619: The Power of Awkward Connections: Escaping Career Boredom Through Strategic Networking – Travis’s Career Change Story

Travis Van Oosbree 00:00

Don't be afraid to, like, just make that really awkward connection because if you don't, you're right where you are, and if you do, you know, maybe after that conversation, you'll still be right where you are, but maybe you'll be somewhere further along in the road.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:18

If you've ever been in an emergency situation, you know how chaotic it can feel, especially if there's panic and distractions. Doing something like screaming, "Help. Help!" rarely works. What emergency responders learn is that you need to give clear, specific instructions. "You in the pink shirt. Call 911, right away." "You in the corner. Bring me a towel." This principle applies in everyday life too. If my wife asks, "Can somebody take out the trash?" And she shouts it out into the abyss of our house, my three teenagers will do their best to assume she's talking to a different one of them. Nobody moves. But when she says, "Camden, please take out the trash before dinner", suddenly there's clarity and action. Studies show that this specificity carries beyond emergency situations and household chores, probably not a surprise, knowing what you want and being extremely clear is the best way to get what you want because when you know what you want, it becomes easier to ask for it, and when you ask for what you want, strangely enough, you get what you want more often.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:21

Now, of course, what you've heard us talk about on the podcast, that we call intentional career change, works this way as well. Simply announcing you're open to work on LinkedIn is not effective. What makes a difference is engineering the right conversations with strategic specificity and making it easy on other people to help. In just a moment, you're going to hear from Travis, and he transformed his career by embracing conversations that felt a little uncomfortable and awkward. But before he did this, Travis spent years as a cabinet maker, and there he felt increasingly trapped, even though he was building all of this technical expertise. I want you to pay attention to how Travis pinpointed the direction he wanted to take his career, and then how he leveraged that specificity to have targeted discussions with exactly the right people. Rather than sending his resume into the void, which so many of us do, he actually built a network of connections and relationships specifically in the areas that he wanted to be in, and these connections eventually led him to his ideal role. Here's how he began figuring out that direction.

Travis Van Oosbree 02:26

I was thinking, "Where do I start? Who do I ask? How do I, you know, break down that first barrier of what direction do I go in?" And she kind of asked me, "Okay, hypothetical here, money is of no consequence. You have your whole day to yourself. What would you do if you could do anything?" And I thought about it, and I said, "You know, I would... I'd probably spend more time playing with my daughter. I would, oh, I played more softball. I joined a couple more softball leagues. Oh, I play some golf during the week. I would, you know what, I've been meaning to play that new Zelda game. I would love to play, have more time to play video games." And she was like, "Okay, Travis, you just said play about five times in 15 seconds. So let's focus on play." And I was like, "Oh, okay, yeah." She said, "Have you thought about the toy industry? The games industry?" And that really was it. That was where I thought, "Okay, I don't know who's going to pay me to play, but let me get on LinkedIn and see who I know, you know, who might have a second connection at Hasbro or Wizards of the Coast."

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:52

We've done this work for a long time, and I'm continually fascinated that some of the most important clues about what we truly enjoy are often hiding in our everyday conversations. For Travis, the word "play" was the key that unlocked everything else. With this new insight, Travis didn't waste a whole lot of time. He began to connect with people immediately in his newly identified target area. This strategic approach led him to an opportunity through a surprising source.

Scott Anthony Barlow 5:02

Okay, notice here how Travis casts a wide net with his outreach, but remains laser-focused on his target area or industry. This combination of broad networking with specific intent is what separates effective career changers from those who remain stuck, and he wasn't just collecting random relationships or building relationships or doing networking just for fun. Instead, each conversation was purposefully moving him closer to a career where he got to focus on play. But I want to point out one other thing too, that this feels different to people that you're having conversations with. Most people want to help, and this actually enables them to help better. So let's take a look at how Travis's methodical approach continued with another person. He didn't just hope opportunities were going to find him. He actively engineered them.

Travis Van Oosbree 04:18

I started asking everyone, "Hey, do you know anyone that works in the toys and games industry?" I asked our across the street neighbors, they came over and, you know, our kids played, and that's when she said, "Well, I know someone who works in the playground industry. Is that toys and games?" And I said, "Yeah, absolutely sure. Like, connect me with them. I'll see if I can find a link there." So that's what eventually led to me getting my current role, was this connection from the across the street neighbor. But that took seven months to come to fruition.

Travis Van Oosbree 05:56

I looked at Mattel and Hasbro, and I saw that Noelle was a connection with my friend, Will. So I text messaged my friend, Will, I said, "Hey, do you actually know this lady, Noelle? Or, you know, is it just a random LinkedIn connection?" And he said, "Oh yeah, she was the lighting designer for a play that I was in, you know, six years ago, or something like that." And I said, "Would you be comfortable introducing me to her? I have a template. If you want to just, you know, I'll send you the template, and you just say, 'Hey, I'm connecting you with my friend, Travis.'" And he said, "Yeah, sure." No skin off my nose. You know, worst thing that can happen is that your situation doesn't change, and you're exactly where you started. I talked to Noelle for 20 minutes, and, you know, I ended every conversation with, you know, "Is there anyone else I should talk to?" And she said, "Let me think about it." And I never heard back from her, you know. And it's kind of like, "Okay, well, on to the next one, I guess." And I, you know, it was the first attempt. I, you know, I started asking everyone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:12

Okay, let's break down for a moment. What you just heard there from Travis, notice he made it easy for his friend to help him by providing a ready to use template, as he called it, for introduction. This small tactic dramatically increases the likelihood that people who say, "Yes, I want to introduce you to this other person", that they'll be able to follow through on their offer. Beyond the tactics, Travis's approach here reveals something much more fundamental about effective career change. It's not just about who you know, but who you're willing to talk to. And of course, how easy many of us are making it for the people who are trying to help us. And I should probably also point out that the challenge for so many of us is pushing past that initial awkwardness and initial reluctance to reach out in the first place. What you're going to see here, though, is as Travis continued having these conversations, he began noticing very important differences between companies, and this influenced his decisions about what created a great fit for him.

Travis Van Oosbree 08:14

I get really invested in a thing for a short period of time, and then I want to move on to the next thing. Hasbro seemed like a much better place to be optimization than Mattel did, and that's really what it came down to. So Mattel has their product lines very clearly defined. They are Hot Wheels, they are Barbie, and they drive to make sure that those existing brands are successful and profitable, whereas Hasbro is much more spread out. They have all kinds of subsidiaries with Wizards of the Coast and, you know, magic gathering in Dungeons and Dragons, or they've got board games, they've got toys, they've got all kinds of stuff. And so their research department was much more extensive. Their willingness to collaborate with outside designers and inventors to bring in new products was much more open to what's new, and that was much more exciting to me than building on an existing brand.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:25

Now, I think there's a distinction between making an intentional career change and just changing jobs or just making any kind of career change. Travis, in this case, wasn't looking for any job at these toy companies. He was digging into understand which environment would truly fit him and what he was hoping for in his career, and this is something most people miss. He was able to gain super specific insights into these massive toy companies only by having these thoughtful conversations with people who were on the inside. He wasn't getting this from reading job descriptions, or company websites. Yeah, he did all that too, but he took it a step further. Here's an example of one of the helpful conversations that he had as he made his career change.

Travis Van Oosbree 10:10

One of my wife's longtime friends is a freelance marketer. And I said, "Hey, Tracy. I'm doing this career change. Can you... Do you have 15 minutes just to give me like marketing 101, is this something I should pursue? Or do I put it, you know, in the round file and move on to the next one?" And so, you know, I took 30 minutes with Tracy, and she said, "Okay, you could be... there's email marketing specialists. There's, you know..." She listed off six or seven different branches of marketing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:47

Copywriting, there's advertising, there's digital strategy. Yeah, all the things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:29

You probably noticed how Travis quickly figures out which marketing roles don't appeal to him, and then he zeros in on the one that is aligned with his strengths, aligned with his interests the best. So Travis, he began combining all of this learning, this exploration of different types of industries and organizations as he was also exploring these different types of roles within those organizations. And he wasn't just speaking about toys and games or asking about product marketing. What he was really doing is he's investigating how these could come together. Eventually, all of this exploration led Travis to a role in a playground company, which he mentioned earlier on. But here's how he decided if this job offered what he actually wanted in his ideal career.

Travis Van Oosbree 10:52

And I was kind of like, "You know, really, none of that sounds, you know, SEO, search engine optimization on your website that doesn't... That's not the kind of marketing that I thought I would be interested in." And then she said, "Well, there's product marketing managers that, you know, kind of, are the go between to the sales and the marketing and the consumer, and they kind of just make sure that everyone's on the same page, and you know, you're the advocate for the end user, and you're the advocate for the sales to make sure that marketing is getting them the material that they need to provide the end user with what they want." And I thought, "Well, that sounds right up my alley. That's very much project management. That sounds very social inter department. Learn a little bit about sales, learn a little bit about the client, learn a little bit about marketing, and be kind of this information hub." Whereas I started to go down that product marketing path, I realized the triangle between end users, sales, and marketing. I was most interested in end user, and most interested in researching, "What does the user want?" I really like the idea of market research, play testing, observing people using the product and getting their responses.

Travis Van Oosbree 13:17

I went through and I looked at the offer and I filtered it through the ICP, and it met the minimums for everything except for income, and that was a really hard thing to come to terms with. Because all of the personal, all of the, you know that I work from home, so my commute, you know, my minimum was less than an hour commute. Well now, I dropped my daughter off at daycare, I come back home and I get on my computer. That's my commute. You know, under helping others, I said, "I want to be face to face with the people I'm helping, and I must be a source of expertise that people turn to for help." So as a project manager for a playground company that I manage the installation, I'm in the field. I'm, you know, I'm seeing, not only the contractors that we work with, I go out tomorrow. I'm going to go out to San Francisco, and I'm going to fix a little playground that's already been installed. There's going to be kids on it playing, swinging, laughing while I'm out there like that. Doesn't get more face to face with the people I'm helping than the children who use this playground equipment every day. The way I was able to kind of, you know, wrap my head around it was, I said, "If this meets all of these other criteria, it will lighten my emotional load and free me up to do kind of those side projects that I've always said I just don't have the time or energy to do, to make you a picture frame that I could then, you know, ask someone for $100 for. Or, I've always had this idea of having a podcast or having a YouTube channel. Like, now I might have the energy and the time to say, 'You know what, I don't need to... I'm not so exhausted that I need to go to bed at nine o'clock. I'll stay up and I'll edit that video of me on the golf course, or whatever it is, and put it on YouTube.'"Like, I've got kind of more drive to do those side projects.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:47

Such an important point about viewing your career as part of your overall life design. It's not your entire identity. And Travis found a way to meet his needs holistically rather than expecting a single job is going to satisfy every single part of his ideal career profile. But Travis didn't stop there. He was already looking at how he could shape his role into something even closer. And by the way, this is how it happens in reality. It's always an iteration. It's never you find the thing and you roll off into the sunset. You're always iterating and continuing to create a better and better situation for yourself.

Travis Van Oosbree 16:26

It's a big enough organization where I feel like there's room to grow. I still think that, like, maybe I've already reached out to the marketing department and said, "You know, like, I'd love..." They have their own research team that researches play and children and how they interact with their equipment, and how they can better design their equipment to meet children's developmental needs. And so, you know, maybe they need a product marketing manager. It's not currently a role that they have, but I figure, like, let me start doing some of that work. And I'm still, you know, a member of the product marketing alliance. I'm still getting their emails, and they have a meet up next Friday where, you know, we just go out and get drinks with other product marketers in the area. And I'll just, you know, continue to keep an eye on that path. Keep one eye, look in that direction, build some skills in the background. Oh, I should also mention, as part of my negotiation, I said, "It won't show up on my salary, but would you pay for some... would you pay for me to get my product, I'm sorry, my project manager's professional certificate, PMP certificate?" And they said, "Yeah, okay, I think we can swing that." And that was just like, "Okay, that doesn't show up on my paycheck, but it is an expense that they will shoulder, that I don't and that I carry with me."

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:08

I think it's worthwhile to point out right here that Travis literally started his journey by subscribing to this podcast. And I would encourage you to do the same thing. If you're loving some of these stories and strategies, take just a moment, hit the subscribe or follow button, and then that way, every time we release an episode like this one, you can get notified. It's a simple step that Travis took that eventually led to actually one of my favorite parts of Travis's journey. It was his refusal to settle for the conventional wisdom that work is supposed to be terrible or undesirable.

Travis Van Oosbree 18:40

I remember talking to my brother and my mom who were both very skeptical about the idea of a unicorn role. Like, every job has its drawbacks. Every job has a thing where you're not going to like it. Every job... so I don't want you to get your hopes up and get really disappointed when you're not able to find...

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:01

To be clear, a unicorn role, it's not perfect. There is no perfect. But like a unicorn, most people don't believe that this is possible to find work that fits.

Travis Van Oosbree 19:11

And I was like, "No, no, no. You have to believe that it's out there, or else, you kind of stop fighting for yourself. You kind of resign yourself, too. I guess this is as good as it gets..."

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:23

Which ends up unsettling, right?

Travis Van Oosbree 19:25

Exactly. And so I was a real... I was in. I had to believe that it was out there, or else I was just going to stay exactly where I had been for last 10 years. The thing about the Social Goldilocks was it just opened a lot of doors. And you didn't have to necessarily walk through every door, but they're open now, and I can turn and go into another one at some point, if I choose.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:58

Just to give you a little backstory here, what we call the Social Goldilocks approach is having many conversations, sometimes short conversations, to find what feels just right. It creates options that extend well beyond your immediate job search. And as Travis points out, these relationships become assets that you can leverage throughout your entire career, plus it's more fun to do it this way. Travis invested all this energy that probably would have been wasted otherwise on applying to many, many jobs. Instead, he put it in conversations that provided continual, genuine insight. It allowed him to build potentially lifelong relationships with people that could help him navigate to his target industry. And it paid off. The question I wanted to know, what does Travis suggest for anyone who's considering a career change?

Travis Van Oosbree 20:43

Don't be afraid to, like, just make that really awkward connection. Because, you know if you don't, you're right where you are, and if you do, you know, maybe after that conversation, you'll still be right where you are, but maybe, you'll be somewhere further along in the road.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:07

I think Travis is right to reframe networking from something uncomfortable to something low risk and potentially high rewards. But even if it is low risk, you don't have to do it alone. That's where we can help. If you're ready to make a career change or a job change, we'd love to support you. Send me an email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com just put 'Conversation' in the subject line. Just take a moment right now. Pull out your email, put it on your phone. You don't even have to put anything in the body of the email. Just drop 'Conversation' in the subject line. I'll connect you to my team, and we'll figure out the very best way that we can help.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:43

All right, we've got much more for you next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Take a look at what we've got coming up next week.

Speaker 3 21:49

There becomes a point in life where you have to decide, "Can I continue on this path? Or do I have to decide that it's time for me to be some and do something different?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:58

"My degree is useless outside my profession." That's the message I received from a chiropractor wanting to make a career change. After years of specialized education and practice, he felt pretty trapped by his specific training, and it's a sentiment I hear all the time from professionals with specialized careers– lawyers, dentists, nurses, accountants. Once you've invested years in a specific path, it's easy to feel like you're locked in forever. But what if everything you thought you knew about your career options was wrong? For example, the idea that your specialized degree limits you, not so much. Or the belief that your skills won't transfer, that's not what we find at all. Or the fear that you're going to need to start over. In fact, we see the very opposite.