment that I had done. But having to go through it, not having to, getting to go through it, Ben's guidance, and with the directions that the course gives in terms of going through and highlighting the things that really are like, yeah, that resonates with me, and adding to them, and really, you know, massaging them so that I could understand them at a deeper level was really, really beneficial for me. And then as I did that, I realized, "Oh my gosh, I've got these top five strengths." But right now, for years, I used them all at our PA, at the charter school. And now I'm using one of them, and it is the relator. So I am building relationships with kids like crazy. We did a forum where kids filled out who they were comfortable like they could check off as many staff as they wanted to, that they could connect with or felt comfortable with us coming to them. And I taught halftime, really small classes, like my top class had 12 students in it, but I had built relationships. I was the third number, the third person on the list in terms of how many students felt comfortable talking to me. So completely out of proportion to my actual job. I was building so many relationships, and I was leaning so hard on that, that it was burning me out. I was not practicing my other strengths, and I was just beating the heck out of that relation strength. And I just thought, "this is not sustainable."

Sandra Cloud 19:11

Oh, it does. It was very deadening, and it was probably the hardest part of this self discovery. Well, I'll say one of the hardest parts. Because suddenly, I had names for everything that I was feeling for years, and because I could name it, then I was seeing it all the time. And that was really challenging to be in this position that I, you know, I'm a grateful person. I have felt grateful for that place and for my mentor, you know, my boss was kind of my mentor as well, and still have tons of gratitude. But to have such a stark understanding of why I was not doing well was, kind of, it was just really hard to deal with, you know, been a big part of my life, and so, yeah, that was really challenging.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:17

Well, that's really interesting too, because what I hear you saying is that you had this wonderful situation that did actually allow you to utilize your combination of strengths together. And that is, I mean, that's only one portion of what creates fulfilling work, and ultimately, a fulfilling life. However, it's an important portion. And then, you know, as things went on in time, eventually, what you were spending your day to day doing was leaning pretty hard only on one particular area of your strengths. And it sounds like that, in itself, was a massive change when you're used to be able to operate, you know, full floodgates open, and everything else, and then you shift to where now you can't do that anymore because of the circumstances, then it feels very different, doesn't it?

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:56

Yeah, okay, well, let me ask you a different question. And since we're on the subject of strengths, because it sounds like this was an area that, personally, I think you did really well in. And at the same time, I also would say that this is an area that seemed to have a large impact for you. So I'd like to talk about it for just a few minutes, in terms of what you specifically did. I heard you say that, "Hey, I had taken all the assessments and all the things in the past" and that's great. A lot of the people that we get to work with have had those experiences where they've been fortunate to take a lot of different types of assessments, quizzes, whatever, you name it, right? And then at some point you gotta take StrengthFinders, cliftonstrengths. And it sounded like what that did for you was begin to provide you verbiage. So now you had names for this. But what else actually helped? What helped you begin to start to make those connections, not just where you're seeing it every place and becoming more aware of it, but starting to be able to utilize that information in a way to make decisions? Take me through what worked for you specifically.

Sandra Cloud 21:07

Well, it's also maybe what didn't work for me and still what I'm iffy about. What I ended up realizing, number one, was that I had to get out. Period. So as I worked with Ben, we came up with a plan. He supported me through that, and I got out. And I realized, it was so scary to put my needs first when I didn't really have a plan yet, but I decided to take that risk and do that. So then, even though I was still working until December 15th, I had some mental space because I knew it was just getting through. So once I started having some mental space, I started the process, like, I kept going with the process that the HTYC course takes a person through. But I kept coming back to these strengths and these ways that I liked to be with Ben's encouragement as much as I could while I was working. And then man, December 16th came, and I was free to just let my days be whatever they wanted to be, which terrified me, because I just thought, "Gosh, if I'm not using every moment and every resource that I have to get another job, I'm toast." And one of the things that had happened was, I said, "Ben, do you think I should ask for severance?" And he said, "Yes, you should ask for severance." So he helped me come up with the way I was going to ask, and I got to tell you, Scott, I am the fairly confident person. My boss and I have a friendship, as well as a mentorship, as well as he's my boss, like very multifaceted. I squirmed. I turned feet red. I broke out in sweat. I couldn't look directly at him. I had to look in my lap to get through this conversation to ask for severance. So I was really proud of myself for doing that, and I asked for twice what I needed knowing how he tends to operate. So he gave me half of what I asked for, which was actually what I needed. And then I realized, I could tap into my retirement. I could just take some time and heal up. And so I did that. So now my slate is clear, like I have no commitments, and I can start resting and trusting myself and listening to what my body seems to want. So I would ask... I'd come in my... I rearranged my spare bedroom so that I have a desk where I'm with you right now, but on the other side of this desk is just an open space with a big old fat yoga mat and I can lay there. I could do yoga every morning, and I could lay there and just ask my body, "What do you need today?" And to be honest, for months and months and months, it was, "I need to not do much." So we were gardening, you know, it's very physically active, but I just took tons of time this year and continued working with Ben, continued trying to hone down these strengths. But I remember the point, and he actually made a note of it too in one of our sessions, where I just thought, "Ben, I don't think anybody will pay me for this. It's really hard for me to imagine that." And if I'm being honest, it's still hard for me to imagine that. And so all of this time that this has been going on, this idea about house cleaning has stuck in my head. I could replace my income. And then I started thinking how I've been looking around the school and seeing this new generation that they don't want to work 60 hours a week on salary, they don't want to give up their personal life. And why should they? We've left them a planet that's beat up. We've left them the inability to buy their own home. The, you know, what we would call the American dream, is not in most of their sites or reach any longer. And so we had good reasons for working all these hours because we were working towards something, but they're not, they don't have that same vision. And I just started thinking, you know, "What if I built a cleaning company? What if I did this thing where I could take really good care with these young people who didn't know what they were doing after high school, like I didn't, and yet, they're bright, they're hard working. It's not that they're flaky, it's just that they don't want to give their entire life over to a company or a business." And it's just so funny because I've always had entrepreneurial ideas, and I've never, ever, ever, ever wanted to have employees. And even when I started this idea, I was like, "Oh, they're going to be contractors." And then I realized, if I have them, if I have a company, then I can take 10 minutes at our staff meeting and talk about personal finance and help them understand that they could be a millionaire by the time they're 65, and help them build into something, help them understand why credit cards are a terrible idea. All of these bits and pieces of education that I've loved for so long that people don't know, and frankly, you know, like if Oregon passed a personal finance requirement to graduate from high school, but if you don't have your own money, and most high schoolers aren't working a job, if you don't have your own money, then personal finance means nothing. So again, you're shoving open their mouth, pouring a fire hose down, they're giving them a grade on it, but they have no practical application for it. Really, where personal finance, in my opinion, needs to be is in those young years where you've got service workers out with their first jobs, and that's where personal finance needs to be introduced. I'm like, "Why can't I do that? Why?" So I just realized, "Oh, contractors are not going to sit for 10 minutes and listen to personal finance. They're going to get on with their day." But if I'm paying them in a staff meeting because I've long believed, if you want people to care about what you're saying, you have to pay them. You have to build time for it and pay them for it. So I just realized this needs to be employees. So I'm building a business with employees, which I never thought I would do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:25

Let me ask you about that really quick. So you got all the way from, "I need to find the next opportunity, the next job, next role", all the way to that migrated into, "you know, I've had this business idea in the back of my head" to the point where you're now realizing, "look, part of the way I want to make an impact is by doing something that I didn't ever think that I would do." And here's my question, it sounds like you're really starting to bring, for you, much more meaning into this business idea, and kind of taking the core of this idea and turn it into something that is more meaningful for you. So tell me a little bit about what else transpired. What does the idea look like now? But also, what I'm really curious about is how you have experimented with this along the way?

Sandra Cloud 28:19

Well, I guess to go a little bit back to this strength exercise, I started... I found a few jobs that looked pretty interesting. They would give me lots of flexibility. They gave me a lot of autonomy. And in the end, like the one that I found, you know, it's a company that builds really cool training programs for HR offices. And I just thought, even that, I just think I'm gonna get bored. I think it's not what I want. I really want autonomy over my life.Which feels so, at age 53 as a woman in America, at age 53 who grew up in a very patriarchal system, I feel like I'm so out of my league asking for that for myself. And that's where Ben really came through as well, was just encouraging me to take ownership of this, of these things that I want for myself, to believe them. So it's, I mean, I love your question, right? "How did I get from there to there?" I think so much of it has been trusting my body, trusting my gut, trusting that when I'm fearful or anxious, that's just an emotion. But my heart is actually telling me what I'm interested in, my heart is actually telling me what I want to do. And so I think, like, I can't explain it, except that I think my previous, I don't know, forays into the idea of entrepreneurship, was always, it was kind of based on a, "get rich quick", kind of a mentality.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:04

That's what you had in your head thinking about entrepreneurship or building a business. You sort of associated it with, I don't know, whatever you see for "get rich quick" type of...

Sandra Cloud 30:15

Exactly. Yeah. "Oh, three weeks, and you can be blah, blah, blah." And I think that's sort of what I had in my head. And this, as it's come together, and I can't even tell you how it feels like a gift. It doesn't feel like I've thought this up. It feels like it's been given to me. And I don't know any better words to explain it, but as I trust it and listen to it, I've just been blown away because the next person comes into my life and they're exactly what I need when I need it. It's been that way the entire time. The fact that Ben started, one of the first things he said to me in one of our sessions was, "It sounds to me like you've been surrounded by patriarchal men all of your life, and you've grown a lot, but you haven't been able to completely trust yourself." So because I knew I needed a man coach. You've got a lot of women coaches, but I knew that I needed a man and I didn't know why, and my husband agreed. And he said, "So I think it's really important that you lead our sessions, that you are the one that is telling me what you need, that you're the one..." And I felt freaked out by that, but I also immediately knew, "Yep, that's exactly what I need to do."

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:36

Are you gonna do that, right? If you haven't practiced it on purpose? Yeah. Carries over to everything.

Sandra Cloud 31:43

It really does. And he also somehow through the screen, and this is one of those moments where I'm going to be really flattering, like through the screen, I would be talking, and he would say, "What was that? What was that expression on your face? What does that mean? Or, what was that word that you just used?" He would just nail into something that I just had some very wrong patterns of thinking about myself and my strengths and me as a woman in this world. And to be honest, this business is built just as much for the employee as it is for me, as it is for the homeowner. It feels like the first idea I've ever had that's win, win, win, and that has kept me focused on it and motivated because sometimes it's about me paying back my retirement that I've spent this year. And frankly, I didn't have enough retirement because I started my career so late, so I've got to make some money, and I want to pay my employees right out of high school or, you know, early 20s, really generously. I want to provide insurance for them. I want to help them understand personal finance so that they work for me for one to three years and then they move into their next, or they purchase a franchise. Because my goal is to franchise this business. And all of those things have kept it, and obviously, I think it's a value to the homeowners that we're going to serve. So I feel like sometimes it's all about me, and other times it's all about that employee, and other times it's all about what kind of service are we giving. And all of those, it's like that tripod that holds up the stool. It feels very, like, this is the most solid I've ever felt–creating something, thinking about something, trusting my gut in it. And it's because I'm assuming that, yes, I need profit, and it's not the most important thing, the most important thing is building something that's different that gives my house cleaners, you know, my model is based on five houses a day, basically seven and a quarter hours a day for them. So they get to have dispatcher access in the back end, so they get to dispatch their own day. So if they have a kid to pick up from school, or if they have a doctor's appointment, they can schedule all that for themselves. It's not a, "Can I have this time off?" kind of a situation. It's completely...

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:00

There's ownership of your time. Very cool. What advice would you give to someone else who's in a similar place as you were a year or two years or three years ago, and is no longer getting to work in their strengths, or maybe not getting to work in their strengths in the same way and they have now realized that they need to make a change. What would you tell that person?

Sandra Cloud 34:26

Yeah. I think I would say, trust your discomfort. Trust the ways. Listen to it. Again, I was super grateful, so I kept putting my discomfort away. And I've realized since that I can have gratitude and acknowledge my discomfort. Before I just thought I kind of had to, "Oh, well, there's all these things, but I'm just going to focus on this thing that I'm grateful for." And that's not wrong. But at the same time, I think we can be super grateful for circumstances, for where we've been, and where we are, and we can trust the discomfort that we're feeling, and maybe even give it more attention than we do the gratitude for a little bit, right? I think we don't want to be jerks. We don't want to be entitled. Trusting our discomfort, and then ask our body, I literally say it out loud, "What do you need today, Sandy? What would feel good right now, right this moment?" And then trust the answer, even if it seems impossible, even if it seems too big, even if it seems not even possible. I think when we start trusting it, and one of the questions that I've learned to ask is, instead of freaking out and being anxious, is, "I wonder how this could happen. I wonder how this might happen. I wonder if I move toward this, what might happen?" And the people that have been brought into my life, it's mind blowing. I can't explain how, I mean, if I would take another two hours for me just to talk about just the right people coming in my life at just the right time as I just trust this process, I believe what is here, I believe my body, I believe that there's love that is guiding this entire thing, and it's amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:25

Most of the episodes you've heard on Happen To Your Career showcase stories of people that have taken the steps to identify and land careers that they are absolutely enamored with, that match their strengths, and are really what they want in their lives. If that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that's awesome. And we want to figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest. Take the next five seconds to open up your email app and email me directly. I'm gonna give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And when you do that, I'll introduce you to someone on our team who can have a super informal conversation with and we'll figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like. And the very best way that we can support you to make it happen. So send me an email right now with 'Conversation' in the subject line.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:18

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:23

There are lots of things that we've been told about our careers and career changes that simply are not true. We've been told them so confidently and so many times that we haven't ever thought to question them. And every single time I get to chat with our readers and listeners, I hear the same misconceptions. And guess what? It's not your fault, not your fault at all. Society in the media pounded these misguided non facts and myths into our brains. Today, we're doing some myth busting. I want to share with you the top seven misconceptions I hear almost every time I talk with people about fulfilling work, like, for example, "If I career change, I need to take a pay cut." Actually, it turns out that less than 15% of our clients end up taking a pay cut, and most make more. You want to know about the other six? Well, let's dive in further.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:18

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep and you get it automatically. Even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week, adios. I'm out.