Why Would You Settle For Anything Less Than Career Happiness?

by

on this episode

If your current role isn’t fulfilling, if it isn’t checking all the boxes, if it isn’t aligned with what you picture as your ideal career… then what are you waiting for? Why are you going down a path that isn’t going to bring you career happiness and fulfillment? Alistair Marshall has made quite a few pivots throughout his career, and one of his ventures happens to be career coaching! With this combination of personal and professional experience, he gives great insight on how to identify if your current role is still the right fit for your life, what actually worked for him as he transitioned careers, and how he knew the role he chose was the right one during his career search.

What you’ll learn

  • Why you should always experiment with your career
  • How to know if your current role is still the right fit
  • How to get out of your comfort zone and find career happiness
  • Career search tips from a career coach’s personal experience
  • How to find your blindspots in order to identify your ideal career

Download New Tab

Alistair Marshall 00:01

Don't think that it's not okay to keep trying and keep experimenting. I think some people are like, "Well, I can't. I've done too many jobs. I've just gotta stay put for five years." Five years is a very long time. We've got one chance at this life. If it's not working, if it's not feeling good, then change it up. Every experience is super, super worthy.

Introduction 00:24

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:48

Let's talk about what I like to call the ongoing experiment of your career. I'm gonna guess that when you started your current role, you were super excited, and maybe even landed that ideal role. But guess what, after a while, the honeymoon period starts to wear off, you eventually start to get that urge to change careers, maybe even switch industries. And that's okay. We never have it all figured out. We never have all the answers. We are constantly evolving. We're constantly learning, changing and discovering new interests, new preferences, new wants, new needs, new ideas. The experiment of it all is being able to take the learnings and the data that you've gathered from your experiences and use that to figure out what you want in the next chapter of your career.

Alistair Marshall 01:32

It was a comfortable ride, the salary is great, the benefits are great, it was a fun ride, in lots of ways, but ultimately, it wasn't enough for me. And I think if I had just stayed on that, I would not have known any of these things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:43

That's Alistair Marshall. Alistair worked in retail for 16 years before he decided to pivot his career and strike out on his own as a career coach. And a while into his coaching journey, he actually joined our team here at HTYC. And he was helping others find their ideal careers. Alistair began to feel the urge to return to his first career love– the world of corporate retail and leadership in that industry. And Alistair and I discuss how he put all of what he learned, as a career coach, those coaching lessons into action and earned himself a new opportunity at a well known fashion company. I'm really excited for you to hear from him, not only because he is a pretty amazing career coach who gives wonderful advice, he's a fantastic communicator, but more appropriately, because rarely do you get to hear how someone is talented as Alistair has taken what he knows and use it to pivot in his own career multiple times. So we get deep into really pretty actionable advice. And you can see much of the nitty gritty, I want you to listen for that as Alistair shares the story for his latest career transition.

Alistair Marshall 02:55

Essentially, I decided that I wanted to get back into a full time corporate role, back into the retail industry, which I had done for, you know, 15-16 years prior to quitting the industry. And so I went out there into the world, applied for some jobs, did what I needed to do, did lots of the Happen To Your Career best practices, got a job with Theory US based fashion brand, head of retail for the UK and Europe. So I'm about eight weeks in. And yeah, so now I'm kind of back into it. But I've also been keeping some of my coaching clients, some of my other consulting jobs, obviously not as much as I was doing, but it was really important that I kept that going. So that's been an interesting balance over the last eight weeks. But now I'm in a situation where I'm like, "Okay, I've kind of got to this first eight weeks, getting some rhythm, I've got some early wins, the vibe is good, they seem to like me. So now I'm looking forward to the next sort of three months in figuring out how I can kind of balance all of this." So that's sort of where I'm at right now. But it's been good for sure. And eye opening in many ways.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:04

That is really cool. I'm really happy for you. And I know that what you have decided you wanted has evolved. And I'm really interested in starting there too. Because one of the things, before we even hit the record button, that you were telling me a bit about is this idea of what we just called "the ongoing experiment", right, the ongoing experiment to your career, which is, in your case, you had mentioned you're learning more about what you were missing at different points. And then also, what might be the next iteration even. And that's an ongoing set of learning. So talk to me a little bit about how you're thinking about that. First of all, what did you discover or find out by stepping away from this leadership executive type roles that you had been in for a pretty significant period of time and then doing some of your own thing and working with our team, as a coach, and some of the other things that you did along the way, too. So what did you learn there that you were missing from the other environments?

Alistair Marshall 05:10

Yeah. So when I left my last executive or with my boss, I knew that I needed to leave. And it was a very visceral need to get out of that situation. Then I moved into building up my coaching practice and getting qualified and certified and all those great things. And I think, though, that three years was important to just kind of understand really what my values are, what's really important for me from a place of empathy and compassion and fairness, and being people focused and enjoying seeing people grow and develop, and being able to sort of fully focus on that. That was an important part of my corporate world, but it was never like the job, right? Like I always held to a sales goal, KPI, goal metrics, profit and loss and all that good stuff. So over those three years, I really understood that I love that side of it– that the people's side. But I think what I also realized over the course of the three years, and obviously COVID was within that. So you know, it's important to note that, but I don't think if it hadn't been it would have made any difference, because I was already working remotely. I definitely missed a sense of community, I definitely missed collaborators, I definitely missed having a team of peers, having a boss, having a team that worked for me, I missed being a leader. And I did miss the sort of adrenaline of running a business and having that KPI responsibility, I definitely missed that. And I think towards the end of my sort of three years, I was really gravitating towards the feeling of needing that. Going into an office, being around a team, developing my team, building a business together, and kind of sharing that vision and that culture and, you know, achieving together. And I think that was definitely missing from my self employed chapter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:53

You know, I think what's really fascinating here, for me, and please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but it seems like had you not made either some of these changes, or not been doing some of the extras like you mentioned, you know, side hustles, and things like that, have you not been engaged in doing things differently than what you were doing them in the past or just continuing to go with the status quo? It seems like none of these realizations would have happened, or at least as soon.

Alistair Marshall 07:28

100%, I could have just stayed on the ride.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:32

Yeah.

Alistair Marshall 07:32

So many people stay on the ride. So many of my friends stayed on the ride. And I can just see the toll that that takes. And it's really difficult ride to get off the ride. It was a comfortable ride, the salary was great, the benefits were great, it was a fun ride... lots of ways. But ultimately, it wasn't enough for me. And I think, if I had just stayed on that I would not have known any of these things. Like the last three years have been so incredibly important to reconnecting with myself, it was the situation I'd left the Hugo Boss job. And three months later, someone was, "Oh, it's nice to have you back. You've been a different person for the last 18 months", While I didn't realize that. So being able to have that chapter, have that journey and build a whole different set of skills, and experiences and connections and relationships, you know, I was in a very retail space for 15 years. My friends worked in retail, I knew what leadership in retail looks like and your career progression in retail look like, I didn't really have a wider scope on other industries and other organizations and other ways of being. And that alone is super interesting, and I wouldn't have had that. And I'm so grateful that I came off the ride, but I'm sort of back on the ride while I'm back in a similar role and a similar brand and a similar capacity, but feel in way more control of it, understand it, it doesn't define me in the same way that it used to. It's important to me, but it's not the most important thing to me. And being able to kind of see the job, the career, me as the separate entities. Whereas I think before it was just all this big blob, it was like, "Well, my job is me and I'm the job and the career was me and everything felt very connected. And now I'm able to extract myself and see that things are important but not so entwined or entangled, which I think makes it way more fun, way less stressful, and way more manageable."

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:32

So that is really fascinating to me. And I think that the subtlety of what you just mentioned, it can... I think we could lose that really easily. But here's what I think I heard, being able to separate out some of the different pieces like, "Hey, this is my experience at work. This is a part that I am really enjoying, this is a part that I am still missing in one way, being able to separate all of these different things from other areas of your life is actually really helpful. Is that from an identity perspective? Or is that from another perspective too? What would you say is most helpful about that for you?

Alistair Marshall 10:16

I think it's an identity perspective, and then a lifestyle perspective. You know, I say this to a lot of clients, I ask them like, "Are you falling into Saturday? Or, are you strolling into Saturday?" And what I mean by that is, is your week just so crazy and so at 10 the whole time that by Friday, you're still running, trying to get everything done, feeling super anxious, your to do list is so long, and then Saturday's basically spent obsessing, thinking, feeling anxious about the week that was, maybe you know, you have a Sunday that's a little bit chilled, and then you're back into it on Monday, is that the life? Why are we on that hamster wheel? Or are you creating boundaries and space to be able to get to Friday and be like, "This is cool. I'm going to wind down on Friday. So by the time it's clicking off, I'm just going to stroll into my weekend and feel really good about it." And I think for a long time, I was just like hurtling towards my weekend, and I'm not really willing to do that, you know, I'm not saying it's going to always be possible but I don't want to do that. But I didn't even know I was doing that. I didn't even realize that was what I was doing. And now I've got this foresight to be like, "Hold on. That's not what this is about. That's not what I'm signing up for here." I can be incredibly productive, achieve all my goals, show up as a leader, be present, great communicator, all that good stuff, and still hold on to my identity and the balance that's important for me, those things are possible. And also do some side hustle work on the side and figure out ways to make that happen. So that feels fulfilling, it is possible to do those things with a bit of intention and foresight. But you have to kind of go through it in my experience to be able to get to that point.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:01

When you say you have to go through it to get that experience, tell me a little bit about what you mean by that.

Alistair Marshall 12:08

I think that you have to be able to extract yourself from it or be really honest with yourself that it's not working. Because I think that when you're in it, right, when you're in the madness of a career that isn't fulfilling you, that isn't ticking all the boxes, that ultimately isn't right, but it serves its purpose, whether it be financially, whether it's the status of the job title, location, whatever it is, that is sort of on the okay pro-list, when you actually are really honest with yourself and say, you know, "This isn't working. This isn't why I don't want to live like this, this doesn't feel healthy." Once you get to that point, and then, whether it's through working with a coach, through family, through peers, through accountability, whatever the process is, for you, and start exploring that that's when you can kind of be really honest. But I think you've got to... I hate to sort of using analogies– you gotta hit rock bottom, because I don't want that to be what people have to do to get to that realization. But if you can kind of see rock bottom, and it's like it's you know, in front of you and you can kind of stop yourself from getting to it, I don't feel healthy, I don't feel happy, my relationships aren't strong, I have no time, my weekend suck, if you can start looking at the triggers and the things that aren't working for you and identify that, I think that's sort of the going through it to be able to then understand how to come out the other side of it. That makes sense.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:36

I sort of liked the analogy of hitting rock bottom for a couple of different reasons. One, I mean, some of the biggest and best changes in my life personally have come from hitting rock bottom. But I think the benefit of having hit rock bottom someplace is that you start to recognize what those signals and signs are that you're referring to. And then I don't think you actually have to hit all the way to rock bottom before you recognize that, "Oh, hey, this is me tilting over the edge and it's been this way for a few weeks now. I can see these signals coming in loud and clear that if I don't do something now, as opposed to waiting a year or two years, then eventually it's going to end at rock bottom again." And so I actually really liked that analogy, especially when you're talking about how do you recognize the signal. So that becomes my next question. And I'm gonna sort of think about it for myself too. But how do you recognize some of those signals before just allowing it to go all the way in bottom me now?

Alistair Marshall 14:36

I think, you know, a lot of us have things that our priorities are different way. So whether it be... I don't have any kids, but you know, I have a lot of friends that would be... "I love spending time with my kids" Right? I like to work out and feel healthy. I know when my jeans are getting a bit tighter that I'm probably not eating well. And I know that that's a response to being unhappy because I'm an emotional eater. I don't smoke or drink or do drugs. It's food that I turned to. Right?" So I'm like, oh that doesn't feel good, or how I'm going to work it in for a couple of weeks? I've missed a couple of birthday parties, or I'm turning up to things and I'm like, half there, half not there. So it can be the things that you inherently know about yourself. I remember my friends saying to me, she was like, I love the theater. One of the best things about living in New York is Broadway, I'd go all the time. And she was like, "You know what, I heard you talk about that much recently." And I was like, "You haven't been for a couple of months." Because I just had no space, mental capacity for it. I don't even realize. And one of the things that we do, we do, I'm still a we. But what happens to your career is, I'll always be a "we".

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:38

You're always a we.

Alistair Marshall 15:41

What we do is, you know, as part of the boot campers, we have our clients ask people to give them feedback on them, which is something that's really an odd thing often for people to kind of think like, I'm gonna reach out to people and ask for feedback. It's not the most normal thing that you're asking your friends or family for. But actually, that is a valuable thing, just to know and to do, right? Like, if you're feeling kind of odd, why don't you just email five people and just say, "Hey, I really just want you to be honest. How are you experiencing me at the moment? How am I showing up for you? How do you think I'm doing at the moment?" If you want it to be anonymous, you could totally make that work Google form or whatever. Because actually, like the people around us are the people that know us and see the things that we ultimately don't see, why is that black, is that blind spot? It's that, yeah, you know, you did come for dinner, but you kind of were a bit distant, you weren't as your normal, funny self, you didn't seem to really want to be there, you left really early, it's been a pattern of behavior that I've seen for a while. And those things can be an interesting way of going, okay... Because people might not come up to you naturally and say that, right? They might just be like, "Oh, you know, he's fine." Or don't put more pressure on his plate. But that, I think, is a really effective way of just getting a real snapshot in the moment of how you're being perceived and experienced. And that can be an interesting wake up call, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:59

Yeah, I love that. And I want to shift topics on you here for just a second. Because I don't want to lose the opportunity to talk about how you made this most recent set of changes. Because I think that you did such a wonderful job. And I mean, to be expected too, like, you've been a career coach, you've helped a lot of people make big changes and everything. So it's not a surprise, right? But I think you did such a fantastic job walking the walk. Because it's easy to say, "Hey, I know all the things to do and still not do them." But you didn't. You didn't do that. You earned the opportunity to be able to get to this latest iteration of your career. So tell me a little bit about what happened, and how it transpired to go from "Hey, I know I need to make a change. Here's what that might look like", all the way to "I've accepted this role with theory."?

Alistair Marshall 17:58

Yeah. So I was intentional about wanting a job. I honestly said to myself, "If I cannot make this happen for myself, then what am I doing as a career coach?" Right? Like, it's time to like, yeah, the proof is in the pudding. So I was like, let's map this out. You know, the first thing that I really recognized, I was like, "Okay, there's a few things that are coming up against me, right." I'm back in the UK, have not been worked...I've not worked in the UK for a decade, right. Some brands will think that's awesome. Some brands will not think that's awesome. And I was very honest and realistic about that. The second thing was, "Do I want to go into retail, which is what I've done before, or do I want to explore sort of more in house corporate coaching, L&D roles?" So they were the two things I was very intentional about. And then again, what were some of the resistance to those two paths be? So I was very honest about what I was coming up against, right. And I think that was incredibly helpful, because it made me be quite discerning about the directions and the brands and the companies that I was going to look at. So that was the first sort of port of call. It was really kind of like, these are the two streams essentially that I'm going to explore. And then looked at my network, my existing network of essentially friends or colleagues or peers, and send a blanket note to a bunch of people basically saying, "I'm back in London, I'm looking for this kind of work {template one} in retail, blah, blah, blah... {template two}, in coaching, blah, blah, blah..." And send it off to the appropriate people. "Love to find some time and just connect and just catch up. And you know, maybe you can help me and refer me to anyone in your network." So I kind of started that. I then made a very robust list of the places that I wanted to work. And I was really honest about the places that I don't want to work. So I kind of pulled that together. Then I moved into connecting with a bunch of people at those organizations on LinkedIn. So I chose, you know, someone in a senior sort of director VP in the kind of who would be essentially my boss, you know, and then someone that was maybe more of a peer connected with a bunch of people.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:59

When you connect with those people, let me ask you about that for just a second. So first of all, what you're describing, as I'm listening to this, it sounds very simple but it's so strategic, where you started out by, let's first of all define the organizations that I want and don't want. And then that way, you can focus your time and energy on more towards the things that you want and those organizations that you want. But when you actually went to connect with people, I love how you identified those people. But why did you identify those people? That's question one. And then how did you go about connecting with them?

Alistair Marshall 20:37

So I identified the people essentially based on their role and seniority. So it was, you know, for example, in retail companies, I would look for the MD or CEO of the UK and Europe region, right? Theory, for example, because it was New York based, I naturally knew people. I had worked with people. So I reached out to them directly, because I'd worked for them in previous companies, wasn't quite the same over here, because I hadn't been in the business for so long. So, "do I know you? Is there something that we know we have in common? Did we perhaps work in the same organization? Maybe not together, but just, you know, you were there I was there? Or is the role something that I can like, connect with like, Oh, you've got a really interesting role? I'd love to find out more." I also always recommend, include a talent or recruiter or HR person. The reason why would never just connect with a talent, HR or recruitment person is they are getting connected with a lot. And they're probably getting a lot of people to reach out to them, their inboxes probably flooded. Whereas you're sort of the VP of Retail, VP of sales, VP of learning development probably is getting connected with, probably isn't getting connected with as much. So I think doing both, I think it's just for me a rule of thumb. And I always say that to my clients– "do both". Because actually, it depends on the HR person, why some of them will be very engaged in their LinkedIn, and we'll see that lead and they'll jump in, and they'll want to talk to you, and some won't. So that was kind of the intention. And then I would tailor my note to them based on that. So... "I see that you used to work at Ted Baker back in the day, me too. Not sure if our paths crossed." Or "I love what your organization does, I'd love to find out more." The opening statement for all of it was, "I've been in the US for 10 years, I've recently moved back, super excited about rejoining the UK market, bringing a lot of my experience over from the US. Would love to find the time to kind of connect and learn more about what you've got going on and kind of what I'm looking for. Here's attached a copy of my resume and cover letter." So that was the sort of general approach that I did. And I had five interviews with different companies. And all of those interviews were people that I connected with on LinkedIn and who replied. The workplaces I applied and connected and didn't hear back, I never heard from them. And I don't think that the companies were any different. I just think the fact that I got a response, just got me that FaceTime.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:14

So you're saying that, because you took the time and effort to connect in a completely different way, and in a way that's relevant to them, like, if we're breaking down why that worked or why that was effective. First of all, just knowing you as a person, I know you're not going to send out anything that's not genuine. So it's going to come off as genuine. And that's an important thing I don't want to overlook that. It sounds like the second reason that worked, though, is you're going out of your way to have that connection in a different way beyond just the normal "hiring or application process". Is that right?

Alistair Marshall 23:51

Absolutely. I honestly wouldn't never recommend just applying for a job on LinkedIn and just clicking Apply, filling it in and attaching a resume. I just don't think it works. And I'm sure people are going to listen and be like, "It works. I got a job that way." Cool. Good for you. But I know a lot of people that just apply, it goes into the ether and we never hear back. Rule of thumb, always connect with somebody, ideally, two people and just say, "Hey, I applied for the job on LinkedIn, super passionate about this company. I'm super passionate about this role. I'd love to get some FaceTime and explain more about myself. I've reattached my resume for your reference, I really hope we can find some time." Like, 100% I recommend that. Because I got five interviews, you know, that's not bad. And they all responded and actually all of them said, "It was really nice that you sent that note, that was helpful." Because you get a thousand applicants. And the thing of it is, I've used LinkedIn as a recruiter. And you put all in you, put all these requirements in what you're looking for, and it could just be... I've chosen a couple of things that are my top 10. The wording might not just be in your LinkedIn profile, and automatically you just get deleted and taken out of it. Or there's a, you know, an intern or a junior HR person that's been told, "Hey, we got 500 resumes. You just go through and try and find the best 50." And they go, "Okay, maybe they know what they're looking for." And so you can just miss it for no real reason other than just, you slip through the net. Yeah, exactly. So reaching out and connecting, it's just like a nice little poke little nudge, like, "hi."

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:26

[25:33] Well, here's the thing that I think a lot of people don't think about with connecting in a different way or forming the beginnings of a relationship in one way or another, is that after you do that, if that person then sends a message to HR, what is effectively happening is now, not necessarily, you know, not necessarily the boss, not necessarily, you know, talent acquisition's boss, but their customers that talent acquisition, or HR, whoever's doing recruiting for that organization, recruiting and hiring for that organization, is now getting a message from their direct customer saying, "Hey, take a look at this one, this person sent me a note." And what that translates to is, you know, pay attention to this one, "I'm your customer, here's why my opinion matters." I mean, they're not saying that, maybe they're saying, I don't know, but there's an extra, it's not just the nudge, but also, any type of communication that happens in the background separates you out from the 400,000 other people that have applied, and honestly, having done recruiting in the past, it's so much easier to pay attention to what your customer wants, or thinks that they want, as opposed to go through this gigantic stack. It's a pain. So then what happened from there? So you got these interviews, and you did so...at least influence that process. You know, some of it is chance. Some of it is luck. Some of it is timing, but you, to some degree, engineer the opportunity for luck and timing to happen, at the very least. But then after you got these interviews, what occurred from there?

Alistair Marshall 27:16

So the interviews were interesting. So there was a combination of ones that I'd been referred to by people that I knew I once applied for, and some of them weren't always the best on paper, but I was like, have the conversation because it may not be this job that I will end up getting, there could be conversations about other jobs that haven't even been to the point of being published yet. There could be people that are moving on in six months that they want to get some consideration for. So I changed my mindset and to be like, have the conversation the brand's interesting, connect with that person, because that is a connection that you will therefore always have. So I definitely came at it with that kind of mindset. So I had interviews with some jobs that I was, like, probably not the best candidate for this, but like I'm up for the conversation, it's 30 minutes of my time. I had an interview with a person from Lego, for example. And by the end of it I was like, "I would love to work for Lego, but this job is definitely not right for me. But we had a great conversation." At the end of that conversation, he was like, "How are you feeling? I was like, "You know what, Jasper, I don't think I'm the right person for this job. But I think you're awesome. Lego is awesome. And I'm really glad we connected. And I'd love to stay in touch." He's like, "Really glad that you said that. I think you're awesome, too. Definitely not the way well for you too, Junior, but let's stay in contact." So that's great. So then you obviously send the follow up and so forth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:36

Can I ask you about that for just a second? Because I think so many people are afraid to have that type of conversation. Maybe not even because of the conversation itself. But because it feels like they might be like giving people the wrong impression or losing a future opportunity. But I have found very much what you just said in that if you're... well, two things. One, a lot of the times you really don't understand fully what your role is until you go and you have additional feedback and conversation, and sometimes that's the interview format, sometimes that's the other way. But a lot of times it's not actually clear upfront. So you almost have to have that extra level of effort in order to give it a good understanding. But then when you're there, if it's not a good fit, I found that being transparent and honest, like creates a better relationship at a minimum, but what have you found from having those types of conversations?

Alistair Marshall 29:32

I agree. It's a few things I think it does. I think it demonstrates that you know who you are and what you want, which I think is really positive. I think it demonstrates that you have the competence and the courage to be able to name that. If you don't say it on the phone in person, and it's in an email, you're losing this opportunity to truly connect with that person. So really, the other way that I would have gone down, I said, “Thank you so much." And a walk come off the phone means like, that's just not for me, and probably my ego would still want them to want me for the job, which is complicated. And so then I'd probably get... that's a whole other thing. So then I would get potentially the email from Jasper being like, "Thank you so much. We don't think you were fit." And I'd be like, "Thank you for your time." The end. We have just missed out on this massive opportunity. Doing it in person, we had a conversation, he understood that, "We'll keep you in contact. If you see any roles that you like, reach back out to me." It wraps it up and closes the loop in a way that's super, super helpful by not saying you're not having that moment.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:35

Yeah. So what indicated to you that theory, and the opportunity that you ended up accepting with theory was really the right path for you right now? I know it's all an ongoing experiment, as we said earlier, like every part of it, and maybe eventually it's not right for you at some point. However, what gave you the indication and what had to occur for you to realize, "Yeah, this is in fact right for me right now."

Alistair Marshall 31:04

Yeah. So going back to the initial plan. So my ideal career profile, again, something that we do. On there was a sense of creativity, having autonomy, having freedom to create, I didn't want to just go and work for a Louis Vuitton, right, where they just give you a checklist and say "Just do the checklist, we don't really want you to think outside the box." That's not what I was looking for. Nothing wrong with that, not what I was looking for. So that sense of creativity and ownership, I wanted something that was building and growing. So that was something that was super interesting for me is it will take me back to earlier parts of of my career, I will enjoy that. And I did want to work ideally for US company, because after 10 years of a big life in America, lots of connections, I wanted to stay connected to that part of me. So then Theory turned off, and I was, Iike, "Okay, the business is small but growing. It's a US company, they're looking for someone to create and build." And so really early on in those initial conversations, it was very clear to me that that's what they were looking for, and that's what they wanted. And I really understood that they want someone to come in and just own it, and build a team and build a processor. So that felt really, really good. Then what I really liked about them is they were super interested, and what were the most interested in my three years outside of weights other than anyone else I spoke to, they saw my three years as consulting as hugely beneficial. They saw the work that I do diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging a super interesting, they thought it was fantastic that I was an accredited coach, really early on were like, "We think this is awesome." And a previous company I've spoken too was really skeptical, like, "So what have you been doing for three years? And how do you think you'd get back into retail? Three years is a long time." And was a very different energy. And that's why I walked away from that opportunity. Because if you don't see the value of the stuff I've been doing for three years, and how I can be an effective leader for you, then we have a problem, right? Because I think those three years are super important. So Theory definitely demonstrated that. And another thing that I did, which we talked about, is can you share something back after an interview? Can you rather than just sending the "Thank you so much for your time, I really enjoyed connecting." Can you add on to that? So I think it was the third interview, when I spoke to essentially my counterpart in America, the SVP of retail over there, we talked about a couple of initiatives and training programs that I built. So in the follow up email, I connected a PDF of the thing that we talked about. And she responded to it, she said "This is great. That PDF then got in the hands of the next interview." So then I was like, "Oh, she's valuing it, that's really cool. And we spoke about that." It became this really cumulative experience at each stage. And that's six interviews, it wasn't easy. But it felt like it was... they were talking to each other and "Oh, when you spoke to so and so they said this, I'd love to explore that." So the whole thing felt really cohesive. So lots of things that were getting checked for my original plan right through the process.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:37

[33:52] That is so cool. And you and I both know the amount of work and development and understanding and awareness that has to go in to be able to do some of those things, ranging from being able to actually have that conversation with Lego saying, "You know what, this is not right for me." There's a lot of work that has to go to be able to realize mid conversation, have the awareness of what is right and what isn't right, and then to be able to turn on a dime. It's not just about recognizing that in the interview. It's about all the things that came before that. And then same thing as you were going through other pieces of the interactions with theory to be able to recognize that "Yes, this is checking a box for me. Yes, this is checking a box for me" because so often, and you and I both have seen this many times over, if we haven't done that work, everything sort of looks good. Or at least not bad, necessarily, for the most part, has to be really bad for us to recognize that is not the right direction because you get emotionally invested really really quick. So kudos to you for doing the hard work and I so appreciate you coming and sharing this candidly and taking the time to be able to, not only share what transpired, but share what you learned along the way too. It is so fun to see your latest iteration of what creates a great life and work for you. That makes me happy, quite honestly.

Alistair Marshall 33:58

[35:21] And I just thank you for what you've created and the experiences that you gave me, but also just the push, honestly, I think we spoke earlier about what was the thing that you know, how do you kind of make that decision? And I think you saw that and you held me accountable for what I wanted, and gave me a little nudge that I needed. And you know, thank you for that as well. So, yeah, I appreciate it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:47

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they want to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:52

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:10

Okay, obviously, this is Scott. If you've listened to the HTYC podcast for more than one episode, you've probably figured out we do things a bit differently around here. So today, you're actually not going to be hearing from me, I'm taking off work for an entire month. Yes, an entire month. Let's back up here. How did that happen? And it turns out that it's actually something that we, as an organization, had been working on for close to three years. And it started out with my wife and I wanted to be able to step away from HTYC for a month at a time, and have it not be dependent on us, we felt that our message and what we're doing here, the work we're doing here is too important to be able to depend upon just me or just her. But we don't just want to do this for the two of us. We want every member of our team to be able to step away when they need to or when they want to. I want that level of flexibility for everyone on the Happen To Your Career team. So my wife, Alyssa and my kids are actually currently out practicing what we preach, what we teach. And we're combining this month off of work with a trip to Greece, which means that next week and the week after and the week after, and the week after that, the team is taking over the podcast. So I'm really excited for you to get to know them because they're pretty amazing. And they do great work. So here we go.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:28

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Finding Your Ideal Career By Getting Strategic With Your Strengths

by

on this episode

When it comes to making a career change, figuring out what you want to do next can seem extremely daunting, especially when thinking long-term. When the pandemic hit, Victoria Lyon was thrust into the front lines of COVID testing operations. This unexpected role change caused her to reevaluate her research job and plans for a PhD. As she began digging into what she truly wanted, she felt a lot of pressure to make the right decisions for her career’s future. Learn how Victoria figured out what she truly wanted, got strategic with her strengths and switched industries to a career she loves.

What you’ll learn

  • How to evaluate your strengths to figure out your ideal role when switching industries
  • The importance of finding a career where you can be yourself
  • Career search strategies that use your signature strengths
  • How to figure out your priorities and avoid becoming a martyr to your job
  • How to use parts of your past roles to figure out your ideal career

Success Stories

The transition was so much easier than the last and so much more gratifying because of all that I learned with HTYC

Michal Balass, Social Science Research Analyst, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

If you're looking for a change, if you're somebody who is feeling unsatisfied in your work, and you're not necessarily necessarily sure why that is yet, I feel like, that's a great way to kind of figure that out, just because of how the program is structured. I don't think that I would have necessarily gotten to where I am now without the program, especially when it came to the resume and the interviewing portion, because I feel like those are the hardest two areas for someone who's trying to switch into something that's completely different. Having that coaching and that information, and, you know, all those resources available to me to prep me for to be able to present myself in a way where, you know, I'm talking to the hiring managers, and they're like, hey, well, you know, she doesn't have, you know, experience in this, but, you know, being able to explain why I'm still a valuable person and why, you know, my other skills are still good fits for, you know, the job that I was applying for, I don't think I would have had that tools and that skill set and, you know, the roadmaps and the guidance that I would have, that I had with being part of the program. So I'm super, super grateful.

Alyson Thompson, Client Success Specialist, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

“It’s hard to find something that fits, that’s why so many people change careers. When I finally understood my strengths and how I could apply them it all made sense. It just made it easier to see what types of jobs and roles would fit me. In my new career I get to do the marketing that I love with a company I’m excited about.”

Kirby Verceles, Sales & Marketing Director

Get the Full Backstory

That's one of the things I learned about in CCB is just the importance of, where are you coming from? Are you more trying to escape from or are you going to, but before that all before CCB, I was thinking very much in terms of I want to escape from. OR Starting with career change boot camp, I think one of the big things that realized is that you can't think your way there. You've got to kind of get out of yourself and, you know, go out and take action. And that definitely came through in terms of the experiments and just kind of the action steps are part of a career change boot camp.

Kevin McDevitt, Senior Research Analyst & Investment Analyst, United States/Canada

Load more
Download New Tab

Victoria Lyon 00:01

Thinking long term felt very daunting. And there's this notion, I am a growing and evolving person. How can I be confident that what I envision for my future 10 years from now is going to at all be where my aspirations and my goals and my values are?

Introduction 00:24

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:48

In early 2020, Victoria was working in a low stakes research job in Seattle. Overnight, her research lab was thrust into the spotlight after discovering the first case of COVID in the US. Her low stakes job was now truly a meaningful, groundbreaking role that was changing the world. But instead of reaffirming the path that she was on, it made her question her entire career path.

Victoria Lyon 01:13

But there's this idea of, if unless you have a destination in mind, you're never going to get there, right. So if I'm on the road, "oh, that's an interesting detour. And that's an interesting detour." I might end up somewhere interesting, but I could also look back and go, "Wow, I did not get to where I want to be in life."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31

Victoria Lyon thought that in order to do meaningful work, and have a career that she was proud of, she inevitably needed to get a PhD to advance her career in public health. Well, not only did she step off the university track and completely switch industries, she found what we like to call here at Happen To Your Career, her "unicorn opportunity", a role where she's using her strengths, she's doing meaningful, well paid work that she loves. And, you know, most people don't think it exists, just like a unicorn. Oh, and by the way, the icing on the cake, she has found a workplace environment that allows her to be her true self for the first time when she didn't even realize she could hope for, in a career. Victoria shared specific tactics that she used in her career search. She also details how working with her coach helped her figure out what she truly wanted, and ultimately prove herself that unicorn opportunities are real.

Victoria Lyon 02:28

I think the earliest place we can start was my freshman year of college, I was determined not to gain the freshman 15. And as part of that, I discovered group fitness, and fell in love with it, became a fitness instructor, and I realized I wanted my career to be about helping people, be healthy and live healthy lives. And during my master's program, I became fascinated in this intersection of health and technology. And I decided, you know, if I work at a health tech startup or do something in this space, I ended up moving to Seattle. And I worked my way into a part time position at an academic research lab at the University of Washington called the "Primary Care Innovation Lab." And then in 2019, I was put on a project that was funded by Gates Ventures, that was about hypothetical pandemic preparedness. It was all about, after SARS and MERS, there's probably going to be another pandemic. And so we had this research study going, we conducted it for two years, we were halfway through our second season of this flu research, when COVID hit. And all of a sudden, I was thrown into the frontlines of running COVID testing operations. And that was never something that I thought that I would be doing. My passion had always been in preventative care, like weight management, diabetes prevention. So to be in this infectious disease world was completely out of left field for me, but like many people during COVID, I was asked to do something, and we all had to rise to the occasion. So I was working on COVID response efforts, COVID testing programs. And it just got to a point where I was ready for a change at a certain point.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:25

So tell me about that then. When you were there, and thrust into the midst of that, in so many different ways, partially because in the United States, Seattle became known as, I guess, point zero, that's not quite the term I'm looking for. But pretty close, right? And also, you're in a very unique, like there's only so many organizations that are working on that exact problem at that exact time and in that exact way. And then on top of it, you are thrust into a different kind of, we'll call it a different kind of work than what it sounds like you were doing up until that point, as well, in addition to already being outside of the reason that you got into that in the first place. Is that a fair statement?

Victoria Lyon 05:20

Sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:20

So what was that like? What do you remember that time period being like?

Victoria Lyon 05:25

Yeah, you know, it was a huge shift from being a research program to a service for the city of Seattle. And it happened really quick. And when you say, we were were patient zero was, literally the reason they found out that COVID was in Seattle was because our labs started testing samples for COVID. Like, my managers were the ones who were on the news and interviewed by the New York Times, there was all of a sudden is very high visibility into this project that had been just completely off the radar before that. So yeah, to be shifted into this job that I have no formal training in was completely different from what my master's degree had been in. Yeah, there was certainly a sense of overwhelm, and maybe some impostor syndrome of "Am I qualified to do this?" But there were so many people and so many different job functions that were asked to go above and beyond. So there was the sense that we were all in it together. And we had to learn a lot fast. I think something that people don't talk about enough is that in so many jobs, part of the job is figuring out how to do your job. And what I mean by that is, like software engineers, it's normal to go onto a website like Stack Overflow, and search for how to do a thing. And I think in this world, I was being asked to start learning FDA regulatory policies. And not only was it something that I didn't know how to do, but there actually weren't established rules yet for what we were trying to do. So, you know, every day, every week, we were refreshing the page on the FDA website, looking for guidance. And that means that somebody at the FDA was also trying to figure out, how are we going to guide people, this is new territory.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:11

For you, what then took place where you ended up deciding, "This is no longer right for me. This is no longer the place where I want to be." What events took place that made you decide, "Hey, it's time for me to move to something different, that is good for me."

Victoria Lyon 07:33

So while I was working at this academic lab at the University, I was considering getting a PhD. It was very clear if I was going to stay in that environment that the only way to have long term job stability, and to have authority is to have a PhD. So I started down that path. I studied and took the GRE. I researched schools. I met with prospective faculty, I did all of the things. And then ultimately, I realized that I liked research, but I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in academia. And I wanted to explore industry research. So through that, I decided to do the Project Management Professional, the PMP credential. So while I was working on all of the COVID response efforts by day, as my job, I was taking a PMP course in the evenings and was preparing for that exam. I took that exam–it was January 2021. And so in my head, I was going to stay in this academic research environment until I passed the PMP, and then I would figure out what my next job is. And then the other piece of this that was I was engaged and was preparing for a wedding, which wedding planning during COVID is a whole other ordeal. So I finished the PMP exam in January. I quit my job in March. I used the entire month of April to focus on COVID wedding planning. We got married in May. We moved from Seattle to Austin in August. And I started a new job and a new industry and our whole new life in August. So there was just this huge shift. There were a lot of pieces of change that were underway. And it was in August that I decided to start career coaching with Happen To Your Career. And the reason I wanted to have help and get coached at that time, was before that I had been thinking about "what am I want to do for the next year or two, what's the best next step?" But all of a sudden, I was married. And people were asking me, you know, "What do you want the rest of your life to look like? What do you want the next five years to look like?"

Victoria Lyon 09:50

Exactly. And I just couldn't picture my life. I had just been thinking about let's just get to the move. Let me just get to a new job. And so funny enough, when I started coaching with Happen To Your Career, I was at this point where I said, "I don't need to get coaching for a new job right now." I want to come out of coaching with a vision of a long term roadmap for my career. And this idea of articulating my ideal workplace, it was bigger than that. What does my ideal career look like? What are the things that are going to set me up for the life that I really want?

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:43

No pressure or anything, like, "Hey, still a...? Yeah, what do you want the next 47 years to look like?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:25

Why was that so important to you at that time? Other than people were asking you that question, and maybe unintentionally or intentionally applying pressure to you in that way. What was really important to you about figuring out what it looked like for yourself, what ideal or extraordinary looks like for the longer term?

Victoria Lyon 10:49

There's an analogy, and I hope I don't butcher this.

Victoria Lyon 10:52

But there's this idea of, if unless you have a destination in mind, you're never gonna get there, right? So if I'm on the road, "oh, that's an interesting detour. And that's an interesting detour." I might end up somewhere interesting. But I can also look back and go, "Wow, I did not get to where I want to be in life." And so this idea of really being intentional about, "Where do I want to be? What are the things that are important to me?" It was important to define that, because once that endpoint is defined, I can start, you know, breaking it down and figuring out what are the small steps it's going to take to get there. And it just felt, I don't want to say I was wandering aimlessly, but I had never thought with this long term orientation before. And again, with starting a new life getting married, all of a sudden, it made sense to have this long term orientation, because it's not only about me, it's about my family. And so having a plan that works for me and my husband long term, that it's important to be very intentional about thinking long term.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:52

Go for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:55

When you begin to shift your perspective to thinking longer term, what were some of the things that either surprised you about what that is actually like that thinking longer term? Or what were some of the things that were different than the way that you thought it would be?

Victoria Lyon 12:16

I think thinking long term felt very daunting. And there's this notion, I am a growing and evolving person. How can I be confident that what I envision for my future 10 years from now is going to at all be where my aspirations and my goals and my values are? And what happened and I actually starting to have these discussions a lot through coaching and a lot through conversations with my partner, is that once it boils down to values, it's easier to see that, that once you're really in tune with your values that it's okay to think long term because values don't change that quickly. This is not a fad, or, you know, some new show that I'm fascinated with this month. Values are pretty constant.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:06

That's interesting. I'm so curious about how people think about values, because I find they're so ambiguous and fuzzy in some cases. But how did you think about values before you started doing this type of, we'll call it difficult internal work, versus after?

Victoria Lyon 13:28

How do I want to put this? Your values show up in so many different ways in your life. And the idea of expressing my values through my work, but also looking at how I'm expressing my values outside of work. I think that the biggest shift for me during COVID was realizing I had a lot of my identity wrapped up in what I did for work. And especially during COVID when extracurriculars got put on hold and socializing with friends got put on hold, that was the one piece that I still have left. And so it was very easy to be tied to any value that I felt was being expressed by my job. And being a public health professional, there was this element of public service that was really a deep value to me, that I was helping others, I was making the world better. And there was a piece of me that was holding on and didn't want to make a change to something else because I was afraid what if it's something that isn't deemed as important or as much of a public service compared to what I'm doing right now? And so I think this dive into values of, you know, what really is important to me? And this idea of relationship building, being at the core of the value of mine, and then actually with my StrengthFinder's realizing how much influencing was something that was really important to me that, you know, maybe I work in an environment that isn't saving the world from a pandemic, but I'm influencing something for the better, that was still in line with my values.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:13

This might be a great time, may I redo something that you wrote to us when we first got the opportunity to meet you, my team first got the opportunity to meet you?

Victoria Lyon 15:22

Yeah, sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:23

You had written to us, "My husband said it best. I became a martyr to my job, my energy and happiness plummeted, and my relationship suffered, because I had nothing left to give." And I think that what it sounds like, based on what you just shared with me, is that as soon as all of those pieces went away, and then, you know, you're spending the majority of your time and energy with your job, then it started to become evident to you that what you felt was important and felt was a part of your identity was not necessarily what you wanted it to be, if I'm interpreting that correctly. How do you think about that?

Victoria Lyon 16:09

Yeah, that idea of being a martyr to my job. I have a lot of people that can relate with that feeling. I'm going to just paint a little picture of what that really meant. One of the final straws where I knew it was time for me to leave my job in public health was, this a couple of months before my wedding, and we were recruiting participants for a longitudinal study, in which we were trying to invite people to participate right after they were diagnosed with COVID, and then follow them for a year to understand what their long term symptoms are, to understand what we're calling long haulers of COVID. It was very difficult to reach people, invite them to be part of a study and convince them to join and fill out all this paperwork when they're feeling really, really sick. And so my team spent a lot of time emailing and calling people who had just found out they got COVID. And so the next step that I was asked, from some of our study leadership, was to start recruiting people either in person at COVID test sites, or in the emergency room after people had been diagnosed. And I've never worked directly in the clinical setting. And it got to a point where I felt like the risk that I was going to put myself in every day to be face to face with people who had just been diagnosed with COVID, that the risk that I myself would contract COVID right before my wedding, right before people were going to travel in from out of town, that I did not want to compromise myself. And that was where if I had said 'yes', that would have been maybe taking my martyrdom too far, where I didn't want to put my own very critical life moment at risk for my job. And so this idea that it was okay to push back and say 'no', and that it didn't make me a bad employee or a bad public health professional, but that I have to take care of myself in order to take care of others. And in the long term, it was the right call for me to not undertake that task.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:14

What advice would you give to people who are finding themselves in that same situation, not necessarily exposing themselves to COVID right before a wedding, but instead, where it is conflicting...they're being asked to do something that is conflicting with something that is really important to them. And it requires pushing back or having difficult conversations or whatever else might be a necessity at that point. What advice would you give to those people who are finding themselves in that situation?

Victoria Lyon 18:50

I understand it's a difficult situation. And when you're a team player and you want to do anything and you care about the cause, it's really hard to say no. I think for me, something that was helpful was imagining the worst case scenario, if I had gotten COVID, it absolutely wouldn't have been worth it. It was very easy to say no to that decision. I could have rationalized myself, oh, the likelihood that I won't get COVID is also pretty high, it's fine, I can take the risk. You know, it's easier to feel obligated to stay in an environment that's not serving you if you downplay the risks. And here's where my project manager's brains are gonna come in. It's okay to do a risk assessment and to decide that the risks are too high. And businesses do this all the time when they're making decisions. So the idea of taking this risk assessment approach in your personal life is absolutely fair game and then it becomes less emotional. It's not–I'm letting down my manager or I'm letting down these people. It's...I didn't assessment and I do not come out ahead. And in fact, if I get hurt, it's gonna hurt everybody else, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:01

I love that. Particularly because on this podcast we've, many times over, had either advice, or we've talked about considering the worst case scenario, but usually we're talking about it in the context of the worst case scenario isn't necessarily that bad. But what I love about what you said is that sometimes the worst case scenario actually can be that bad. And it's okay to make a decision based on that worst case scenario, it really helps put it in perspective. I appreciate that immensely. It also leads me to ask something else, too, because a short bit ago, we're talking about your strengths. And if I understood correctly, you've taken Clifton StrengthsFinder, a variety of times over the years, a couple of times, right? And I'm curious, because we haven't spent a lot of time talking on this show, about how people's strengths evolve over time. And I'm curious what you learned, as you had seen different results evolve over time for yourself?

Victoria Lyon 21:09

Yeah, so the two strengths that had been pretty consistent from...when I took it in college, and my first job out were Futuristic, and Includer. And Futuristic, I think has played out throughout my career, because I continue to be excited about entrepreneurship, right. The shiny new frontier, people who are making a better future. So that makes sense. And then funny enough, I've had on and off with the different times that I've taken the StrengthsFinder– Includer and Woo showed up. And what I think is very funny is the first time I took it, Includer was almost at the top. And then when I took it after I had just gotten my first job, Includer was gone, but Woo was on there. And it made sense, because I was wooing people to start my career, of course, that mindset was going to be more top of mine. And when I look at some of the other strengths that have been in there, Arranger is one that has been a pretty constant through line. And I think that my journey to find project management really taps into my Arranger, that is...it is all about coordinating people and getting resources organized. And funny enough, one of the strengths that came up this most recent time I took it was Maximizer. That had not been on my StrengthsFinder earlier. And I think that becoming a project manager, or I'm thinking about how do I maximize the resources I have, make sure that people are doing things that make them feel empowered and tap into their competencies that, you know, I think that the environment I'm in and the job that I'm in has certainly brought out certain strengths. So that has been really interesting. And one of the things that was really insightful for me about going through my strengthsfinder with Happen To Your Career was, we did a really, really deep dive into what each of those strengths meant and how they show up in my life and how I can focus, for example, in the first 30 days of a new job, how can I be very intentional about bringing my Arranger strength to the table? And so I talked with Jennifer about each of those different strengths, and how are they going to come to play, and can I even pencil in time on my calendar for activities that I know will tap into my strengths? So we got really granular with it. The other thing that was pretty amazing, and diving into my strengths was I had never looked at the kind of parent categories of the different strengths, executing, influencing relationship building, and strategic thinking. And so zooming out and looking at my strengths in terms of those four categories, as opposed to drilling into the individual strengths, one of the observations that Jennifer made, which I had not thought about before, was that the majority of my top five strengths are in the influencing category. And when I had been talking to her about what I wanted in my next career, I kept saying, I want it to be relationship building. I've been doing so much that it's transactional, or I'm doing things behind the scenes and I'm not connecting with people, I want it to be relationship building. And she kind of pushed back and said, "Whoa, let's look at this influencing theme here. Are you doing anything that makes you feel like you're influencing? Do you want to be doing something that's influencing?" And what we realize is that the experiences I've had in my past where I have felt the greatest sense of purpose was absolutely when I felt like I was influencing the direction of an organization, wasn't just doing tasks, but it was helping an organization be better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:57

So that's fascinating because I think what I heard you say is that you were feeling this need to be able to have more connection to people. And you viewed that as in the past been more operating, more transactionally. And what you were perceiving as the potential solution was more relationship focused. And it sounds like what actually was a better solution for you was to focus more on how you're influencing others, and that created a different level of connection. Am I getting that right?

Victoria Lyon 25:39

Yeah. I think there was always an aspect of relationship building. I'm building relationships with my co-workers, no matter where I work, that's one thing. And where it really came to be top of mind for me was, in my academic research life, I actually loved the stage where we were planning research studies, and it was lots of meetings and logistics, and the part of the end where you've collected all the data, and you're doing statistical analysis and writing papers, I dreaded that stage. I am in those days when my calendar was blocked, I can't have any distractions, I need to write an academic paper. And the majority of people that I've worked with in that environment felt the complete opposite where the planning and the logistics is just the part you have to get through. And I can't wait till I get to run this sophisticated data analysis and show how smart I am and write this publication, which is what your worth in academia is measured by. And so that was one of the big pieces to me realizing "Okay, well, maybe academia isn't right for me. Maybe I shouldn't go down this PhD path, because I will be rewarded and incentivized to do things that go completely against my strengths." And so I kept latching on to the relationship building and the collaborative part of what I had liked about my past job. But when we drilled in deeper, it wasn't just that it was collaborating with others and social because I could have done something like sales, that would have been very relationship oriented. But I could close a million sales with great clients and not influence the organization. And it was this nuanced view that when I'm working with others, and I'm helping an organization evolve, or create new policies, or impact company culture, that is what gives me a great sense of satisfaction.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:33

So how did you utilize that newfound understanding of yourself to make decisions then? Because from what what I understand for our chat before we hit the record button, that influenced a lot of decisions, no pun intended with the influencing.

Victoria Lyon 27:53

Yes, one very tactical takeaway was that I started putting the word influencing in my job searches. So in Indeed, I would type in Project Manager influencing, because, turns out, there are a lot of different flavors of project management. There are project managers who are all about data. And it's mostly about budgets, or staffing people and making sure that nobody's over allocated and that, you know, those project management jobs, they're spending a lot of time in a very sophisticated software, allocating resources to the right place. And that was not the kind of project management job that would be right for me, that would be one where maybe a strength like input or something more analytical, what if thrive. But for me, I was looking for project management roles where when I looked at the job description, it was more nebulous, you know, we need somebody who's an organized self starter who can help drive multiple initiatives and can influence without authority. And it was that exact phrase can influence without authority that was in the job description that made me decide to apply for the job. And it was a huge part of the interview process. That was one of the questions that the hiring manager really wanted to dive into. And this idea of somebody who's able to influence, that's also part of relationship building and relationship manager, right. So the two are very linked.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:22

When you were in the interview process, it sounds like that was reinforced throughout the process in a variety of different ways. So you had this initial clue as you were starting to modify and target your search to where you were putting literally the keyword influence or influencing into your searches. So that's where you started, and that's so subtle, like that doesn't...I know you said, "Hey, this is a small tactical thing" but I think that's actually a really big strategic tactical thing. Because so many people miss the fact that if you start searching in the right places, in places where you're more likely to find what you want on the other end, then that in itself eliminates so much of the minutia and the noise and the things that don't actually matter. So I would say that that's actually really strategic. But then it sounds like throughout the interview process, it was reinforced, or it was validated that, no, it wasn't just any random thing on a job description, which sometimes it is, right. But then this is something that they actually need and is actually a valuable part of the role, or they need someone who to be able to do that. Is there anything else that stood out to you that caused you think "yeah, this is actually really right for me."?

Victoria Lyon 30:43

Yeah, I'm gonna take this on a bit of a tangent, but we'll get there. So let me just start with how this job opportunity came to me. So again, I had been meeting with Jennifer, I think we met four months into career coaching. And I got an email from a recruiter. And I looked at the job description, and I noticed that it was an Israeli startup. And something I had joked about is that it would be a dream of mine to be able to travel to Israel for work. And the reason why that was on the fantasy list was because I'm Jewish, I've gone to Israel several times and on organized trips, and high school and college, and so I always am happy to have an excuse to go back, I have a deep connection with the place. And for that reason alone, I said, "Sure, maybe I'll take an interview, why not." And it turned out in learning about the company, and you know, who they were funded by, and that they had all this momentum, that it sounded exciting. And then when we drilled into the job description itself, this piece about influencing and doing a lot of cross functional engagement, that I was gonna get to interact with people on the product and engineering team, the sales team, the marketing team, customer support, I might even get to do some research and talk to customers directly. I love this idea of getting to really learn the business from all different angles. And this idea that my job was going to be to influence everybody to come together to accomplish really big initiatives. So it sounded exciting. And then the piece of it that has been a really pleasant surprise was, in being part of an Israeli startup, something that I took for granted was that a lot of people at the company are Jewish. Not necessarily that they're all religious, you know, they can all practice in different ways. But there's this huge kind of Jewish subtext to it such as, you know, the team in Israel is not going to be working on Jewish holidays. And so the idea that I might want to take off work for Jewish holiday, is not something that's out of the question, or something that I really have to explain. And so this has been the first work environment that I've been in, where being a Jewish employee doesn't feel like the exception. And any minority, right, there's parts of yourself that you feel like, "Oh, I'm just always gonna be different." And so this idea of how does my Jewish self affect my being at work, like it just never crossed my radar is something I could want or ask or that it was possible to fit in with that. You know, like it just so it was one of those things, we didn't identify it through the course of coaching. I kind of stumbled on this opportunity, Jennifer got me ready to make a leap. And then after being in it was like, "Oh, my God." I was allowed to ask, like, "Why was I looking for this the whole time?" So yeah, I think that's where it comes in. And I think, you know, I'd be very curious if people in the LGBT community, you know, have a similar experience or people of color, you know, there's so many versions of this that I think might be similar for people.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:05

I think one of the most fun things about that story that we've heard again, and again, even in many of the stories we've shared on the podcast, is that so many people feel like, hey, this thing that I want that is been in the back of my mind, sometimes for years, like in your case, it was many years, because you felt like "hey, I'm not going to find an organization that really allows me to have that said, like, celebrate what I value in this particular way" or it sounded like you felt like it had to fit within certain boxes. And I find that anytime that something is pervasive like that, it's important enough where it sticks around for us. And it feels like it's an either or choice. Usually someplace just beyond sight of what we can see is an "and solution" where we can have our cake and we can eat it too, or, you know, whatever analogy you want to use. But usually, I find that there's always an “and solution”. So I'm so, quite frankly, excited, ecstatic, there's a lot of words here, I could say, that is what I'm feeling that you were able to find this "and solution" for yourself. I think that is so very cool. And yeah, I really appreciate it.

Victoria Lyon 35:27

Thank you so much, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:35

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they want to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:39

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 36:57

Don't think that it's not okay to keep trying and keep experimenting. I think some people are like, "Well, I can't. I've done too many jobs. I've just gotta stay put for five years." Five years is a very long time. We've got one chance at this life. If it's not working, if it's not feeling good, then change it up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:15

Let's talk about what I like to call the ongoing experiment of your career. I'm gonna guess that when you started your current role, you were super excited, and maybe even landed that ideal role. But guess what, after a while, the honeymoon period starts to wear off, you eventually start to get that urge to change careers, maybe even switch industries. And that's okay. We never have it all figured out. We never have all the answers. We are constantly evolving. We're constantly learning, changing and discovering new interests, new preferences, new wants, new needs, new ideas. The experiment of it all is being able to take the learnings and the data that you've gathered from your experiences and use that to figure out what you want in the next chapter of your career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:01

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

How Your Gut Feelings Can Direct Your Career Search

by

on this episode

When it comes to your career search, it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of proposals from new companies or the prospect of making a higher salary. However, a huge part of navigating job offer negotiations is convincing yourself to wait for the right fit, knowing when to walk away and trusting the right role will come along. It’s hard. A lot of people feel desperate to make a move, but learning to trust your gut feeling can help you navigate these decisions.

Peter Stark, author of “The Only Negotiating Guide You’ll Ever Need” joins Scott to discuss the importance of practicing specific negotiation tactics, building trust during your career search and listening to your gut feeling.

What you’ll learn

  • How to practice negotiation in everyday conversation
  • Steps to negotiate a raise (Peter takes you step by step)
  • How to decide when to negotiate and when to walk away 
  • The importance of envisioning what you want out of your career trajectory
  • Why everything is not negotiable

Success Stories

The biggest thing in CCB that's changed my life, it helped me understand that I had an abused way of going back to the unhealthy environment in my current workplace without even realizing what it's doing to me. Once you helped me see that and once I got out of it, all the other areas of my life also improved! So it wasn't just CCB I noticed this career changing and wasn't just a career change. It was like a whole improvement all areas of life.

Mahima Gopalakrishnan, Career and Life Coach, United States/Canada

The role is meeting my expectations… totally owning the marketing function. And luckily the founder/president is always forward-looking – he just presented us a huge strategy doc for the next year. So there will be an opportunity for us to grow beyond our initial audience, which is great. I applied (against conventional wisdom!) and went through a lengthy interview process. I did use the resume/cover letter chapter quite a bit to customize what I used to respond to the ad. I also found that using the Interview chapter was super helpful in formulating “SBO” oriented responses, and I even used some of them in the interview. Having those “case study” type responses was really helpful and I believe cemented my candidacy. BTW – they hired me completely over Skype and phone! I never met anyone from my company (in person) until last week at a conference.

Erica Fourrette, Marketing Director

Load more
Download New Tab

Peter Stark 00:01

Many times the very best negotiation you'll ever make is the one you do not.

Introduction 00:11

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:35

You know that feeling you get when something just isn't right. That nagging feeling of unease. I've even heard people say they could feel it in their bones. But what I'm referring to is your gut feeling, and specifically trusting your gut. This is a feeling of intuition that many people instinctively rely on to make decisions. And it turns out, it's actually an extremely useful tool to harness when it comes to navigating your career. We talk a lot about the importance of negotiation. But the other side of that same coin is how to know when it's time to walk away.

Peter Stark 01:13

So the side who has the most power is the side who has the ability to walk away. The side who's unwilling actually has the least amount of power in a negotiation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:22

That's Peter Stark. Peter is the author of "The Only Negotiating Guide You'll Ever Need", which has been a go-to negotiation tool for almost two decades and has sold over 150,000 copies. Organizations around the world such as the NFL, Wells Fargo, Sony, have all called upon Peter to transform their cultures and maximize the effectiveness of their leaders. Now, Peter, he has a vast array of knowledge when it comes to negotiation and leadership. But we also talk about how hardship and his personal life reframed negotiation for him, and taught him the importance of building trust, and trusting your gut. So I want you to listen to Peter's story, as he goes way back here for a minute first, and leads up to what brought him to negotiation experiences and becoming really revered in this area today.

Peter Stark 02:24

I was an undergraduate student at San Diego State, majored in psychology, and then graduated and I worked for Caterpillar Tractor for one year in their marketing department. And I was one of those people who...I had a boss that's like the worst possible imaginable boss, he was a yeller, he was a swear. And to make it even more exciting, he was the president's son.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:47

So we need combos if I've ever heard one.

Peter Stark 02:49

And one day, I went to a printing sales rep who had come and called on me and I said, "You know, I'm gonna go down in the hall, and I'm going to tell his dad, that he's a jerk." And this printing rep said to me, "You know, he says you can probably do that, and in the meeting with you, he's probably going to agree that he is a jerk. He raised him, he probably is gonna agree with you. But on Sunday night's dinner, you're gonna get fired. So I wouldn't take that strategy if I was you. I would set bigger goals." So I actually went back into graduate school at San Diego State in the MBA program, and did that for 18 months. And in the process of doing that and graduating, San Diego State asked me to do courses in their Extended Studies program in leadership, management and sales. And so during that process, as about two years into that, when the printing rep came back to me and said, "You know, I've always wanted to open up my own commercial printing company, I've never had the guts to do it alone, you know, marketing and sales, I know printing and operations. Let's do this together." And so I actually quit caterpillar. And the same time I did that I was also teaching in San Diego State, and I loved teaching. I did not love working in a printing company. So I actually did that for nine years. About year seven, I woke up one day, and I said, "I hate this job." And so it's one thing to say you hate a job. I'm sure some of your listeners have said that before, "I hate my job." But it's another thing when you own the job you hate. And so I actually went through a two year Buy-Sell agreement with him. And so you say, okay, where did this negotiation come in? I was in a market in the 80s in San Diego County where there was 650 competitive commercial printers. And any one of them would steal your clients for a quarter and toss in their mother if that's what they had to do to scale your business. And I went to San Diego State probably in year three or four of owning this printing company, and I said, "I want to teach a course in negotiations, but I'll never forget the head of it." The extended studies said, "Have you ever thought negotiations before?" I said, "I have not. But that's exactly why I want to teach it." And she said to me "Based on your feedback and your evaluation from the participants and students, I'm gonna let you teach this course. And so that was my start as I wanted to get better at it in my own career. And so in 2002, I wanted to contract with Random House and wrote a book called "The Only Negotiating Guide You'll Ever Need". And then in 2016, they came back to me and said, "We want you to actually update this." I was able to include things like negotiating by email, and topics like that, and edit 21 more strategies and tactics that I had learned along the way. So that's really how I got my start in being a negotiator. And so now I've worked with a lot of corporations to teach their sales team, or their purchasing team on how to be an effective negotiator.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:40

So that begs a few different questions, I think. First of all, I found the book very helpful, primarily for...I mean, let's just say that there's a lot of negotiation type books on the market, right? That said, though, I really appreciated the range of both tactics and concepts that you covered within a fairly short period of time within the book, and you know, one of the things that I wanted to ask you, as I was reading through it is, what do you find are some of the most common ways or common, well, let's call it common ways that people can start? Like we had to have, like, a gateway into getting more comfortable with negotiation. What are some of the most common ways that people can start?

Peter Stark 06:39

So one of the things to get comfortable with negotiation is just to recognize to be effective as a negotiator. All of us are already negotiators. All of us do it on a daily basis. I just threw out a fun example. Today's Wednesday, in my neighborhood it's garbage day, and I have to take the cans in the back of my pickup down to the bottom of the hill. And this morning, I was leaving. And in my head, I was thinking, "You know what, they're not very full. I actually think they can last another week." When my wife comes out on the porch, and just yells two words, and they were... "The Garbage!" And I thought, you know what, I can actually tell her it's not really full, I can fully put one into the other, but she's going to counter with "Yeah, but it stinks." And then I'm going to counter "But you know what, I get the spray in the garage, I can cover up the stink." And then she's gonna go, "Today's gonna be 96 degrees in San Diego County, the ants are going crazy. That's okay. But this other stuff from Home Depot, you spray a perimeter around the cans." And right there sitting in my truck, I just put it into Park, got out and loaded up the cans. And as I was driving off my street, I really thought to myself, "that wasn't a negotiation, it was with myself, and I lost." And so every one of us, when we think about the definition of negotiation, is anybody and two or more people gather and exchange information with the intent of changing the relationship in some way, that's a negotiation. So I've always known big stuff, the day to day stuff, and this route one for people who got kids is, "what time is curfew in your house?" If you got teenagers, I promise you, that is a negotiation. So all of us do it. But here's one thing that would help all of us just in the introduction to negotiation, remember there's three points you need to identify. So one of them is the goal. And so here's what I would say, if I wanted to use a fun one, I have an 18 year old right now off to college. But when she comes back home, we still have a curfew in the house, because I don't want to be woken up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning with a kid coming home. And so if my goal was that I want her to be home by 11 o'clock, you never start the negotiation at the goal 11 o'clock, you always have to raise it up to what I call a wish. And the wish is, "I need you to be home by 10 o'clock." "You know what Dad, 10 o'clock is way too early." And so now I'm negotiating what I call the right side of the fence between 10 o'clock, and probably 11 o'clock, which is what she wants. And that's what I call it "Negotiating on the right side of the fence" because I was gonna give 11 o'clock would be the time that she ultimately could be home. And then I need what I call a bottom line in the sand. The bottom line is I'm not crossing this. So if she had a really good story, and she said "You know what, because of these three reasons, I want to be able to stay up past 11 to 11:30." I may be able to concede on that, so I went from 11 to 11:30. But the big key is you have to identify what is the goal that you want to achieve and then open up higher. So if one of your listeners wanted a starting salary, and I'll pick a number 150,000, they need to go in and be able to use this line, "The acceptable starting salary for me is $165,000. And the reason why we start at 165 is now we have room to negotiate that may come back to the goal. If you start out at 150, you're always going to be negotiating on the wrong side of the fence, because it's going to be below 150. If that was your goal, and that's where you opened up, you didn't open up at your wish, 165 or 175. So that one tip of recognizing those three points and identifying them, most people don't ever identify those three points.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:32

So I think that, first of all, I love that. And I have found that to be true as well. I also, just in many conversations with people talking about negotiation, have realized that they'll think or say things like, "Hey, you know, why can't we just both go to the number that that I want?" Or, "Why can't I just be totally straight up and say, hey, here's exactly what I want." So my question to you is, take us through a little bit of that, why is this a more helpful approach overall? And thinking through those three points that you just mentioned, versus saying, "Hey, well, I want 150. Why can I just go in and saying, “Hey, I need 150." Why do I need to do the dance?

Peter Stark 11:25

You asked a really great question. So one of the goals you have in negotiation is you want both parties to walk away feeling as though this was a win-win. Okay. There's psychology involved in that. So if I just played this out with you, Scott, and I said, you and I are negotiating, I'm thinking about hiring you. And I said, "Scott, so what's your goal on a salary?" So you just tell me a number. "What would you like to make starting to work with me?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:53

$247,500.

Peter Stark 11:56

Hey, you know what Scott, actually, that's not going to be a problem at all, we can go ahead and make that work. Could you start on Monday? Now, what thought is going through your mind, as I just immediately agreed with you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:08

Oh, wow. What would go through my mind is, wow, that was easy. What else can I ask for?

Peter Stark 12:17

Right. Why didn't I say 275? Okay, why didn't I say 285? Because if I came back, and I said, "You know what, 275 is actually out of our band for this particular position. But what I could get you is a lot closer to probably 265." If you had the room to negotiate, you would walk out and say, "I really did good." Okay. And if I also started out at my wish, and was moving back closer to my goal, I'm gonna walk out and say, "I feel like this is a win-win." So my favorite one is if you were selling a car, and you were selling the car for $5,000, and I come in, I walked around, and I kick the tires on the car, and I look at the engine, I started up and I said, "I'll tell you what, I think it's worth $2,500. But you know what, take it or leave it." and you go like this, "sold." I go, "Something's wrong. I should have said $1,000." And so that's the psychology you want people to walk out thinking as though they've got a great deal, or feeling at least as though they won. And it's very difficult to actually teach them the seminars, "Don't ever say yes to the first offer."

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:29

That's really interesting. And it also just occurred to me as well, that, you know, there's really great data out there in the form of research at this point that indicates, if you feel you are being paid fairly, that's one of the things that can help you feel good about your job, or more appropriately, the real, I think power or real telling points in that research is, if you don't feel like you paid fairly, it can take an otherwise amazing situation and put an expiration on it. So if you come out of that negotiation, like you were just describing, where, you know, I said "247,500", and you're like, "Deal. Okay, we can do that." And I come away with that feeling like, "Oh my goodness, I should have asked for more" than I'm entering into that role, possibly feeling like, "Oh my goodness, I'm not being paid fairly" which can totally jeopardize the whole entire thing in the first place. And I've never really thought about it in that way before. But to your point, like, there's a lot of ways that this can jinx it.

Peter Stark 14:40

Right. And so one of the things can happen in that situation, too, is with a little bit of time people always do know is I find that I'm working at 247, but everybody else in my job category is close to 300. Then all of a sudden now, I negotiated my own salary, I ought to live with it, but my level of engagement and motivation is significantly gets down if I feel that I'm under compensated. So that's where the issue comes in. So if, for example, one of your listeners said, "You know what..." and here's the line that I would use is, "my current salary requirement is X. So this is a new job, my current salary requirement is 200,000." I'll pick a round number. And the person says, "You know what, that won't be a problem. Can you start within two weeks?" I would say in that situation what I asked for, if I could just have four days to go ahead and think through this particular offer, because I do have a couple other options that I just want to play through. And the reason why I say that, I always believe you should have more than just one job or opportunity, you ought to be working in this world today, digitally making connections with people that you want to have more than one opportunity, the greatest tactic in negotiation is competition. So if I was a salesperson for an organization, and I have a great track record as a salesperson in my organization, and I go out, and I interview three others in our industry, and I'm able to say, "You know what, my current salary requirement is 200,000." The person comes back and says, "That won't be a problem, XXX." In this case, I want to be able to say, "You know what that seems like a reasonable offer, I just want to check with the two other organizations who are also putting an offer together to make sure that this is a best fit for both of us." Now, in this situation, if I did that, I'm not lying, I've got a couple of different opportunities. In this situation, there's a really good chance the company who does not want to leave me says, "Well, regardless of what they commit to you, when you give us the opportunity to at least come back and see if we can meet their opportunity." And so you say, what happened...one power, the power of competition is one of the single most powerful tactics that you can use in negotiation. I'm not telling your listeners to lie. But I am going to also say this, I always want to have options. Even in buying a house, I want to narrow down my house to two houses by love, both of them would work well for me and my family. Because in an event that I go and place an offer and the owner and the realtor say "You need to know there's three other offers on this house." I want to be able to say, "You know what, I actually have a policy of not negotiating against myself with multiple offers, what I want you to do is play it out with those three other buyers. And in event it doesn't work out, would you recontact me?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:39

We actually did that when we bought our most recent house, too, where we actually working on multiple deals at the same time. And in a case where we didn't have that same kind of leverage, it created an element of scarcity for the people who were trying to sell us the houses that wasn't there, even though one of them actually had multiple bidders on it.

Peter Stark 18:03

And we call that smart negotiation, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:06

Why thank you. I like to talk it through but I'm a little biased.

Peter Stark 18:09

So one of the examples I know when I was reading the background on your podcast is you may have listeners also who want to earn a higher wage at their current place of employment. And I'm gonna say this, I have a strategy that will help you do that. But I'm also going to say this, let's say you've already told yourself in your mind that there's a really good chance they may not be willing to negotiate a raise with you at this time, then I'm going to encourage you to go out and do interviews and see if you can generate an offer from another organization. You have nothing to lose, because you're not going to leave for something worse than what you're currently getting at your own company. And so to be able to say to your organization, if it was a great offer, is I wanted you to know that I'm coming to submit my resignation, because I have received another offer that is paying me significantly more. If you do bring a tremendous amount of value to your organization, there's a really good chance they're going to counter offer you to try and keep you. Now, some organizations have an absolute policy not doing that. But I'm also going to say the smart ones, if this person brings tremendous value, are not going to lose you for another 10,000 or another $15,000 or whatever the amount is– it's usually 5%, maybe 10% more that you're leaving for.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:29

And we've seen evidence of that with the folks that we've worked with over the years, too, where their goal was to make a change and went out and got other offers, realize that there still might actually be an opportunity because there was enough things that lined up in what they wanted and what they needed from that organization. So we were able to have them go back and essentially they'd say that something very close to what you just said, you know, "Hey, I have got this other opportunity and I am planning on submitting my resignation." And that opened the door for another conversation to be able to say, "Okay, well, what circumstances can we keep you?" And then that opens the door for a renegotiation, for lack of a better phrase. But the thing I wanted to point out, though, that I think is easy to gloss over is, none of that is possible if they don't already value you highly. They'll wish you goodbye if...

Peter Stark 20:29

Yes, it's a huge point. Number one on my list, if you were ever trying to negotiate a raise, is what my advice would be: start in your offense, work really hard, add significant value to your organization, there are only two types of reputations, there are good ones, and there's bad ones. Everything in the middle is kind of an employee who just hangs out, but they have no reputation. If you want to achieve a raise, I really do believe you need to build a reputation where you are highly valued and everybody knows that you bring significant value to the organization. And if you were to leave, you would be significantly missed. Because you named it right. There are some employees, some team members, some managers, when they walk into the office, you can feel the rise in energy that they bring, you can feel the rise in spirit, you can feel the rise in morale, you can feel that when there's a problem instead of them blaming people, they really get people together and focus on where do we want to be, and how do we get there, and they really are a positive force. And there are other people in your company right now who brighten up the whole office when they leave. And you go in and say, "You know what, if I don't get a raise, I'm not going to stay." You know what, and unfortunately, we're really going to miss you. You know, and those are ones. You have zero power to negotiate, because after, the office is cheering for you to leave.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:52

I appreciate you going the extra effort and pointing out some of those examples. And speaking of examples, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, as I was thinking about, us having this conversation, is how can people leverage time during...let's use the example of job offer, because that's the most...probably the most prevalent place where a lot of our listeners are going to think about the idea of negotiation. But also, I found that time as it relates to the negotiation, when you get to the stage of job offer, people feel a lot of apprehension around time, like, I have to give an answer right away, or I have to do this by a certain time. These are all, in many cases, self imposed. So my question to you is how can people either look at that differently, or really leverage time for themselves within the negotiation process once they're at that stage?

Peter Stark 22:48

Okay, so when I taught negotiations at San Diego State, I actually gave people an exercise and the exercise was you need to be able to change the time frame. And so you say, "What is a practice look like that." Your boss asked you, "Can you get this done by Monday at 8am?" You say, "You know what, I can't get it done by Monday, but I could do it by noon, would that still work well for you?" And so it's just practice. Now, my favorite one of all time, for the last 30 years I've owned a consulting firm, that's where I moved to, and that was the natural transition coming out of San Diego State. And one time, my staff had gathered all of the data together to buy a new color copier. And so they bring me into the conference room. And I had not been involved in any of the process with the salesperson with the color copier they picked out and I'll never forget the price is about $18,000. And so the salesperson looks at me and he says, "But I need you to know, this sales price is only good until the end of the month." And it was like the 28th. And he said, "So we have to execute if you're going to get this price." And I just looked at this guy and I said "I am so sorry." And he said, "Why?" I said, "Because our company has a policy not to buy color copiers until the fifth of the next month." He looked at me just dumbfounded and said, he look down and choose to do well, "I'm gonna have to see if I can get a one time exemption then to keep this price build up." I said "If you could do that, I'd be very grateful." And so he walked out. My staff looked to me and go "What are you doing?" And I said, "I just practice and move the date." Because almost always you have more flexibility with time than you think you do. Okay, if I just go back to unions and management negotiations, this is our final offer. Okay, there is no more negotiation even what almost always there is more time. Almost always there's things that we can do, which will help us. They also know this even with the job offer, it is only good we need to know by Thursday at noon. I need you to know, I'm not going to have an answer by Thursday at noon. Could I get back to you very first thing on Friday morning? And you say, "Why did I need that?" Because I get one more interview on Thursday afternoon. So almost always, if you provide an exception or an alternative, you can have more flexibility in your time. If you truly believe that there is no movement past noon on Thursday, then you're right, because that's in your head, and in your head, that's going to dictate what actions you take, I just got to take this job, because I don't know what the next one looks like. It would have been a lot easier in terms of truly feeling good about your decision to get four more hours.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:42

Another thing that you mentioned in the book is the idea that not everything is negotiable. I think that there's many clips out there, not just in books, but all over the place where, you know, people say that "Oh yeah, everything is negotiable." And you say "No, not true." for a variety of different reasons. But can you tell me more about that?

Peter Stark 26:11

Yeah, I do have this deep seated belief in my faith. And that is that my plan may not be God's plan. And what I mean by that is that there will be times where there are situations–I use one example, I had a 14 year old daughter who for two years was on a heart transplant list. And I'm telling you, I'm a great negotiator, I could not negotiate my way out of that, I could not buy my way out of that, and I could not problem solve my way out of it. And it truly was a case of God's plan was not my plan. And part of the challenge I had was being able to let go a part of that because you sit there and you go, you want to negotiate with the doctors, you want to negotiate with DonateLife, you want to negotiate with the helicopter, and the plane service of how quickly we can get her to different hospitals, and all of that, the negotiation side for me, relatively easy, I'm not going to impact the outcome.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:02

I can't even fully imagine or comprehend that experience. But I am very curious about what did that experience teach you about negotiation.

Peter Stark 27:18

Part of… I think the biggest lesson that I learned going through that is what's really important. Because if you ask me, my long term goal is a long term relationship, where both of us trust each other significantly. And we can come to a deal in maybe an eighth of a time that it takes somebody else to put that deal together. So I've worked really hard in my career to say, "What do we need to do to make this work?" But ultimately, I do know this– I want to build a relationship based on really strong trust. Because if there is no trust in the relationship, you have to go through all sorts of hoops to guard yourself and put safeguards in place to ensure that when things go wrong, we have it all covered. One of my favorites, and sometimes I'll negotiate with somebody and they got like a 50 page contract. It looks like every lawyer on the floor of the organization, you know, put their two cents into this with indemnity clauses and all these things. And there's a part of me that the best clients I work with, it basically looks like this, it's a one page agreement that basically says, "If I don't do what I say, you get your money back." I've never had to execute on that in my lifetime. You said what about the date changes? Yeah, we have things like that listed. But it's really, I work really hard not to be in a relationship with somebody I don't trust. And if you do not trust them, this is a...you don't trust your boss, or you don't trust your company. I am going to say this, go with your guts. Because many times the very best negotiation you'll ever make is the one you do not.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:02

I think that is...I'll say I've done a series of inner negotiation interviews, and you and I chatted before we hit the record button here about that. However, I think that is possibly some of the most profound advice right there because I think it's also sometimes the hardest to do.

Peter Stark 29:22

Yeah, it is the hardest to do because you're emotionally involved. And so I'm going to use two examples as one, your listeners are out negotiating with a new company, and it picked up multiple feedback from multiple people. But in those multiple interviews where they picked up this conflicting feedback, it sets off a red target flag that says you know, something's not right here. My feeling is, one, you can go explore that deeper but my feeling is your guts are sending a radar signal to your head. And here's the problem in a negotiation, your head will overtake your guts and lie to it. So the head will say, you know what, "This was a disgruntled employee. And that's the reason they said this, and this. And it's not going to be a problem." And so the head will argue with the guts and the head will try to win my feelings about guts. And so for me, because I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm working on behalf of my team, if I go out and I have my guts, this firm is not a good match for our organization, my guts, I usually go and I will actually say this, "I really appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. In this particular case, I actually don't think that we're the best fit for you." And I'm going to pass on putting a proposal together. And I can't tell you how many times that's helped me, because when you have this level of feeling, you have to have all sorts of other stuff in the proposal to guard against what you think could go wrong in this situation. So if I used an example, you talked about the house. One time I put a house in escrow, and about three weeks after it was in escrow, the owner disclosed that the house had a crack slab of which they sued the builder to fix. And so I got that disclosure three weeks into it. I mean, we've, like, married this house by now. And I called my realtor and I said, "I need you to know we're out." Because if they didn't disclose that upfront, what else is there that they have not disclosed? Well, the realtor works with my wife, they collude against me. And so the realtor says, "Actually, this slab is the strongest one in the neighborhood, because it's been reinforced." And my wife said, "Are you willing to check out the perfect house for our family over a stupid crack slab?" And I actually said, "Yeah, honey, I am. Because I had a house once with the crack slab and all the doors closed on their own, you wouldn't actually have to push it. I'm not doing that twice in my lifetime." And I walked. And here's what I want your listeners to remember about being able to walk away. So the side who has the most power is the side who has the ability to walk away. Okay, the side who's unwilling actually has the least amount of power in a negotiation. So walking away, I knew two things, I knew that where we were going to move to next was actually going to be better than this house, and it was probably going to cost a little bit more because there's no way we were gonna go into escrow on a house that was less good than the one we just did cancel the escrow one, but being able to walk away gives you significant power, you know, my line, I like that, but not that much. And you're able to pass and move on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:23

This has been a fantastic and super fun conversation for me. I really, really appreciate all of the specific language around that. I think that helps our listeners so much. And just wanted to say thank you, first of all, for taking the time and making the time. And if people want to learn more about you, what you do, or get the book, where can they do those things?

Peter Stark 32:46

Yeah, so two places. One, peterstark.com. Really, really easy. And I have a lot of free resources on my site for your listeners. If they want to get a copy of the book, "The Only Negotiating Guide You'll Ever Need", that was republished in 2016-2017, it's on Amazon, it has sold over 150,000 copies. And I am so grateful for that book because I've written 10 books, most will sell around 10,000, for one to take off and have shelf life over a long period of time. It takes, like, what was kind of fun about that book is the most simple one I thought I'd ever written, a lot more content and complexity. But that book just talks about the first six chapters, what does it take to be a great negotiator. And then I give your listeners 121 tactics to gain or maintain leverage, or to counter if somebody used that tactic on you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:44

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they want to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:48

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Victoria Lyon 35:07

Thinking long term felt very daunting. And there's this notion, I am a growing and evolving person. How can I be confident that what I envision for my future 10 years from now is going to at all be where my aspirations and my goals and my values are.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:27

In early 2020, Victoria was working in a low stakes research job in Seattle. Overnight, her research lab was thrust into the spotlight after discovering the first case of COVID in the US. Her low stakes job was now truly a meaningful, groundbreaking role that was changing the world. But instead of reaffirming the path that she was on, it made her question her entire career path and begin looking for a way out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:57

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Reinventing Yourself To Earn Career Fulfillment With Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

by

on this episode

Do any of these sound familiar? “I’ll be happy when I get a raise… My life will feel complete once I make it to the top of my industry… If I could just increase my salary by $100K, the rest of my life would fall into place.” Linking achievement to happiness or contentment is a common theme in today’s society, especially when it comes to evaluating a career.

However, to live a fulfilling life and do meaningful work you must learn how to love the life you have, and live without regret. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discusses earning your path to fulfillment & continually reinventing yourself so you are never truly stuck.   

Check out Marshall’s new book: The Earned Life

What you’ll learn

  • How to live with less regret by perpetually reinventing yourself
  • Why regret and fulfillment are polar opposites
  • How to have confidence in starting over in your career or switching industries
  • The problem with our society’s overfocus on achievement 

Success Stories

The hardest part was getting overfitting myself into a job board. Because after about a decade of following job boards and what careers were trending in on the uprise, you really get in this holding pattern of not acknowledging what you want. It was you and your podcast and your CCB program. So, more background, I went through your CCB program a year ago. But, I finished it less than a year ago. And some of the tools are you have us design this ideal career profile. And so, you make us acknowledge all of these different aspects and put it together in one sheet. And so, it really visually lays it out that you can combine them.

Allison Curbow, Career Solutions Coach, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

The way you guys have it laid out it just, it makes it easier to move through the process, because the steps are laid out such a way that it's clear. It's that extra support to help you move through the process that helps you move through the program.

Kristy Wenz, Chief Communications Officer, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

I think one of the reasons the podcast has been so helpful to me is because you talk to people in different roles, and all of a sudden I have exposure to people in different roles. Talking about why they got there and what they like about it.

Laura Morrison, Senior Product Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

One of the most key things we talked about was feeling instead of thinking, I would think all the time, about this and that, I would just take time to feel. That is the key for really understanding where you are supposed to be and what you love.

Kelly , Leadership Recruiter, United States/Canada

Load more
Download New Tab

Marshall Goldsmith 00:01

What advice would a wise 95 year old you, looking at death, who knew what mattered and what didn't? And what was important and what's not important? What advice would that old person have for you who’s listening to me right now?

Introduction 00:19

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44

How many versions of you are there? No, I'm not talking about alternate universes or anything crazy like that. Here's what I mean. Do you think you're the same person you were 10 years ago? About five years ago? I'm gonna say probably not. Yet, so often when I talk to people about making a career change, they feel stuck on a career path that 18 year old or 20 year old them selected and said "Hey, this is what I want to do." And ultimately, they're scared to make a change because they believe they'll regret leaving their career comfort zone.

Marshall Goldsmith 01:22

Carrying around regret is actually a choice. You don't have to carry this stuff around you, you choose to carry this stuff around.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:30

That's Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. Dr. Goldsmith has been recognized as one of the top 10 Business thinkers in the world. And he's also a top rated executive coach, actually, he pretty much invented the word executive coach. He's been coaching for nearly 40 years and has traveled around the world to share his groundbreaking, yep, groundbreaking is the right word, leadership development tools. His coaching clients include CEOs of Ford, Pfizer, Walmart, Mayo Clinic, and many other high level executives. Dr. Goldsmith is also a prolific author with 49 books under his belt, including six best sellers. This was such a fun conversation. Marshall and I discussed so many topics. And I'm really excited for you to learn from him. Specifically, though, I want you to listen for, in our conversation, about how he talks about perpetually reinventing yourself. All right, here he is talking about where he started out in his career.

Marshall Goldsmith 02:30

Well, you know, I was a college professor and I met a very famous man named Dr. Paul Hersey. And he got double booked. And, you know, I basically was wise enough to carry the bags and serve coffee and, you know, just do whatever grunt work, so I could just sit in his classes for free. And so I just watched him teach and he was invented "Situational Leadership" with Ken Blanchard and he got double booked. And he said, "Can you do what I do?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "I need help. Can you do this?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "I'll pay $1,000 per day." I was making $15,000 a year. I was 28 years old. It was 43–no, it was 45 years ago, that was a lot of money for a kid from Kentucky. And I said, "Well, I'll give it a try." I did a program for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They were incredibly pissed off when I showed up because it wasn't him. But I got ranked first place of all the speakers. And they said, "Well, this guy was good. Send him again." Paul said, "Do you want to do this again?" I said, "I'm making 15,000 a year, you're paying me 1000 a day? Yes, I will do this again." And that's how I got into the speaking and then coaching, also, largely by accident. I'm a quote "pioneer" in something called customized 360 degree feedback, a pioneers and I may give you when you get old. So I'm a pioneer in this customized 360 degree feedback. And I was working with a CEO and I said, "I get this kid working for us– young, smart, dedicated, hard working, driven to achieve, brilliant jerk." And I said "It'd be worth a fortune to me if he changed his behavior. So admired to turn fortune us and maybe I can help him." He said, "I doubt it." I said, "I'll try." He said, "I doubt it. But, I came up with an idea." I said, "I work with that guy for a year. If he gets better pay me, if you don't get better it's free." You know what he said? "Sold." There was nothing called executive coaching. I made that up. That's how I got into coaching.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:21

I love that. It also begs the question then... what was it, really, initially just the opportunity where you're looking at it, going, "Hey, I'm gonna make $1,000 a day here versus the $15,000 a year there." And if it was, initially, what caused you to keep going?

Marshall Goldsmith 04:42

Well, I like being a teacher. I mean, it wasn't like I was unhappy being a college professor. It was just very similar work, actually. I was still teaching, I enjoyed it even more. Because I got to work with real world executives, it was more exciting. So yeah, I'd love to work. It wasn't that I didn't like my previous work though, I enjoyed it, too, I just enjoyed the new work better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:03

One of the ideas that you talk about in your new book, "The Earned Life" is really the concept of what you call "the fulfillers", or those pieces and parts that create fulfillment, but also what takes away from fulfillment. So I want to get deep into both of those here in just a minute. But first, what do you consider to be those fulfillers?

Marshall Goldsmith 05:30

Well, if you look at life, there's six things I have people to really focus on. One is, do you have a sense of purpose? And then do you have some sort of an achievement? And then basically, you find meaning, are you happy? Are you building great relationships? And then are you engaged in President what you're doing? So that's that. And in the book, I kind of combined some of those and I talk about these three factors– our aspirations, which I think are the bigger purpose, "Why am I here? What does all this mean?" And our aspirations don't have a finish line. Then we have our ambitions, which revolve around actually the achievement of goals. And then we have our actions, which are day to day activities. And that part of the book has probably received the biggest positive risk reaction, because so many people are addicted to achievement. And so the people, historically, human beings have just been focused on the day to day action phase, you know, they're wandering through life, doing what you're told. And you know, they're not bad people, but they're just doing what's in front of them. Some people are kind of lost in the aspiration phase, or living up in the clouds. They don't do much for the world, but they have lofty thoughts. The people I work with, and probably most people on your calls, they're focused on achievement– they're achievers. And if you over focus on achievement, you can have some problems. One is in the book, I talk about this, I define "The Earned Life" as it's not based on results– never become ego attached to the results of what you do for a couple of reasons. One, you don't control the results of what you do. The end outcome is many factors outside of your control. And two, what if you do achieve these results? What happens next year? You have a more, more...how long does it make you happy, you know, week? So really, it's very counterintuitive, because almost all self help books are focused on, here's what's good about achievement. And this is unique in terms... this is– don't become attached to result, don't become over focused on achievement, you should try to achieve to achieve but don't think achievement is going to make you happy. Don't think achievement is going to make you feel good about yourself as a human being because it won't.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:52

It does do a really nice job of guiding us towards... I'll be happy when the next thing or this thing or that thing occurs. That said, let me ask you about what you said a moment ago, though, you said "never become ego attached", if I heard you correctly, to what you do to results. So let's talk about that for just a moment. Because I found that, well, that is very useful. I found a lot of benefit out of that. I've also found that in many different ways, even though I know that it can be hard to do from time to time. So help me understand what you've seen is highly effective ways or things that even have worked for you or your clients to separate out the results from the ego attachment.

Marshall Goldsmith 08:43

Well, one of the guys in my... and I talked about our LPR groups in the book and one of the people...I had over the COVID the privilege of spending every weekend with 60 brilliant people and, you know, I mentioned their names in the book, and one of them was Safi Bahcall. Safi is a brilliant guy, probably has an IQ equal to mine and yours combined. Just a brilliant guy, PhD in physics from Stanford, and he wrote a book "Loonshots" and he's worth 10s of millions of dollars, started companies, work for presidents, you know, on and on. And you know, Safi finally said, he realized something that he thought–and he talks like a scientist–he thought that happiness was a dependent variable based on achievement. And he finally realized that happiness and achievement are independent variables. That you can achieve a lot and be happy, you can achieve a lot and be miserable, you can achieve nothing and be happy and you can achieve nothing and be miserable. They're basically independent variables. And the problem we have in the West is the, I'll be happy when... when I get the money status BMW condominium, when I achieve this stuff, and the reality is just doesn't work. Because we never get there. And by the way, this is hard because it's been hammered into our brains constantly. The most popular Western art form sounds like this...there is a person, the person is sad. No, they spend money, they buy a product and they become happy. This is called a commercial. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those, but that message has been hammered into our brains over and over and over again. It's totally pervasive. And the idea that, no, not really. You're not going to find happiness out there, there is no product you're going to buy, there's no achievement, there's no amount of money you're going to make. Half the people I coach are billionaires, there's no amount of money you're going to make, it's gonna make you find peace in life or happiness. Nothing wrong with making money to make money. Nothing wrong with achievement for achievement's sake. As long as you don't believe that, that's going to give you value as a human being. As long as you don't believe that's gonna make you happy. Because I can tell you it won't.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:53

Let's talk about the opposite of fulfillment for just a minute here. In your book, you say that regret is the polar opposite of fulfillment. I thought that was a really interesting way to think about it. Also, you said one other very curious thing, and I'd like to ask you about it here. You say that regret is a devilish cocktail of agency and imagination.Can you explain that a little bit for me?

Marshall Goldsmith 11:19

Yeah, our regrets are when imagining what would have happened had we done something else. So, you know, it's like, "I could have done it. And I didn't do it." That's the combination of agency and imagination. "And here's what would have happened, had I done it."

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:35

Okay, so here's what I'm really interested in knowing from you because you've been diving into this for a while. And regret is not a... understanding regret is not a new thing for you. Also, I'm curious what have you have found to be the biggest misconceptions with regret today?

Marshall Goldsmith 11:55

I think a couple of misconceptions with regret. One misconception with regret is you have to keep carrying it around, and it sort of doesn't go away. And I think that a big misconception is that because you don't have to carry it around. Carrying around regret is actually a choice. You don't have to carry this stuff around, you choose to carry this stuff around. And one of the things I like in the book is called "The Every Breath Paradigm". And one of my reflections based on your good question is that, if you breathe and you think, "All right, think of those people in the past as a previous version of you." Well, you know, I tell people, take a breath. Think of all the previous versions of you. Now think of all of those people and all that they've given to you that's here. And into they make some mistakes, think about how hard they tried. Did they make some mistakes? Sure. Just forgive those people for being who they were. And the point is, you aren't those people. You see, when I say I feel regret is, you know, you're acting like you were those people. The 'you' that's listening to me right now is not the 'you' of 10 years ago. The father of this listening to me right now is not the father when your children were little, you've changed. And what you did then was done by a different person than you. One of my favorite stories in the book is that the husband and wife are in the car, and they're having a great weekend with the kids. And then he's driving home. And she starts in on what he did 10 years ago. And it's too bad he didn't do this and this. And what he says is, "I'm a different person than I was 10 years ago. And that guy, 10 years ago, did some stupid things. And I'm not that person. And you're not talking to that person anymore. I am a different person." And his wife said, "You're right. You are a different person. Why am I dredging up some 10 years ago, old person. That's not you. That was somebody 10 years ago." So I think a good way to get over regret is realizing in an existential or Buddhist way, that's not you. You're not the same person you were 10 years ago, you're not the same person who made that decision. We change as we go through life. Key point of the whole book is, you know, impermanence and the Buddhist concept of, you know, it's always a new me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:22

That was also one of my favorite stories in the book, coincidentally. And you casually mentioned something about "The Every Breath Paradigm". I can't remember... it must be pretty towards the beginning of the book, pretty much towards the beginning of the book. You mentioned that you started using that with clients quite a while ago, when other things that you were leveraging at the time just weren't working. So it just makes me curious about, where did you start to find that people were resonating with that? I would say it's a highly effective way to shift or reframe and I found it very helpful when I read it. But it makes me curious, like, where did you start finding that was working for people?

Marshall Goldsmith 15:06

Well, you know, one of the things I've always tried to help my clients with is not put themselves in stereotypical boxes. I mean, as long as we say, "that's just the way I am", there's a high probability you won't change very much. And most of us go through life saying, "That is me. That's just the way I am" as opposed to, "That was a previous rendition of me. I don't have to continue doing that." So for example, I'll be coaching some guy and he said, "Well, I can't listen, I've never been able to listen, I can't listen." So you got something stuck in your ears? You know, raise your right hand. Repeat after me. "My name is Joe, I do not have an incurable genetic defect. I can listen if I want to." Well, you know, I mean, we talk about ourselves, though, as if we have these incurable genetic defects. And one of the things that I think is helpful is getting people the every breath idea of "Hey, look. That was the me of the past. All right, the ‘me’ of the past didn't listen." Fine. And it's fine to apologize, say, "I'm sorry, I didn't listen, then. This is the 'me' of now. And 'me' of now doesn't have to repeat that. I can be a different person. And it's okay." And by the way, to me, that's not being a hypocrite or phony. That's been what you need to be in the situation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:20

To me, it feels like it is more realistic in some ways. I don't love the word realistic, because it gets tossed around in very negative ways. However, I think that it applies here so well. You talk about the idea of impermanence. And then that's where you showcase "The Every Breath". And I loved the idea of impermanence because it seems to be much more true with how life is. We don't stay in the same state forever. But I'm curious what for you, why do you think we latch on to this? Especially Western wise, we latch on to this idea that things are permanent in so many different ways. What do you believe causes that in your opinion?

Marshall Goldsmith 17:11

I think the whole worth Western ethos is the real 'you'. That there is this quote "real you" or this "fixed you". And as you journey through life, that is the 'you' that's here, and it's pretty unchangeable. You know, I mean, the whole concept of the same 'you' that lasts for eternity and all that, that's a much more western concept than the concept of the 'you' that's here today is not the same 'you' that was here a week ago, that we're ever changing, and that we're not really locked into this quote, "real me" thing. One of the things that I teach all my clients is, is to be what you need to be, you need to be what you need to be in the situation. And one of the chapters I like in the book is one on empathy. Because, you know, before this is something new for me, I thought of empathy was kind of a uniformly good thing. And then when I wrote the book, I realized empathy can be a very negative thing. Empathy can do more harm than good. For example, one type of empathy is the empathy of caring. Well, that sounds good, caring. And I love one example, in the book of the hedge fund manager, you don't think a hedge fund managers caring at all. So that's one reason I love the example. I'm listening to this one hedge fund manager interview another one. And he says, "Why don't you have a fund?" He says, "Because I'm not as good as I used to be." And he said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, in the old days, obviously, I'm worth billions of dollars. So I made 10s of billions, but I lost 10s of billions." but he said, "You know what, I didn't care." Then he said, "I started caring." I thought these are people's health care and retirements and...I started becoming much more conservative, much less effective. That's quite quit investing other people's money. Well, in the same way that the medical doctor doesn't operate on their kids. I'm the coach of the, you know, CEO of St. Jude's Children's Hospital, he watched this kids die every day. He can't carry that home with him. He's got to let it go. So to me, empathy is being what you need to be for the people you're with now. So for him, it's tough when a little kid dies, but he's got a family. They need him. He's got a wife, he's got kids. Well, when he comes home, he needs to be with them. He doesn't need to be back at the hospital. He needs to be with them. So the whole idea is really, "I am what I need to be now." Empathy is...I'm the person I need to be for the people with me now as opposed to this is what I feel like at the moment.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:44

How do you reconcile that idea of, "be what you need to be" with the idea that you mentioned just a moment ago, where we, as Westerners, have a tendency to think more, like, I forget how you said it, but figure out who I am or be more of 'me', In your mind, how do you think about that in terms of, maybe reconcile the wrong word, but just tell me a little bit about how you think about that.

Marshall Goldsmith 20:09

The way I deal with that as a concept of professionalism. To me, when I coach a CEO, they need to, maybe, be nine different people in one day, you know, they can wake up, and then they have to do a performance appraisal, they have to have a board meeting, they go to a funeral, they give positive recognition. They're in all these different roles on the same day. They need to be the person who is in that role at that time. That is not to me being a phony, that's been a professional. One of the guys in the book I talked about Telly Leung. Telly literally played Aladdin on Broadway 1000 times. So I asked Telly, "How'd you do it? 1000 times, same role." And, you know, Telly's gay. And he said, "You know, I go out there, and I fall in love with the Princess every night." And every night, he said, "I was a little boy, eight years old, and I went to a Broadway play, and it was so nice, and the music and everything and it just...I loved it." And he said, "Every night, I think of the little boy." And it shows for the little boy. And the point is, it doesn't matter how he feels on, you know, like, my foot hurts, my aunt died last week, you know, suck it up, you're a professional! The kid in the audience, it's not their problem. You need to be who you need to be if that little kid in the audience, not because it's what you feel like being. So I actually had him come and talk to the Children's Hospital, which was really great for them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:39

That is fantastic. Interestingly enough, I remember having a conversation with Daniel Pink, another author. We've had him on the podcast, but he said something very similar in terms of, "Not be who you need to be." But he thinks about that idea, that concept in terms of professionalism. So that's resonating highly with me for a variety of different reasons. It also leads me to another topic, the greater topic of the book, like the book is, it's called "The Earned Life". Right? And even, you have a couple exercises in there. One in particular, is the idea of establishing, "what is earned even means to you." And you go on to provide a little bit of a definition throughout, of what earn might mean to you personally. However, I am interested in, not just what your definition of earned is, although I will ask you to share that for our audience. But also what are some of the lesser known examples in your own life that fit that definition of earned for you?

Marshall Goldsmith 22:44

Well, to me, you don't live an earned life, you're living an earned life. So what that means is, I'd say it's your efforts, your risks, and it's not focused on the results of what you do, it's tied to a higher level of aspiration. So the idea is not that you are live...you live an earned life, and you say, "Well, I did this. Now, I'm declaring victory. I won. I've done it. I earned it all." It's a constant process of returning. Bob Dylan said, "He who was not busy being born is busy dying." Well, I believe that. I think the very important as we go through life, we're constantly restarting. And the people that think they won, Michael Phelps after his 25th Gold Medal, thought about killing himself, you know, NFL players, disasters on the whole. My friend Curtis Barn is trying to help as many as he can. Many with drug problems, depression, suicide, you know, then with divorces, they lose their money. Why? They're looking for that result, that glory, and it has to be better than last year. It's a fool's game. So I think, you know, "The Earned Life" is every day you start over. You're the ex football player, okay? You're not the football player anymore. You're not living in Super Bowl Three. You're not living there anymore. You're a different person. That person that won the football game was nice, you're not that person. That was some kid. You're different. So how are you earning your life now, as opposed to just thinking about what you did in the past? And from my experience, thinking about what you did in the past just doesn't work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:24

What do you mean by that? Tell me more about that. When you say, what you did in the past or thinking about your experience from the past doesn't work.

Marshall Goldsmith 24:31

It's almost like vicarious living. In terms of the way I'd talked about it is vicarious living. One of the problems in our society is vicarious living. The average kid that's flunking out of school spends about 55 hours a week in non academic media, you know, movies, TV, video games, they're living vicariously, they're not living their own lives, they're living through other people. You can't have a great life if you're not living your own life. Vicarious living is living through other people. In the same way that vicarious living is living through the Kardashians or something like that, the football player who's living on Super Bowl Three is living vicariously. They're not the same person that won the Super Bowl, that's over. And to the degree, their value as a human being is tied up on that person, they can't win. Because the person who's talking to me now is not that person, and it's trying to live through that previous person, as opposed to saying, "Here I am now. How am I finding meaning in life now? How am I finding happiness now? How am I building relationships now? As opposed to what I did 30 years ago?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:38

What do you believe is most difficult or that people don't realize, as they are trained to shift how they're living, to focus on living in their own life?

Marshall Goldsmith 25:52

I think that we in the West, particularly, as we've discussed, are just lost in results, and the belief that somehow when I get to a certain point, it's all going to be okay. You know, what type of book ends with the same phrase–and they lived happily ever after– is a fairy tale. Well, I think we're chasing a fairy tale. That somehow I'm going to get there and then I'm going to live happily ever after, wherever there is that there is a there. And once, quote, "I get there" I will achieve this permanent state of happiness forever. As opposed to saying, "I'm starting over. I'm starting over every breath, I'm starting over it's a new me, and I'm going to enjoy what I'm doing. And I'm going to try to achieve something meaningful, and it's tied to a higher aspiration in my life." To the degree you can do that, you win. I mean, I've got some pretty clear research on this, assuming that you're healthy. And assuming that you have good relationships with people you love. And assuming that you have a middle class income, what matters in life? What matters in life is you have a purpose, you're doing something that you think is meaningful, you're achieving something connected to that purpose, and you love the process of what you're doing. If the answer is "yes" you just won the game of life. That's about all there is. If there's any more I'm not aware of what it is.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:12

What advice would you give to people who are in transition? They're beginning to think about what they really actually want out of life. They're beginning to think more about their purpose, we have so many people that are listening right now that are in that spot, where they're reconsidering how they're living their life, and what they actually want, in so many different ways. So what advice would you give to that person who is in that state of transition?

Marshall Goldsmith 27:39

Well, I do a lot of work with former CEOs who are living your roles too. So I'm very familiar with this discussion. So I've done a lot of work with people of various transitions in life. So I would first say to people, be open minded. Be open minded. You don't know exactly what you're going to love. So be open minded. You may not think, well, I don't think I'd like to be a college president. Well, maybe you wouldn't like to be some college president. But maybe you'd like to be one college president. So be very open minded. Offers are good. I always encourage people get offers. You can always say no, but you can't say no to offers you don't have, be open minded, get offers and think, "Am I going to be doing something that, number one, I can achieve something? Number two, it's meaningful for me. And number three, I'm going to love doing it?" And the great answer is "yes". Do that. You're never gonna get it perfect, but get as close as you can.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:32

You have, well, let me say that I think one of my favorite things about you is that you seem to ask so many questions that other people just wouldn't ask, or be afraid to ask or not ask for one reason or another. And I'm curious, what drives that for you?

Marshall Goldsmith 28:49

Well, I think for me, it's, one, is curiosity. And two is unkind of different. I mean, I've been studying Buddhism since I was 18. I'm kind of different. And I think that I'm just constantly looking for new and different things to do. And I always have a feeling I'm reinventing myself, I'm reinventing my own life as well. So, you know, that's it. And as I've grown older, the people I work with now, it used to be...my coaching has changed. My coaching used to be strictly helping successful leaders achieve positive long term change in their behavior. Now, though, I really work with people...so many people I work with now are already ridiculously successful. I've already achieved so much that now a lot of my life is just trying to help people have a better life. Help people find happiness, help people find meaning in life. Help people as I said, find fulfillment. So that's a large part of my work right now which I think is very important for me and fun. And again, they don't need me to help them achieve more. You know, they're doing quite fine on their own without me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:04

I would agree.

Marshall Goldsmith 30:06

They don't really need me. On the achievement scale, they're already 99.999.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:11

They're doing fine.

Marshall Goldsmith 30:12

You really think going from a 99.999 to a 99.9999 is going to make any difference? No.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:19

We'll call them marginal.

Marshall Goldsmith 30:20

It won't make any difference. Now, before we wrap up, can I finish with my favorite advice?

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:26

Yes, please.

Marshall Goldsmith 30:27

I always like to give people my favorite advice that is this: "take a deep breath". Ah, imagine that you're 95 years old, and you're just getting ready to die. Right before you take that last breath, you're given a beautiful gift, the ability to go back in time and talk to the person that's listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better professional, much more important, the ability to help that person have a better life. What advice would the wise 95 year old you looking at death, who knew what mattered and what didn't? What was important was not important. What advice would that old person have for the 'you' is listening to 'me' right now? Stop and breathe. Whatever you're thinking now, do that. In terms of a performance appraisal as the only one that will matter. Nettle person says, "You did the right thing." That old person says "You made a mistake." You really don't have to impress anyone else. Some friends of mine interviewed all folks who are dying got asked this question, "What advice would you give? On the personal side, three things. Thing number one, be happy now. That's what a lot of the book is– be happy now. Not next week, not next month, not when I get this or that. Find joy in the process of life itself. Because the process is all there is– be happy now. Number two is friends and family, don't get so busy climbing the road of success, you forget the people that love you. And then number three, if you have a dream, go for it. Because you don't go for it when you're 35, you may not when you're 45 and probably won't when you're 85. Business advice is much different. Number one, life is short, have fun. We're all gonna be equally dead here. Just have a good time. Enjoy the journey of life. Number two, do whatever you can do to help people. The main reason to help people has nothing to do with money or status or getting ahead, the main reason ill people's much deeper than 95 year old 'you' will be very proud of because you did and disappointed if you don't. And if you don't believe that's true. And if you any CEO who's retired, I've interviewed very many and asked him a question, what are you proud of? None of them have ever told me how big their office was. All they've ever talked about, so people would help. And then finally go for it. World's changing, your industries are changing, your life is changing, do what you think is right. You may not win, at least you tried. Back to regret old people, we almost never regret the risks we take and fail, we usually regret the risk we fail to take. And finally, as I've grown older, in some ways, my level of aspiration has gone down and down, my level of impact is going up and up, I quit worrying about what I'm not gonna change. So my goal on our little podcast here, number one, thank you so much for inviting me is pretty simple. If a couple of people listening to our little podcast have a little better life, I feel very good about our time together.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:24

I appreciate it immensely. I have heard some of that advice. And you give it before and I've personally benefited from it. So I appreciate the opportunity to hear it live in conversation now. And thank you so much for making the time and taking the time. And also for people listening, I highly recommend the book. It's called "The Earned Life". And where can people find that, Marshall?

Marshall Goldsmith 33:51

They gave me a million dollar advance. So my guess is it's gonna be pretty much everywhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:55

Everywhere. All the places you buy books go and search the area.

Marshall Goldsmith 34:00

I think it shouldn't be that hard to find. And then and also go to my website, www.marshallgoldsmith.com, my LinkedIn, my YouTube, I give everything away. I'm glad you brought that up, I forgot. All my material, you may copy, share, download, duplicate using church charity business nonprofit. And by the way, not only do I give it all away, if you want to modify it, modify it, you want to change it, change it, you want to put your name on it, put your name on it, I don't care. My feeling is if it helps anybody, please use it and I'll be honored if you use it in any way that produces any good in the world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:42

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they want to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:46

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:05

Today, it's just you and me, talking about how to find the time to make a career change even when you are insanely busy. And the reason that we've wanted to do this type of episode for a really long time is this is one of the biggest things that stops people again and again and again. If you are wanting to make a career change, finding the time, making the time, prioritizing the time, those sound like they should be easy, and we all know they're not. And I don't want you to have to feel bad when it isn't easy. And instead, I wanted to be able to give you some ways to be able to find that time, take back that time and do something about it here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:52

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

A Career Change Can Pay Well: How to Ask for More with G. Richard Shell

by

on this episode

You’ve done it! After logging numerous hours of hard work focused on a career change, you have received The Job Offer. Your ideal role at a company you really want to work for. Wooooo! Now it’s time for a little more hard work and then you can really put your party pants on. That’s right, you have a little more work to do.. you still need to negotiate. Why? Because you actually can (and should!) ask for more.


When you receive a job offer, you are in the best position to negotiate. It’s your time to get what you want, whether that is more money, better benefits, flexibility. On the other hand, if you’ve been with a company for a few months (or years) and think it’s about dang time to ask for a raise, you can (and should!) Listen in as professor, author & negotiation expert, G. Richard Shell gives real life examples of job and salary negotiation.

What you’ll learn

  • How to ask for more money when you receive a job offer
  • The trick to making negotiation less awkward
  • How to prepare and set goals for your next negotiation
  • How to ask for a raise

Success Stories

I had listened to the Happen To Your Career podcast for several years before reaching out to Scott about getting career coaching. I'd been in my role for nearly 10 years, wanted to stay, but felt like it was time to renegotiate. What I expected/hoped for was maybe a 10% raise MAX, as I was already near the top of my salary range for the area. Scott pushed me to ask for more, helped me feel confident I was worth that ask, and coached me through how that will probably go, what to say, when and how to say it, what not to say, etc. I walked into my boss's office prepared and he knew it. As my request went higher up the chain, they knew it as well. My preparations and HTYC's great coaching paid off, in a few week's turn around time I was given a 20% raise, and renegotiated job duties which will help me enjoy my job even more! I highly recommend both their podcast and coaching services, Scott and his team are the real deal!

Justin, Engineer

I was able to negotiate a higher salary, accepted the offer and I can not be happier! You truly helped make this process as painless as possible! I would (and will) recommend your services to anyone and everyone looking for a new job (or current job pay raise).

Kevin Larsen, Manager of Maintenance, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

I have worked my entire career in behemoth companies (Hershey, Kraft, Pepsi), but I never felt like my creativity could really be stretched. I was often told I have great ideas but there was no way they would happen. So I found myself really discouraged and wanting a more challenging, creative career. And to top it off, I’m making almost $40,000 more a year. I certainly don’t expect that kind of increase every time I make a career move, but I knew my skill value and what I bring to the table. I held my own and negotiated. Now my salary is on par with my male colleagues.

Julie Laughter , Senior Manager, Sustainability

I greatly appreciate your help in bringing this along because I wouldn't have had the confidence to negotiate and to be where I am today without the help of a lot of other people. You played a really significant role in it. I'm not going to be that everyday person that hates my job, I'm going to stretch and I'm going to aspire to be better and I'm not going to make that everyday salary. Thank you Scott for putting this out there for all the people that are trying to do a little bit better and trying to go a little bit farther. This is awesome. I love this. This thing that you do, the whole HTYC thing, from the paperwork all the way down to the podcast and just helping people understand that there is success out there and it is attainable but you've got to work for it.

Jerrad Shivers, Market Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory
Load more
Download New Tab

Richard Shell 00:01

The price tags are just made up. Somebody writes a price on your job the day before you walk in to talk about it. And whether you negotiate or not is a choice you get to make.

Introduction 00:17

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:41

Let's time travel into the future for just a moment. It's a few months down the road, you've been working on a career change, finding the right organization, determining what matters most to you, all the things, you've been doing that for months now and your commitment has paid off. You've just received an offer from the organization that you want to work with very most, it's pretty much a wonderful fit all the way around. Okay, so you finish popping some champagne, you do some happy dancing, it's now time to negotiate. You might be thinking, "What? Negotiate and risk losing this amazing offer?" And that's so commonly the response. Or even if you're willing to negotiate, so many people think that it is a struggle, and it is something that they don't want to do, and it's undesirable. I want you to think about it like this, receiving that offer means, out of every single person that was considered for position they want you. Now, the balls in your court. So how do you propel yourself for that conversation? How do you make this amazing offer actually everything including on the finance side, including on the offer side, including the other things that can be structured into an offer? How do you make it all that you thought it could be into your ideal?

Richard Shell 02:04

If there are a lot of things you want to bring into this discussion that from your point of view might help you achieve your goals, which is to get a certain amount of money with a certain set of benefits by a certain time. And that has to be done beforehand. I can't emphasize that enough. You walk in with no goals, you're gonna get what they offer because you don't know what you want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:26

That's Richard Shell. Richard is a highly experienced lawyer, author, and is currently a professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches MBA level classes and workshops on negotiation and persuasion. Because of his expertise in these areas, he was even sought out by the crisis negotiation unit of the FBI and served as a consultant for them. Here's the thing, you're gonna get to hear how Richard's background in education helps him provide wonderful examples on how to approach negotiations. In particular, I want you to pay attention to what we talk about in our conversation for job offer negotiations. And he does a fantastic job by providing exact language that you can use during your next salary or role negotiation.

Richard Shell 03:13

I am not a natural born negotiator. It was actually something that I felt things anxiety about. And at a given point, I went to law school and went to be a lawyer. And when your lawyer, it's not an option. You're doing a lot of negotiation, you have to all the time. I felt very uncertain about it. I did my best, I looked for role models. But it became a topic that I went, "you know what, I bet there's a lot more to know about this than I'm bringing to it." And so when I got the opportunity to switch careers into being a professor at the Wharton School, one of the beauties of being professors, you get to study what you want to know more about. And I made negotiation, my topic. And so I just went to school on it. And the more I learned the better I got, and the better I got the more confident I got. And then the more confident I got, the better I got. And eventually I started an executive program on negotiation. And the book "Bargaining for Advantage" actually emerged from the executive program. Because as you're teaching senior executives, you learn a tremendous amount about all these different contexts that they're negotiating, including people from Africa coming to the program, who have been hostages, and how they negotiate their way out of it. Or people who are buying and selling businesses and how they do that, and people who are heads of private equity firms, just all these different contexts. So as that began to happen, then I just got loaded with examples, stories, context, and then I could write the book from a business standpoint, and really feel like I was talking about something that I knew about, not because I've done all those things, but because I've been working with people who do them all the time for money and it's their life's work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:04

One of the points that, I believe it was in your book someplace, that you had mentioned is that negotiation often is happening around us, even though we may not realize it and we find ourselves in these situations where we're negotiating, but may not have realized how or when, or where, or even for what necessarily. And the story that I recall, was something along the lines of, I want to say babysitting the hamster or something along those lines. Fill me in. Tell me more.

Richard Shell 05:39

Yeah, sure. I think at a sort of premise level, you can't negotiate unless you know you're doing it. So I mean, you can't do it skillfully. So first step is awareness. And it's often the case that they sneak up on you. So I was living near the university with my family and two sons. And the phone rang one evening, as we were eating dinner, and it was a neighbor's daughter whose name was Emily. And, you know, her father was another professor, you know, we knew the family really well. And she was in middle school. And she said, you know, she was raising money for her little middle school softball team to go on some trip during spring vacation and what I buy a basket of fruit that, you know, they were on selling. And basically, there was a $10 and a $15, and a $20 option for the fruit. And so I listened to it for a little while, and I kind of went "Well okay, Emily, you know, we want to help you. So we'll take the $10 basket." And just then my older son says, "Is that Emily?" I said, "Yeah", he said, "Ask her about the guinea pig." And I went, "what guinea pig?" and we have a guinea pig, but our younger son had just gotten his guinea pig, we're going off for the holidays, we needed someone to take care of the guinea pig. So I said to Emily, "Emily, are you guys gonna be around this weekend?" She said, "Yeah." And I said, "Would you mind taking care of Ned's guinea pig?" And she said, "Oh, we'd love to do that. But in that case, could you take the $20 package?" So she was negotiating. I wasn't. And what am I going to say at that point? I mean, I can't say "No, Emily. I'm gonna make you take care of the guinea pig." But it was a good example of even a child, in fact, children almost always realize that there's some give and take going on. And they're alert, that when someone asked for something, they get a chance to ask for something back. And so I got trapped.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:32

So I have kids, my oldest right now is 12. She's going to turn 13. And I see a lot of evidence that they are very painfully aware that there is always that give and take and trade offs and all kinds of situations as it relates to negotiation. It also makes me curious, at what point do we fall into naivety somewhere along the way, where we're painfully aware that initially like with our parents, but then later on are like, "oh, I guess that's all happening." What are your thoughts on that?

Richard Shell 08:06

Where do we miss it? I think kids actually understand the fun part of it. And they also understand that everything... they're in a relatively weak position, because everything they get comes from their parents. So they're, like, totally dependent. Now, when you're totally dependent on someone, do you study them? Yes, you do. You study them like a holy book. So if they want to get a little more of whatever it is, that's on their list of things that they want, they've studied you, they studied your spouse, they know the whole social story there. And so they have to negotiate, because that's the only way they can, you know, get more of what it is they want. They can of course ask and different families have different cultures. But they don't always get by just asking. So then they have to be a little more clever. Now, the adult world is full of rules. It's full of standard operating procedures. It's full of price tags. It's full of all these things, especially in our culture. Now, if you go to, you know, Ghana, and you know, go shopping, it's a different experience, because they're haggling over everything. But if you go to the supermarket, you know, you don't go up to the guy at the meat counter and say, "Well, I see you're offering filet mignon for $30 a pan, what do you say to 20?" Good luck to you. I mean, that guy doesn't have the authority unless they own their own shop to just count what's sitting there with a price tag on it. So we're acculturated to forget. We live in a price world, not a haggling world. And so there's a lot of support for forgetting in our culture. And you know, then when we learn it, it take a job negotiation, for example. You go, you know, into an employment negotiation and are used to a price tag. And so you're thinking, well, they're offering "X" so that it's like the price tag. So, you know, I'm gonna say yes, or I might lose the job, or I might look like I'm greedy or crazy or something. And actually, at that point, what's going on is, you're not in a market, where there's a price tag. The price tags are just made up, somebody writes a price on your job the day before you walk in to talk about it. And whether you negotiate or not, is a choice you get to make. But when people negotiate it, you don't look crazy, you don't look unreasonable, you don't look like you're coming from another planet, what you look like is someone taking initiative, someone who's got some skills, someone who can do it well and have these awkward conversations in a way that make other people comfortable, which is a really important skill to have. So in some ways, the negotiation process, once you put it into a place where there is no market price, that's the signal, there's no market price, they just... somebody puts a number on something, then it's going to be negotiated if you want to. And most jobs are like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:09

This is really interesting. There are about seven different things I'd love to dig into. However, the most important of those, first are, you mentioned, making people feel comfortable through these awkward conversations and that being a really valuable skill. I don't think I've quite heard it explained that particular way. So one, tell me more about what you mean by that. And how can people begin to get very good at that or practice that?

Richard Shell 11:40

Yeah, well, it depends. Well, you know, how do you make, let's say, you're in sales, how do you make your customer feel comfortable? Well, it depends on who the customer is. So when you're negotiating a lot depends on who your counterpart is, and what their expectations are, and then also, who you are. And part of that, what you get when you buy “Bargaining for Advantage” is a personality assessment, which gives you a chance to benchmark your own sort of impulses and emotions, and learn, well, you know, I'm a pretty cooperative person. And so I'm going to need to make some adjustments to be more assertive, or I'm a very assertive person. And in order to, you know, make this work, I'm gonna have to dial it down a little bit, and listen a little more and be more sort of open to questioning people. So the way you make someone comfortable is going to depend on the emotional intelligence that you have about yourself and the other person with the surrounding circumstances, building a set of expectations. You've got a lot of things to talk about and the last thing you want is to make yourself one of the issues.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:54

Explain that for me. Tell me more about what you mean, when you say...

Richard Shell 12:58

When you make yourself an issue, it means that people start going this person's trouble. They have a personality quirk that don't listen. They overtook me. There's stuff that, you know, some ways you're sort of still interviewing. And so if you make yourself an issue, people started thinking, "you know what, this may not be a good fit." And now you're adding risk where there wasn't any. So I think it's important to just, again, it's social appropriateness. Now, I'll give you a quick story. So I had a student, a student of mine, who was going to work for a hedge fund. And they got this offer. And they started to negotiate it. And they became so aggressive in the negotiation that they started offending the person they were negotiating with. Now, it's a hedge fund. So they want you to be aggressive. But they also need you to be able to client interface. And the person who was making the offer was obviously the person in the power seat in this discussion. And it became obvious that my student who had a very aggressive personality and had trouble containing himself sometimes didn't really have the social intelligence to dial himself down to make the appropriate adjustments to who actually owned the room. And they went through the offer. And he came to me and went, "what did I do?" I said, "Well, you weren't paying attention to the social situation you were in and you overdid it." So you need to learn how to dial it down when you don't have leverage. When you get leverage, you know, maybe there's a chance for you to behave this way. But even then, it's not a great idea. Sometimes when you're up against someone like you, it'll be a shame, imagine you'll both enjoy it, but this other person was not like you and so you blew it. So there's a boundary condition of behavior that we expect in certain social conditions. And when you go outside that boundary, other people become uncomfortable. They don't know where you're coming from, they don't know where you're gonna go next. They wonder what's happening. So your goal as a negotiator is to stay inside the boundary conditions, that is going to allow for open communication, but not make any concessions on your goals. So there are two things going on. One is the social. How do we deal with the other person? The other is your cognitive, where are you going? What's your goal? And then, you know, how close can you get to it?

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:47

Tell me about how that can look in the real world. Because I think that what you said there is so important about not going outside of the perceived social, I forget the word you used, the perceived social boundaries. However, you know, I think that that makes sense on its own, what could that look like? Let's use the, you mentioned, job offer negotiation earlier. Let's use that as a thread here. What would that look like in that situation? Well, I'll give you a situation right now. So we're experiencing this right now. We have someone who were helping who, just now, got an offer just a few days ago. She is about to go and have a conversation with them about that offer. What could that look like in that?

Richard Shell 16:38

Absolutely. So you know, again, I hate to do this to you, but if she's got an offer at a hedge fund, and, that's going to be one set of assumptions about what they'll expect. Because if you're gonna work for a hedge fund, they want you to be aggressive. And if you come in and just softballs negotiate, they're gonna think, "do we really want to hire this person?" On the other hand, if she's got an offer at hospital, and, you know, it's all about patient care, and nursing and stuff like that, then they're not gonna want someone who's aggressive, they're gonna want someone who shows a lot of social intelligence, both people can go in with a goal, you know, whatever the goal is, and I think you set your goals in a salary negotiation, by virtue of what the market tells you, that span of reasonable fair compensation is at this kind of place, in that part of the country, for this kind of position. So you need to do some research. It's just like, if you're buying a car, you know well the MSRP price for the Honda, you know, is X. And with these many bells and whistles, it goes up a little bit. So that's where the offer is. The offer is based on their perception of what the standards will support. You come in, and then you have a respectful conversation, maybe more persistent or less, depending on whether you're in the hospital or the hedge fund, and start talking about what's fair. So obviously, we need to talk about the salary. I'm very excited about the offer that you've given, I can't tell you how close this is, just something that I could see myself doing and really being helpful to you with the experience I bring. And I think we have a shared interest and having a package that works in terms of it being fair for what people get when they do this kind of work in Memphis. So maybe you could tell me a little bit more about why you perceive this package that you've offered as a fair offer. And then let me see if I can think about that and come back to you and respond with some perceptions of mine on how we might improve it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:50

I love that, first of all, thank you for giving a specific language that is so helpful, and makes it real world and people can start to understand how they can embed it into their own reality too. So thank you for that. And I heard you be able to ask, instead of just responding in that situation and saying, "hey, you know, we're off. And here's what I'd like instead." Instead, I heard you use the language to ask, you know, tell me why you feel this is fair from your perspective.

Richard Shell 19:25

Yeah, I wouldn't even use the word tell.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:29

What did you use?

Richard Shell 19:31

Explain.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:32

Ah, I like it. Tell me the difference in your mind between those two words.

Richard Shell 19:36

Because "tell" is a kind of challenge to, you know, like, justify yourself. And "explain" offers the opportunity to give a reason and to get inside their head and see how they came to that conclusion. And there's a trail of breadcrumbs of logic that led them to this place and you're just trying to get in and follow the breadcrumbs back to where it started. And do it in a way that you're sharing information, it's like you're gonna pull this information about fairness. And you've got some, and they've got some. Let's see if we can pull that. And then maybe the salary number, it looks fair after they discuss it, and you, you know, kind of think about it, you go, "Okay, I really see where you're coming from with that. So the package interests me as much as the salary. So I'd like to sort of hold that for a second. And then let's talk about the insurance, the vacation, bonus possibilities, how often will I get reviewed. So if you find performance is excellent, can I get rigid for a salary raise? A little sooner than maybe you might have otherwise thought about." There are a lot of things you want to bring into this discussion that from your point of view might help you achieve your goals, which is get a certain amount of money with a certain set of benefits by a certain time. And that has to be done beforehand, I can't emphasize that enough. You walk in with no goals, you're gonna get what they offer, because you don't know what you want. And people that don't know what they want are pretty easy to deal with. Because they can be persuaded to want what they're being given.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:16

So let's talk... I think that brings up such a great point here, with establishing your goals, what you want out of the negotiation, what you want out of the interaction. So tell me more about what advice would you give to someone who's in that situation. Let's just keep using this job offer, like this real world job offer situation that we have going on right now with one of our clients.

Richard Shell 21:41

Can we give this person a name? They didn't have a real name, but just named her.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:45

We're gonna call her Sarah. How about it? To protect it in the sense and everything else. So Sarah.

Richard Shell 21:52

Yeah. All right. So Sarah. Sarah's got a job negotiation, she's got an offer, which means they have not just said, we want to hire you, but they've said, we want to hire you and here's the deal.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:01

Yep, that's where she's at right this very second. So that's perfect.

Richard Shell 22:05

That happens to me in my life all the time, because I teach in an MBA program, and students get offers, and they come up to my office, and they say, "Okay Professor Shell, what do I do now?" So you get out a piece of paper, and you write down the world as you would like it to be working for this group. Maybe you have some work life balance issues that you would like to take care of, maybe you've got some planned vacation that you already had in the books that your family's eager to take, and you've already got a down payment on the vacation place, whatever it is. So make a list of all the things that would make you a really happy camper. And then think, "Okay, do I need more information on some of these to help with the standards?" That standards are a really important concept in negotiation. Standards are the justifications we offer, that what we're asking for is fair and reasonable. And that means that you've got some benchmarks, you have a friend who has a job like this, and they're getting this in their job, your last job actually offered a better version of this than this one is. And so you have a version of reality that you can talk about, that is just not quite in sync with the one that you're seeing on this piece of paper. So now you have your standards, you have your wish list. And then you go in, and you start talking about the items and where you'd like to go with it, and why you're grateful so that you keep the month communication open, and you have a direction you're headed. Now, it doesn't mean you're gonna get it all. But another thing that I would advise in this kind of situation for Sarah, is that she uses at least one meeting just for information. Don't consider the first discussion over an offer letter, as we got close it today. Unless there's urgency on their side, there's always it depends. But if there's a chance, say, you know, "I got this letter, I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about it. So I can understand it. And ask a few questions and just kind of fill out the parts of my brain that don't have the information that you have. Because you do this all the time. I only get to do this once." So then use that to upload. You know, why is it fair? Are there options here? Are there, you know, are they flexible there? What's going on? And then say, "Thank you, I'd love to think about it. I'd love to get back to you. What's the deadline we have to meet here? I want to work with you on that." So then they get some time, then you run back and then you start doing things like calling Scott and saying, "Scott, this is what they said, what do you think?" And getting perspective consulting and then setting a set of priorities so that you know what this is the most important thing so let's make sure we secure that. And then you come back with a response, where you get to say, "Well, I thought about it a lot, I think it's great. There are a few areas I'd like to tweak if you're open to discussing. And so here's what I'm thinking at the moment." And then you get your turn. And they get to say, "Are you crazy? No, never. We've never done that for anybody." Just asking, you know, just checking, you know. And then, you know, depending on how it goes, you might even go to a third meeting. So you might exchange your proposal, then on email, just to summarize where you think things are, and consulting in between sessions really important. You don't want to do this alone. We have a saying at the Wharton negotiating workshop, "never prepare alone." Why is that? Because you're in a bubble. You don't even know what you're not asking for and your own fears or anxieties, people negotiate with themselves a lot more than they negotiate with other people. And if you're talking to somebody else, and you say, "Well, I would never ask for that." Somebody else will say, "why not?" "Well, it just seems unreasonable." "What? Doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I mean, it's not what you're asked for, it's how you ask for it." "Oh, okay. All right, Bill, before I abandon that, maybe I'll keep that on the list. But if you didn't have somebody to talk to, you talk yourself out of it in the second" or the reverse may be happening, you may have something on the list, and this person knows the industry and they know that if you go in and ask for that, they'll ask you out the door. You know, that is certifiably insane. It shows you don't know anything about the job, if you ask for that. And so you lose credibility if you put that on the table, when you don't need to say your helper can, you know, give you a little more information that maybe that's something you want to just abandon until you've been there five years, or whatever it is. So other people's perspectives are really important.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:32

[26:52] You said a couple of things there that I think are particularly powerful, one, you were talking about your own fears. And you mentioned the "Why don't you want to do that?" "Well, it sounds unreasonable." "Well, that doesn't sound reasonable to me." I can't tell you the number of times like, into the probably well over 1000 times that I have been involved in that conversation. So that is very real to prove your point that never prepare alone. Your perspective is going to be missing some pieces in one way or another. So I really appreciate you making that point. One other thing I wanted to ask you about too, you mentioned deadlines earlier and just as a part of the conversation asking about deadlines, I have found, and I'm curious if you've seen this too in other places, but when we get to deadlines, especially for things like job offers, there is some crazy fears that have a tendency to surface as it relates to deadlines. Like, I feel like I can not ask for seven days. Or I feel like if I go more than giving them 24 hours to respond like it might disappear as an option. So question number one is, have you seen that same thing? Is it relates to job offers or other places in referring to those fears popping up around deadlines that it might disappear? And then two, what advice do you give, I guess I would say, to help with that?

Richard Shell 28:24

Well, a deadline is just a way of making something scarce. So you've got an opportunity, as soon as you put a deadline on it, it becomes scarcer, because it could go away. And that's the reason you put a deadline on it. And every time something becomes scarce here becomes more valuable. That's basically the law of supply and demand. So people put deadlines on things for a variety of reasons. Now you know, it may have the effect of creating some urgency on the other side, but they may put the deadline on because they have another person, it's gonna get the job if you turn it down, and the other person is gonna go poof. And so they have to get an answer from you, because otherwise they lose Plan B. And so I've done this on the other side, I'm the chair of a department at Wharton, I hire people. And we have Plan B and C sometimes. And we need to manage it with deadlines. So it's nothing necessarily bad or aggressive about having one. I think it helps if you ask why the deadline is important. And that way, if there really isn't any reason, you probably have a different kind of deadline. Then if they say, "Well, we need it because there's a regulatory filing coming up at the end of the month. And we have to have our headcount settled." But that being said, if the deadline becomes an issue, that is inconvenient, you can't get the information you need by the deadline, your person you're consulting with is in, you know, Timbuktu and can't be reached on the internet until next week. Then I think you go in and you say, "Can we talk about the deadline? Because here's why I'm having a problem meeting it. But if you... if it's totally fixed, I'll try to cope but if it's possible to get an extra day or two or a week, or whatever it is, then I'd really appreciate it. You know, as I said earlier, you do this all the time. But this negotiation, for me, is huge in my life. And I'd like to be able to take the time it takes to make sure I get it right. But I want to work with you. So you know, is there a chance we could add some time to it?" So you can negotiate if you need to, otherwise, don't worry about it, and even make it a concession you've made. "So I got a deadline. I've been working with you on that. Now, can you work with me on, you know, the start date?" And so now you're doing the guinea pig thing. They asked for something, you get to ask for something. So they had a deadline. So you could ask for a late start date. But the important thing is almost every deadline is set as a result of a negotiation by somebody. And anything that's been created by a negotiation can be renegotiated.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:10

Richard, I have probably more than enough questions to keep us going for months. However, I just want to say thank you, first of all, this has been amazing. I really appreciate both the stories and making this very palatable, giving exact language that people can use and also differentiate where people need to consider that it depends. Thank you for addressing both sides. That has been very, very helpful. I wanted to do two things. One, we mentioned the bargaining styles assessment, where can people go and take advantage of that?

Richard Shell 31:51

Well, it's in the appendix in the book. So the book is widely available. It's in 17 languages. So it's not hard to find "Bargaining for Advantage". And if you get the book, then it's on the Kindle. It's in the Paperback. And it's Appendix A, I have to say about everything we talked about today. And the book itself is threaded with that. So it's sort of... a chapter will say, if you're an accommodating person, this might be the best move at this moment. If you're a competitive person, something else might be the best move. So it has a kind of a theme through the book that your personality is an important thread.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:27

First of all, the title of the book is "Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People", which I personally loved as a title. And at the same time, I found it very helpful, almost it made the book more interactive. That's probably the best way that I could describe it, which then I believe, for me personally, made it feel much more useful, and therefore actually be much more useful, as well. So really nice job with that, get the book so that you can get the access to the assessment as well, because they work very wonderfully hand in hand. And is there any place else that people should go? Or could go if they're interested in learning more about you, your story, or the book itself?

Richard Shell 33:15

Sure. Well, GRichardShell.com, is my personal website. So I've written four books, not just this one. And so that website has information about some of the other books. And then, you know, I actually think that, I mean, we offer executive programs that weren't, and people come for a week and study that subject with us. And it's the best possible learning environment for someone whose company is willing to sponsor them, but it's pretty expensive. So it's a luxury item. Otherwise, I would just say, take every advantage you can to make negotiation one of your things. It's just like playing the flute, if you practice you'll get better. And learning about it by reading books, by going and listening to podcasts that interview people and discuss it, seeing how important it is in diplomacy or in business or in real estate are all the different ways that it comes up, follow it and then the final thing that I enjoy the most is look forward in movies. The office is nothing but a wonderful Encyclopedia of negotiations that illuminates how people behave and how it works in a really good humored way. But it's you know, it's really fun once you start getting your arms around it, to see it like that in films and television and understand it and you kind of go, "Oh, I get it. I got to understand it now." It opens up part of the world that you might not have understood before.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:50

Well, I really very much appreciate both the conversation and the time. So thank you.

Richard Shell 34:57

Oh, Scott, my pleasure. I appreciate your having me aboard here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:05

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they want to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:10

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Marshall Goldsmith 36:28

What advice would a 95 year old you looking at death? Who knew what mattered and what didn't? And what was important and what's not important? What advice would that old person have for you is listening to me right now?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:43

How many versions of you are there? No, I'm, I'm not talking about alternate universes or anything crazy like that. Here's what I mean. Do you think you're the same person you were 10 years ago? About five years ago? I'm gonna say probably not. Yet, so often when I talk to people about making a career change, they feel stuck on a career path that 18 year old or 20 year old them selected and said "Hey, this is what I want to do." And ultimately, they're scared to make a change because they believe they'll regret leaving their career comfort zone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:22

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Pivoting To A Career That Fits When Your Priorities Change

by

on this episode

Aligning your career with your priorities can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. 

After 10 years as a high level marketing professional, Haley wanted to let her foot off the gas. She wanted a career that was more flexible for her family, but she was fearful a career pivot would jeopardize the experience and success she had gained over the past decade as a marketing executive. 

Learn how Haley made a career change to a role that aligned with her priorities (without derailing her career trajectory!)

What you’ll learn

  • How to know when it’s time to leave your long-term career (even if it’s going well!)
  • The importance of giving yourself permission to get out of your career comfort zone
  • How to align each phase of your life with your career
  • The benefits of taking small steps toward your ideal career 
  • Why you need a personal board of advisors
  • The importance of being selective and waiting for the right offer 

Success Stories

Getting clear on what I wanted helped me to recognize how perfect this opportunity was when it came along and the choice to switch was a no-brainer. Thanks for doing the work you do!

Austin Marlar, Frontend Developer, United States/Canada

Thank you both for inspiring me to always ask, "Why NOT me?" and stick to my values for what I want for my life. I couldn't be happier and more excited for this new life!

Lisa Schulter, Special Projects Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

After working many years in aerospace as a Manufacturing Engineer, I wanted to move into a Program Manager role without ever holding a PM title or certification. Scott and HTYC helped me to showcase my relevant strengths and made me feel confident and prepared for the interview stage. I landed the Project Manager job I was seeking even though there were qualified internal candidates available. I was able to avoid a disruptive family move and am loving my new position.

Andrew Gagnon, Project Manager, United States/Canada

The role is meeting my expectations… totally owning the marketing function. And luckily the founder/president is always forward-looking – he just presented us a huge strategy doc for the next year. So there will be an opportunity for us to grow beyond our initial audience, which is great. I applied (against conventional wisdom!) and went through a lengthy interview process. I did use the resume/cover letter chapter quite a bit to customize what I used to respond to the ad. I also found that using the Interview chapter was super helpful in formulating “SBO” oriented responses, and I even used some of them in the interview. Having those “case study” type responses was really helpful and I believe cemented my candidacy. BTW – they hired me completely over Skype and phone! I never met anyone from my company (in person) until last week at a conference.

Erica Fourrette, Marketing Director

Load more
Download New Tab

Haley Stomp 00:01
I had been in a role for about 10 years and we had done amazing things. I had built a team, we had grown the business, so much success, so much fun, but I was at that point where it was more about maintaining an incremental growth. And I was ready, I was hungry for that next thing to challenge me.

Introduction 00:23
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:48
When my youngest son Grayson was born, I remember a shift that took place for me internally, and it went something like this. In my head, it sounded like, "Okay, I now have three small kids at home, and I am at work or commuting like 60, sometimes many more hours a week. And when I'm not there, I'm stressing about work. So something's gotta give, something's got to change." Now, this is similar to what happens for a lot of people. And maybe it's bringing a new child into the world. Maybe it's your favorite coworker find a new job. Something happens externally, where you decide it's time for a priority change, a priority shift. And making that decision alone can seem life changing, but it can also be kind of terrifying. It can seem like, "Okay, I want to leave. I want something new, but has my entire career, all my degrees, my experience, all the time it took to get here, has that been for nothing?

Haley Stomp 01:54
I mean, my job was my identity. So I had to figure out who was I without this job and what did I want to do. And there was some work for me to understand that, just because I left that role, I didn't leave all of my strengths behind. And I didn't leave, you know, who I was behind. All of that was still me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:15
That's Haley Stomp. And as you'll hear in just a little bit, Haley received her degree in chemical engineering, and later pivoted to marketing. She has now accumulated a lot of experience and is currently a fractional chief marketing officer. And just as importantly, if not more importantly, a mom. Haley realized it was time for another career pivot when her priorities begin shifting from her home life and work life, and they were no longer matching. I want you to take a listen in the conversation that I have with her, because you're going to hear how Haley came to terms with leaving the company that she had been at for well over a decade. And what it took for her to figure out what she wanted her career to look like, and how it could truly fit to the rest of her life. Here she is talking about where her career started.

Haley Stomp 03:11
Yeah, I've made a couple of big pivots during my career. So I graduated with a chemical engineering degree. And I went into engineering in a food production company. So I know how to make a lot of different things, breakfast, cereal, fruit, snacks, and cake and all kinds of stuff. So that was exciting. I did that for several years. And then I made a transition from that company to a different company. And when I switched to that job, I started my master's to get my MBA. And during my... when I was getting my degree at night, I started shifting from manufacturing into R&D and project management. And that gave me a whole view of all the different functions in a business. And I realized that marketing was having a lot of fun. They were getting to go do stuff and get out of the manufacturing plant. And so as I was finishing my degree, I tailored my classes to the marketing end. So by the time I got done with my master's, I had been eyeing a marketing job within the same company. I moved into that role. That was a big change for me to go from being an engineer to being charged marketing. And...

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:24
Okay, hold on. Let me ask you about that then. So was that really a case of where you're looking at other people in marketing and be like, "that looks like they get to have all the fun." Or were there other elements there that caused you to say, "Hey, I think I want to lean more towards marketing." Tell me about that.

Haley Stomp 04:42
Yeah, I mean, it was both. I was working on really important projects, but I literally bought a manure spreading truck for a project I was working on. I was working with sulfuric acid, which was dangerous. I was getting called in the middle of the night because pumps weren't running. So I'm doing all of these things that were interesting and exciting and I love the science and I loved that I was doing it. But I was seeing this business side, and people were getting to make big strategic decisions and get outside of those walls of the plant and go places and see people and do things. And I really wanted to be a part of the action.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:17
Is that part of the... I've gotten to know you a little bit over the last year and a half. And one thing that has become very evident to me is, those strategic decisions are something that you are very good at. I'm curious, though, where you started to realize and recognize that, one, that was fun for you. Because it sounds like that was part of what you were alluding to. And then two, that that was something that you were or had the potential to be great at.

Haley Stomp 05:48
You know, I took a bridge role in between engineering and marketing, it was a project manager role. In that project manager role, I could take my project manager skills as an engineer and see all the potential problems, and I got to understand all the functions. And the thing I really liked doing, I got to report to the leadership team on how our project was doing. I get to tell them, "Here's where the problems are, here's where we need money, here's what's going well." And I loved that part of it, trying to direct the decisions and figure out and basically negotiate on the things that I think needed to happen so we could hit the goal. But that role was really, I think, where I discovered my love of being in that position.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:30
So how did that influence then some of the changes that you made after that?

Haley Stomp 06:34
Yeah, so I applied for a marketing role when I graduated and moved out of the project manager role. Got the marketing role. And a couple months into this role, I had a presentation in Belgium. I got to fly to Belgium and give this presentation. And one of the leaders in the company approached me and she said, "Hey, we want to go work with this company in China. And we need somebody to launch this product for us globally, would you be interested?" I was like, "I know nothing about the product. I've never been to China. But yes."

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:05
Sure. That sounds great. Let's do it.

Haley Stomp 07:08
Yeah, and I mean, it was one of those sliding door moments for me where I just took a leap and just did it. It was probably the biggest pivot of my career to go do that, because it pushed me out of my comfort zone. And it just sent me down this track that was really eye opening and developing and changing on what I was going to be doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:29
What were some of the biggest learnings out of that experience? Living outside your comfort zone.

Haley Stomp 07:38
I learned I couldn't be afraid to fly when you have to get on a 13 hour flight. You have to get over that in a hurry. You know, I think the main thing I learned is that I could do so much more than I gave myself credit for. I mean, I went to Asia by myself for a whole month. And I was also pretty scrappy, and you know, the big learning, I think, when you leave your culture and start working within other cultures, it's just how similar you are. And it was about building those relationships and understanding where people were coming from and building that team. And, you know, they're my teammates, like, a person that sits in the same town as me, they're the same as that in terms of our relationship and what we needed to do together.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:19
I'm also curious, then, what caused you... after you started making these changes, recognizing what you enjoyed more, and then moving up the ladder with this organization, what were the pieces that caused you to recognize that you no longer wanted to move in the same path?

Haley Stomp 08:37
Yeah, I mean, I think my priorities shifted a little bit. I went through, you know, when I didn't have kids, I was doing a lot of this exciting climbing and traveling and all of that. And then when you start to have to balance, you know, a marriage and kids and all of this stuff, you just have to reprioritize a little bit. So I think it was that balancing act was definitely, you know, a reason to shift and think about how am I going to do all of this. And I think too, I've always had a project mindset. So as an engineer, you could be a process engineer, project engineer, I tended to be a project engineer. I wanted to start in an end date. And I wanted to see that. And then I wanted to move on to the next thing. And so I think there were a couple points where I was like, "Alright, I feel like I've gotten this to a good point, I need the next thing."

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:27
I need this project to be over and move on to a different.

Haley Stomp 09:30
Right. For the next one. Because this is more about maintaining, and more incremental growth, where I was looking maybe for some of those opportunities to make those big shifts.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:40
So that's really fascinating. I think even that mindset of having a project outlook, and I found that that can be really helpful for people because when we're in a...what was the name of the last role you're at?

Haley Stomp 09:54
Senior Vice President of Global Marketing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:56
Yeah. When you're in, you know, that type of role where you're Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, it's perpetual, like, it just...it goes on. It is not necessarily something that unless you are treating it as a project with open and close and, you know, maybe even experimental type mindset, then it is perpetual. And I think that in itself creates a lot of challenges when other things start to change in your life, like, you describe, "hey, you know, I was married and had kids and there became other different priorities that started to become very important as well. And when something's perpetual or non-project, then it's harder I found to even think about, like, stepping away or changing the landscape or moving on to the next project or whatever." So I'm curious what that was like for you and whether you found the same experience, or what advice you might give to someone who's in that situation.

Haley Stomp 10:55
You know, I think one of the big learnings I've had in the last couple of years is that there are phases in life. You know, you go to college, and your eyes on the prize. I'm gonna get my degree, I'm gonna get this job, I'm focused on my career. And oh, by the way, I want to get married and have kids, but I'm focused on my career, focused on my career, and you're kind of going through your 20s. And even for me, I would say, my early 30s, like, this was all just going to work out. And I think the last couple of years, I really realized that, look, I'm in a different phase now. There was an article recently that I ran across where it talked about the three phases of a woman's career, and it was so helpful to say, "Oh, wait, this is normal. There are phases in a career. And as I'm getting older, as the things in my life priorities are changing, it's okay. It's normal that your career is going to look different along these phases." And that you're not just going to put the gas down 100% until you die, I mean, it's okay to kind of work everything together. And maybe that was the realization that this phase of my life needs to all fit together or stack together. It doesn't have to be– my career is driving everything and I'll try to fit everything in there. It's more like– how do I make this phase of my life ideal with all of the factors that are in it? So, you know, on your project versus perpetual, I think it was about giving myself permission to say, "I get to design the space on how it works for me, instead of just following along the career trajectory and hoping everything else fits in."

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:34
That makes a lot of sense. What made you finally decide that I'm going to make a career change from that role, that situation, that organization? What took place that caused you to decide?

Haley Stomp 12:50
Yeah, so two years before I left, I had been in a role for about 10 years, and we had done amazing things. I had built a team, we had grown the business, so much success, so much fun, but I was at that point, like, I was talking about that project versus perpetual where it was more about maintaining an incremental growth. And I was hungry for that next thing to challenge me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:12
That all the project.

Haley Stomp 13:13
I was ready. And so I was at a decision point internally in the company to... do I look outside, or do I look for something internal. And timing worked out really well for me to try this global role to go back to the global role. And putting my Superwoman cape on, I was going to spend half the time out of the country and do this amazing job. At the same time, my kids were starting to need more from me in terms of activities and eating and whatever it was, you know. So I think it was a little bit of a perfect storm in terms of it was the ultimate challenge. I tried to...I think about, like, watching the Olympics, and different dives have different difficulty ratings. I feel like I stepped into, like, "Okay, the highest difficulty rating. So if I perform it here, I should get a really good score, because the difficulty rating of everything I'm trying to do at once is pretty high." But I mean, I grew so much in those two years. And that was such a good experience. And it was a good decision to make that move, but COVID hit, and I think, holding all the balls that we had going in the air at the same time, COVID was finally the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of trying to keep all of these things moving at the same time, and it was just not sustainable.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:34
What was the final thing? If you remember. If there was one thing that caused you to say, "Okay, this is I'm making the change."

Haley Stomp 14:44
I remember the day that I was like, alright, something's got to change. I was on a conference call. And I'd been on several conference calls and you know, I'd been really trying to keep it all going. And I just dropped off the call, and I got in my car–I left work, I got in my car, and I drove to my parents house. And I just said, "Look, I don't know if I can go back to work tomorrow, like, how am I going to get up tomorrow? I have all these things that need to be done. I need to talk about this." And so in the bucolic small town, Iowa way, we went to an apple orchard and bought some apples, we had a nice dinner, we talked about it. And the next morning, I got up, I called into the next conference call and drove home while I was on the call, and was like, "Alright, I'm gonna get through this. But I've made a decision that I need to make a change. And I need to figure out how to do that." So my project manager hat was going to go back on and say, you know, "What's my action that I need to take to get out of this place?" And I didn't mention this before. But earlier in my career, I had another moment where I was like, "things were not going well, I need to leave." And I gave myself, at that point, I gave myself three months, I said, "I'm doing this for three months, and I'm going to make it work. And if in three months, I haven't fixed it, then I will make a decision." And luckily, at that point, three months later, it was all going great. But in that pivot point in 2020, I just... I could feel that I needed to upset the applecart in an even bigger way to make it better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:24
After you made that decision, do you remember what it felt like at that point in time? What did that feel like?

Haley Stomp 16:31
Honestly, relief. I had a sense of relief, like, "Okay, I've made a decision." And I think, you know, I've noticed that a lot along the way. And Mo and I have talked about that, too, that... he told me "action brings clarity", and making the decision one way or another is such a relief, and it may not be the right decision, but man, just making that decision feels good. And it's like, alright, I made this decision. Now I can start moving on whatever plan is following that decision.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:01
That is amazing. I also have felt that. And now actually, strangely, I use that as an indicator for whether or not I felt like making the right decision for me. If I'm getting some of those sense, same senses and feelings after I've made that decision that helps validate it. That said, though, I'm curious, what advice would you give to people who are in those same sorts of situations who are trying to make those types of decisions for themselves? Because it's hard.

Haley Stomp 17:31
You know, it's really hard. And I think so much about this. And I think from some of my other friends and contacts, too. I wish that I had a coach while I was still at my last job. I wish I had hired a career coach while I'm just within my company trying to make decisions and it's lonely at the top. And the farther you move up in a company, especially when you've been there for a while, people have seen you at different levels. And so when you get to the top, it's hard to find the right people to admit that you're not sure what to do, or you need help. And so you have to build that network. And yes, you build it within. But I absolutely think building it outside of where you're at is so helpful. And you know, when I left, I made a huge effort to build my personal board of advisors. And I had, I mean, I joined a women's networking group, I have Happen To Your Career, we have the Happen To Your Career group. Outside of that, I had my therapist, I had my friend who wanted help marketing, she started her life coaching business, so we were trading hour for hour. And then I had some other people that I... I just made a list, like, these are the people that are going to support me. But if I look back, I wish...I'm like, "Man, I would have enjoyed work more before if I would have done some of those things earlier. If I had worked harder to put that together." I just want to tell any HR person out there, any manager out there, help your people get that network, because it would be so beneficial.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:38
[19:00] It creates a much healthier place to operate from is how I've always thought about it. As opposed to not having that network and having all those questions, like, should I be doing this? Should I not be doing this? Is this right for my career? Is this...like all the million things that go through and I've experienced the same thing, the further up you go in any organization, no matter what size it is, small or large, it definitely becomes far more challenging to find people to where you can talk through things like that, and it's still appropriate and productive and useful for the other people as well and yourself.

Haley Stomp 19:39
Yeah, and you know, we put a lot of pressure on people's managers, but I think finding a mentor is helpful, but the thing I liked about having a coach is, that person is dedicated to helping me. And, you know, in my case, Mo was seeing all kinds of other people in similar positions and so it was really helpful to hear, "Oh, you know, luckily there are a lot of other case studies and other people where we can draw information and draw experience from" and that was very helpful for me too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:08
You're the third person I've talked to today, that is... No, but seriously, though, like all joking aside, I can completely appreciate where that is very helpful. Because if it's normalized, whatever it is, whatever we're talking about, whatever type of challenge, if it's normalized, that alleviates some of the feelings of craziness, or whatever else, you know, other people might feel, I'm not even sure what to call that feeling, honestly.

Haley Stomp 20:36
I think there's so much responsibility. As a leader, you're trying to be there for your people, and you're showing strength, and you're showing resilience and all of those things. But it doesn't mean you wouldn't benefit from somehow, you know, or somebody to talk through these things with. And from the female perspective, when you work with a lot of males, sometimes it can be intimidating or hard to say, "Hey, I don't know what to do here, because you're already trying to look like you know what you're doing." So that was another factor sometimes, too is, "can I find another female who's like 10 years older than me to just kind of tell me how it's going? What do I need to do?" You know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:14
Yeah. When you look back, after you made that decision to make a change, and then as you started exploring what your next steps would look like, what was most challenging? Or what surprised you along the way?

Haley Stomp 21:32
I had to, I mean, my job was my identity. So I had to figure out who was I without this job? And what did I want to do? And there was some work for me to understand that, just because I left that role, I didn't leave all of my strengths behind. And I didn't leave you know who I was behind. All of that was still me. I could take that with me. And then I just needed to look for the next place to apply it. So I think it was an unraveling that idea of, you know, am I a failure for leaving this role? Was it because I couldn't handle it? Was there something wrong with me that I couldn't do this? And kind of getting to the point where, "no, that's absolutely not the case." And I think there was also a really positive feeling the day that I posted on LinkedIn that I had left that role. So many industry contacts had complimented the work I had done to that point. And I think that was all learning to say, "All right, I did this for a really long time. I've banked all this, this is my experience, and no one can take it from me. And I don't need to feel bad about making this decision for myself. It's okay, it's good." And again, life has phases, you make these changes, you don't have to stay at the same place your whole career. And sometimes it's okay to do that for yourself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:56
Why do you think that's so hard for so many of us?

Haley Stomp 23:00
Well, I mean, it's safe and comfortable and you know what you're doing, you've got that structure, you know, the bad and the good already, you don't have to learn that. And you have your network, and you have all of that, I think it's scary to let it all go. And just kind of be out there by yourself. And I think that's really hard. And the other thing, you know, when you're a manager, you don't want to leave your people, you feel bad about, "oh, I don't want to..."

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:26
That sense of responsibility. Yes, pervasive.

Haley Stomp 23:29
Yes. And then you have to remind yourself that look, any of these people could leave tomorrow. You have to be kind of selfish. And it can be hard to be selfish about those things when you've been trained to be in a leadership role, where your main job is to help develop people and to help your team, you know, to say, "Alright, I need to be selfish about what I need" especially after surviving the pandemic together, it can be really hard to just say, "All right, I gotta do this for me."

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:57
Yeah. So let's talk about that for just a second. I think that's really fascinating that you use the word selfish there, because I would argue that changing pieces so that you can make sure that you're taken care of, as well as taking care of your kids, your family, it's probably not actually that selfish, but it definitely feels selfish. I jokingly and seriously use that word a lot. I'm like, "go ahead and be selfish, like for a minute." But what do you think for you that feels selfish to where we need to use that word? Because you're not a selfish person. You're the furthest thing from selfish person that I can think of. Still, though, it feels that way. So tell me about that.

Haley Stomp 24:41
I will tell you, it doesn't feel that way anymore.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:43
That's great.

Haley Stomp 24:44
Yes, I think at the time because you spend so much time building these things and you're so committed, you know, maybe we take so much out of the success and the things that we're able to do. It's really tangible. The rewards of working and doing that are very tangible. You get paid. You see you get praised. You see the results on a budget, on a sales sheet. You can really touch and feel those, the success of what you're doing. And so it's a very tangible way to see that what you're doing matters. It's not always tangible to see that I made chicken for my kids, and they're super happy. That's not...

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:25
Sometimes they're not super happy.

Haley Stomp 25:28
Yeah, actually, I guess they don't really like my cooking. But I think we tie so much of our worth into that and who we are into that. And, you know, and especially me, being a female in a more male dominated area for so long, being a first generation college student, I mean, I remember thinking at some point, I'm done. I don't have to prove anything to anybody else anymore. Like, I'm done, I can be done with that. And now it's about what works for me in this part of my life. And I only have eight more years till my kids go to college. And what do I want that next eight years to look like?

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:03
Yeah, we've definitely had that conversation many times over. Ours like, there's only this much time for this, for the kids, for... And that is definitely a driving force for me as well. I am also really curious, you said, "Hey, I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel like it is selfish in the same way that I did at the time." What changed for you and what did you have to do for yourself, in order to get to that point to be able to look at it differently?

Haley Stomp 26:36
Well, I started writing, and I think that was helpful. I also think when I finally started talking to other people about other jobs, and explaining my experience, the reaction I would get with sometimes surprising. You know, when you're at the same place for so long, and you're always pushing and being pushed, and doing things, you don't actually realize maybe, you don't appreciate everything you've done, not everybody spinned up all the countries I've been to, not everybody's done the things I've done, but it's hard to realize that when you're in it. And so I think when I started looking at other opportunities and talking to other people, it was nice to see their reaction to, oh, you know, and just realize that, alright, there is value without this company, there's value without my title. My experiences here, I'm very comfortable and confident in what I have done. And so I think it was just starting to reach out and look at other positions and realize and be able to compare all those years, and what all that experience looks like, compared to other potential roles. And also just honestly, just talking to other people who have done it, listening to the podcast, I mean, you have so many good examples of nothing fell apart when they quit and found the next thing. Every one of those is this...

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:50
Life's going on. Crazy isn't it? Like, life still went on.

Haley Stomp 27:54
Alright, that was a huge thing for me like, oh, it's cool. If I don't leave the country for a month, guess what, I still have cool things to do. There's people to meet, life is going on, all around me outside of where I was at. And I just... I needed to actually see it to believe it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:11
Okay, let's go all the way back to when you made that decision. And you were maybe even just before that decision, maybe the month prior to that, because we have a lot of people that are listening to the podcast that are in that place right now. And they are considering, "Hey, do I stay? Do I go? If I went, what would that look like? What does the world is?" All the things that you know, having been there, run through all these crazy things that run through your mind. And also some of the not so crazy ones, too. And you don't necessarily know which ones or which. But what advice would you give to that person who's in that place? Who's trying to decide, you know, should I make a career change? If so, what does that look like? What does a better life or better career look like for me? What is extraordinary look like?

Haley Stomp 29:01
Yeah, I mean, well, if they're listening to the podcast, that's a great start. Because for me, it was just so helpful to hear other people make that decision and come out okay on the other side, that was really helpful. And I still have it up in front of me, on my board, the ideal career profile, like writing down here is what I want it to look like. And then you could even, you know, what I ended up doing was I made a spreadsheet with here all the things I want, here all the opportunities, and I would score it, and it would give me a really quantitative objective look at this. I mean, people could do that where they're currently at too, to see what was missing. You know, when I when I used to coach my team members, I'd be like, "Alright, you're not happy where you're at, but can we design something internally first? Can we look at that?" But I mean, honestly, I hate to be a broken record, but hire a coach. Go get yourself a career coach.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:58
It's says so much easier. I very much have been in the camp over and over again. And my identity used to be built on, I can figure this out myself, like very, very much strong, like my dad is a wonderful, really wonderful role model. And also, he's the type of guy who just figured out like, never pay for anything. So that was what I grew up with. And well, in some cases, I'm still releasing that. And it's just, there are many things in life, it's just harder or impossible to do on your own. So I really appreciate that advice, not just because we have a team of coaches working with people all over the world.

Haley Stomp 30:36
Well, and I think, I mean, it's really daunting when you haven't updated your resume, or really been on LinkedIn, because you've been happy for a long time, or when you haven't done any of those things, it's so overwhelming to think about, I don't even know where to find a person to help me or how to do this. And so a couple years ago, I found somebody to help me rewrite my LinkedIn and my resume, just in case, you know, and I found Happen To Your Career by Googling, you know, and I was like, and I compared it with a few other things and less like, this one feels good. But I just kind of had to take some leaps of faith to find some of those resources. Because when you have to start, you have to start somewhere, I think that's the thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:18
One last fun fact before we go. I feel really fortunate that I get to interact with a lot of our clients, not all of our clients, but you and I got to meet along the way. And that doesn't necessarily happen for everyone. But then later on, we actually talked about a role here at Happen To Your Career, which is something that doesn't happen all the time at all. And what was really cool, you mentioned your ideal career profile, which you said, "Hey, I still have up" and your ideal career profile, you know, helped us realize that what we were talking about at the time, it just honestly was not the right opportunity for you. And I think that that is so cool. And evidence of like, hey, that working and you staying in line with what is true for you.

Haley Stomp 32:02
Yeah, I think that was so helpful. And you know, there were a lot of times along the journey where I was like, I should take this job, you know, or I should take these jobs because I should get a job. And it was... it took a lot of patience and willpower and practice to say no to things that weren't right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:19
That's so hard.

Haley Stomp 32:20
Yeah. But as I went along, it got a little easier. But there are definitely points where I was like, I should probably just take this job. And I'm glad I didn't do that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:31
Well, kudos to you because I know how hard that is. And we've seen that same challenge with, at this point, thousands of people. And that is no easy feat. And it says something about the work that you did to get up to that point to where you could see that, yes, it feels like I should take this. But no, I shouldn't. Because it conflicts with all of my other priorities and what I hold dear and what is important to me in the next opportunity. So nice job.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:03
Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they wanted to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:08
Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 34:26
The price tags are just made up. Somebody writes a price on your job the day before you walk in to talk about it. And whether you negotiate or not is a choice you get to make.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:39
Let's time travel into the future for just a moment. It's a few months down the road, you've been working on a career change, finding the right organization, determining what matters most to you, all the things, you've been doing that for months now and your commitment has paid off. You've just received an offer from the organization that you want to work with very most, it's pretty much a wonderful fit all the way around. Okay, so you finish popping some champagne, you do some happy dancing, it's now time to negotiate. You might be thinking, "What? Negotiate and risk losing this amazing offer?" And that's so commonly the response. Or even if you're willing to negotiate, so many people think that it is a struggle, and it is something that they don't want to do, and it's undesirable. I want you to think about it like this, receiving that offer means, out of every single person that was considered for position they want you. Now, the balls in your court. So how do you propel yourself for that conversation? How do you make this amazing offer actually everything including on the finance side, including on the offer side, including the other things that can be structured into an offer? How do you make it all that you thought it could be into your ideal?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:07
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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Successfully Quitting Your PhD to Find Career Happiness

by

on this episode

Dropping out of your PhD program is not a career death sentence. 

Anna VanRemoortel realized early on in her PhD program that she was not on a career path that would ultimately make her happy. Her identity was heavily tied to her academic job, so when she realized she was no longer excited about her work and questioned her career’s direction, she was left feeling like she was lacking in all areas of her life.

She is now (happily!) the executive director of a nonprofit organization that is focused on making a difference in its local Boston community. Learn how Anna doubled down on her strengths, found value in her transferable skills, gained confidence and made the most of networking opportunities.

What you’ll learn

  • Why you’re never really “starting over,” even when it feels like it
  • How to identify when it’s time to change your career direction 
  • The importance of differentiating your skills from your strengths
  • How to dig deep and figure out what will make you happy & fill your cup
  • Ways to make the most of casual networking opportunities 

Success Stories

The transition was so much easier than the last and so much more gratifying because of all that I learned with HTYC

Michal Balass, Social Science Research Analyst, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

I think the clarity and accountability I got from my coach was super important in this process. Sometimes people don't have the discipline, not because they're not diligent or hard working. It's because they're afraid.  It's because they're scared. You know, they also don't know what to do. I think with the accountability from my coaches, especially like, my coach can just lay down, okay, now, after this call, you need to do 123. So that was specific, right. And that was an even like, you need to do this by this time of this week. So I got to do it. You know, it's very clear. I think the clarity and accountability I got from my coach was super important in this process. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there even if you feel under qualified or not the right fit because you might sit down and they might say I know you applied for this but what do you think about this and it could be something you totally love.”

Sylvia Guo, Research Director, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

Scott took the time to really hear my problem, to understand, and offer solutions to help me transition to where I am and where I’d like to be. That is why I decided to sign up for Happen to Your Career. I used to work in the legal industry and now I work in the nonprofit industry for a nonprofit that helps people change their lives!

Cesar Ponce de Leon, Online Campus Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

If you're looking for a change, if you're somebody who is feeling unsatisfied in your work, and you're not necessarily necessarily sure why that is yet, I feel like, that's a great way to kind of figure that out, just because of how the program is structured. I don't think that I would have necessarily gotten to where I am now without the program, especially when it came to the resume and the interviewing portion, because I feel like those are the hardest two areas for someone who's trying to switch into something that's completely different. Having that coaching and that information, and, you know, all those resources available to me to prep me for to be able to present myself in a way where, you know, I'm talking to the hiring managers, and they're like, hey, well, you know, she doesn't have, you know, experience in this, but, you know, being able to explain why I'm still a valuable person and why, you know, my other skills are still good fits for, you know, the job that I was applying for, I don't think I would have had that tools and that skill set and, you know, the roadmaps and the guidance that I would have, that I had with being part of the program. So I'm super, super grateful.

Alyson Thompson, Client Success Specialist, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory
Load more
Download New Tab

Anna VanRemoortel 00:01

The things that I was, you know, good at, I didn't want to continue. And so I felt like I was almost starting from nothing.

Introduction 00:13

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:37

When I was a kid, I was often asked the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You probably been asked this too. And back then, I thought this was a pretty harmless question. So I was always ready for it. Architect, obviously, is what I wanted to be, at least for a while, until studio recording, and then the next thing and then the next thing. And again, I just thought it was a harmless question. But many years later, I started to realize that it wasn't. I've come to realize how useless this question is, and how all it really does is teach us from a really extremely young age that we have to pick the exact career we want, instead of figuring out what our strengths are, and what's really going to make us feel more fulfilled, and gathering experiences and mastery and all the other things that actually helps with fulfillment, happiness, enjoyment. And often the result of this very normalized mindset of the "what do you want to be when you grow up?", the perfect thing is that when we actually begin to study for, or practice that one career that we've always dreamed of, if it doesn't work out, we're left feeling like we failed.

Anna VanRemoortel 01:44

Where do you get your energy? Like, what tasks do you most look forward to? And if it's having a meeting with someone, like, that says a lot. If it's reading, like, that also says a lot. And I think focusing on tasks versus big concepts that was a mindset shift that helped me during the career change process that led me to a career that I actually enjoy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:04

That's Anna VanRemoortel. Anna was a PhD student at Duke University, when she first came to HTYC. She worked really hard to set herself up for success. But when she actually started the PhD program, she quickly realized "This isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life." And after having that realization, and later on working with a coach, and really diving into her strengths, and what she actually wanted, Anna decided to go out on a limb and accept an internship at a nonprofit that she was super excited about. This led to a whirlwind of events. And thanks to a lot of intentional hard work from Anna, she ended up as an executive director of a nonprofit organization just a short 10 months later. Take a listen, as she tells what led up to her transition over this last year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:53

For a little bit of context here, you entered into one role with your organization. And just really recently, even in the space where, like, we could get the scheduled, getting your promotion, tell me a little bit about that. What took place that allowed you to be able to take advantage of that opportunity and having it lined out? Because it sounded like it's even better opportunity for you and your strengths and what you want.

Anna VanRemoortel 03:20

Absolutely, yeah. So to give, like, people listening a little bit of context of what the past few years looked like. So, like, at the end of spring 2021, I was in the PhD program, I decided to leave, I left my PhD with my masters, I was able to, kind of... it took me so long to decide to leave the PhD that I ended up getting a master's. So that's kind of funny. I moved home and I ended up being unemployed for a little bit, living with my family, which was my worst nightmare at the time. I thought, like, that was, like, what failure looks like. And which was not, it was really great actually. And then I did a lot of volunteer work, which really helped set me up for this kind of job. So I reached out to a small organization, my hometown that was all about, like, supporting small businesses. And I just did some volunteer work with them. Then I applied for an entry level job at an organization in Boston that has the program's a public park. And I really admired them for years, and I ended up not getting that entry level job and, instead, I got an internship, which was still really great because I, kind of, viewed it as still, like, the experiment phase that, like, as part of the career change process with you guys. And that just allowed me to build some experience that wasn't academic and get my foot in the door with Boston nonprofits in general. And then I also was so lucky that during that experience, I had a supervisor that was just so amazing. And she helped me as I was applying for new jobs, and she was, kind of, another career coach. So that was super great. And then I threw all of this, I was really focusing on Main Street organizations. So Main Streets are it's kind of this umbrella term to describe organizations that focus on a commercial district and supporting local businesses and revitalizing that area. And I was really interested in that. And so Boston has 20 of them. And I started just reaching out to people on LinkedIn that were directors of these Main Streets. And I actually got to talk to a bunch of them, they're all super open to having me ask questions. And one of them was actually alum, an alum of my undergrad University. And so we actually met up for coffee. And I just, like, asked her about her job and everything, and we really connected. And she was like, "Oh, by the way, like, we're gonna be hiring a program manager in a little bit. The job description isn't posted yet, but just let you know, this might be an opportunity." I'm like, "Oh, that's amazing." And so from that kind of casual conversation, which I wasn't even asking for a job, that she led me to a job to apply for. So I applied through them. And then during the process, I got into the manager position in November. But during that whole transition, the current IDI left, it wasn't like a super great fit. So she moved on to do some other work. And so we were actually without an executive director for a little bit. One of our board members stepped in as interim ED, and I worked with her. And we actually started hiring for an ED. We put the job description out, I was part of the interview process. And we interviewed a few candidates. And we just didn't feel like it was a great fit. And actually one of the other managers in the organization, he was like, "What about Anna? Like, what if Anna just steps into the role?" And I was like, "I would be interested in that I, kind of, imagined doing that, and maybe like two or three years, but I'd be up for the challenge if there was like, offered to me, and if I had, like, support from the board. And so throughout all of that, the board decided to offer me the job, and this was like early March. And so then, about a month ago, I stepped into the IDI role. And so now I am the executive director of the organization. And it was definitely a lot of growth and transition. And I'm still, like, growing, getting used to this role, but it's so exciting now. Like I love doing this kind of work. I love managing the organization and just thinking about where I wanted to go in the future, because it has such a rich history of, like, impact in this community. And so it's been so great to now be in the position where I can help lead it into the next year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:32

What led up to the point where you were wanting to make a change?

Anna VanRemoortel 07:37

Yeah. So I was at Duke University in their Sociology PhD program. And so for many years, pretty much throughout my late teens and early 20s, I really want to be a sociology professor. I love studying pro social behavior, like what motivated people to take on certain actions and to intentionally do good things, intentionally build community. And I really liked researching that. I loved researching in my undergrad. And I had this goal in mind that I wanted to, like, be like my professors in undergrad, and go for that PhD. And so I spent the second half of my undergrad and a year between undergrad and grad school, like, really working towards this goal. I secured funding, I worked for professors with research assistant positions. And then I spent pretty much that year leading up to grad school applying for different programs and finding the best fit for me. And when I got there, I pretty quickly realized that it wasn't for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:35

Okay, tell me about that. What took place that caused you to realize? It sounds like there were some specific events. What happened?

Anna VanRemoortel 08:45

Yeah, I think one big piece is it was really my first time researching full time. So like before when I was doing research, I had all these other things going on, too, that, like, really kept me engaged in my community, that were pretty social activities. And this was the first time I was doing research, like, full time, like, 40-hour work week, of course, it was like, way more than 40 hours, as you could probably expect. And so that was like, the first time it, kind of, just became my everything. And I realized that the issues I really cared about, and I was researching, I didn't really feel that connected to. It kind of felt like the research process made me take a step back. And I felt pretty removed from it. And I think part of it is like, you kind of have to do that as a researcher to produce good research and to be objective. But I just felt like I wasn't, like, connecting with issues in the way I wanted to be connecting with them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:39

That's fascinating, actually, because what you're saying is that, hey, I initially went in and thought I would be more connected with the issues but research, by definition, in many ways, you sort of have to take a removed more objective stance. Maybe not perfectly, but it was taking you further away from the ways that you wanted to be connected as opposed to closer. So that's really fascinating.

Anna VanRemoortel 10:06

Yeah. And I think I learned a lot about, like, myself through this process because before I'd always kind of identified as an introvert. And so the idea of reading and researching my whole life, and that kind of sounded good. But I didn't factor the fact that, like, I have been doing a lot of other social positions throughout my life as I've been doing researching before I took it on for a full time job. And so my life became pretty isolating with research. And it was... I felt like I just couldn't really connect with people. And I wasn't getting, like, the energy I wanted to, like, from my research experience, like, I was missing that personal connection.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:44

Let me ask you about the introvert piece. Do you still identify as more of an introvert or lean more towards introversion? Or how do you think about yourself now, after that set of experiences?

Anna VanRemoortel 11:00

Yeah, I don't think I'm an introvert anymore. I think I thought it was about, like, being shy, but I think I've, like, realized that it's really about more where I get energy. And I realized, like, throughout my life, like, stuff like this, this is what I get my energy from. It's like meeting with people. When I was doing research, when I was interviewing people in a qualitative method, like, that's where I was getting my energy from. It wasn't really the work alone, like, combing through data and, like, writing up a literature review that felt very draining for me after a while.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:33

It wasn't about the research, it was about the interactions, it sounds like.

Anna VanRemoortel 11:37

Yeah. And that was kind of the big thing that I learned throughout this whole process. Like I'm pretty young, I'm 26. And so I think I was still very, like, influenced by my college career program where, you know, at that age, like, people are like, "Oh, what are you interested in? Like, what do you want to do?" And your answer is kinda like, "Oh, like, I majored in sociology and economics.?" And my career path is kind of defined by these topics I was interested in, not actual tasks. So I kind of wish that someone asked like, the 20 year old version of me like, "Okay, like, put aside what you're interested in, like, what's your favorite part of the day? Where do you get your energy? Like, what tasks do you most look forward to? And if it's having a meeting with someone, like, that says a lot. If it's reading, like, that also says a lot." And I think focusing on tasks versus big concepts, that was a mindset shift that helped me during the career change process that led me to a career that I actually enjoy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:34

So then it sounded like you were in the PhD program, recognizing that it wasn't necessarily where do you want it to be. What caused you to make the final decision that, "hey, I need to do something about this, I cannot continue to be here in this place, in this way."

Anna VanRemoortel 12:53

It was a long process, and honestly, like, so I started my PhD, the fall of 2019. And a few months later, I found your podcast, because I was just, like, I knew I wasn't happy. I didn't know if I wanted to leave the program, like, I was thinking, "Oh, maybe I just need a new advisor, or I need to be at a different university, maybe I need to think about the methodology I'm using and find something that's more exciting." But there was like this little voice in the back of my head saying, like, "maybe you can quit." But that was just such a scary thought for me. I've been pretty much, like, building up to this for many years, and I thought that leaving it would just be failure. And I didn't really see a lot of other people around me doing something like this, like, I saw my peers being, like, really enthusiastic about their work. And so it just felt, like, really wrong of me to not be excited about it and want to leave. And so I actually started listening to your podcast in 2019. I listened to it for maybe like, a year and a half or two years before I actually reached out to you guys. And that was just like, a way of normalizing leaving career, like, I needed to hear experiences of people who left their career, and it was fine. Like, I needed to hear what it's like on the other side in order to just get out of my head and be able to talk about it out loud.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:11

Why do you think after going through that type of experience, I'm just curious about your opinion on this, because I've been forming my own hypothesis for years and years and years and years. But why do you think it is so, whatever the opposite of normalized would be, the unnormalized in our society, that you could leave the PhD program, and that would be okay, or socially acceptable, or whatever word you'd throw in there, but why do you think is so much the opposite way or we feel it so much the opposite way?

Anna VanRemoortel 14:46

It's so interesting, because I knew in my mind, like, objectively, people who get PhDs, like, statistically don't end up in tenure track positions, like, that's a very small percentage of people that, like, get that position that everyone's working towards. But I think this idea of, I think I've just been, like, socialized to always want to pursue, like, one thing in my career. And another big part was like, I was told I had, like, potential, and I was like, people praise me like, "Oh, you're at Duke. Like, that's awesome. You're gonna get your PhD from Duke. Like, that's a great thing to have on your resume." And so I was really scared to let go of that, even though I knew the success rate of what I was going for was incredibly low. I was just worried of, like, wasting my potential, or like not living up to what people said I could live up to. So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:36

Your interest in.

Anna VanRemoortel 15:37

Yeah. And also, like, I knew the structure. Like, I had been a student pretty much my entire life. And so being a professional student, I just... I knew how to play the role of the student very well. And so the idea of stepping off that track felt like I was stepping into an abyss. And I didn't really know where I would go next.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:58

I don't remember exactly how you put it. But you and I got to chat before we started working together after you've been listening to the podcast for quite a period of time, which by the way, this is super fun to now get to chat with you before the podcast, after you had been a listener for... yeah, so you and I had talked and I remember you saying something about that, like, that stepping off the abyss. Or you said, I don't even really know what I'm stepping into. And that wasn't exactly how you put it. But, what about that made it scary or uncomfortable or whatever, at the time? And then tell me a little bit about what you ended up doing in order to move through that? Because I think it can be scary.

Anna VanRemoortel 16:44

Yeah, I think one big piece was that I just had my identity so tied up with academia, and I had like my resume and my skills, so tied up in academia. And so when I looked at my skills, I thought they could only apply in an academic context. Like, I looked at my experience, I was like, oh, I have experience writing literature reviews, and like gathering data and writing research reports and proposals. And I kind of thought that that my resume that I built, I had to build off of that to find a new job. And it was frustrating, because none of those things that I was skilled in, like, I wanted to continue, like, I don't want to write literature reviews anymore, I don't want to do that kind of research work. So the things that I was, you know, good at, I didn't want to continue. And so I felt like I was almost starting from nothing, which now I realized wasn't true. And that was what was really helpful working with Alistair, like, we started off from a very broad, like, strengths based kind of approach where we did StrengthsFinder. And I just was able to separate myself from the academic skills and focus more on my broad strengths that I had been developing from, yes, academia, but everything else I've done, like, hobbies and volunteer opportunities. And once I was able to focus on that, and think about my strengths, versus my actual resume experience, that was what allowed me to kind of shift and think about new opportunities that I could be good at. Before I was like, only looking at research positions, I was like, "Oh, I have experienced the research, I should be looking at research positions, but I didn't want to be doing research." And so shifting to that strengths based approach, that's what allowed me to look at new opportunities.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:29

That's such a great point. And a little bit of context for everyone else listening because one of the, I found one of the biggest confusions around strengths is often we have a tendency to think about strengths as skills. Because skills are, as you pointed out, like, that's what we see, and that's what we're experiencing, and that's what we're doing. Like, you're writing the papers, and you are like doing all the things, and then we can visibly see those, like if we think about it sort of as an iceberg a little bit, like those are the tip of the iceberg. However, strengths are not skills, they are the things that are lying under the surface that make you predisposed to be better at some things versus another. So the reason I wanted to point that out, though, is you made such a great point about the things that you were good at were not the things you wanted to spend your time doing. And I think that's such a confusing thing, because people are like, "these are my strengths." No, they're not. They're actually just the skills and skills are good, but that doesn't mean you have to spend the rest of your life doing it just because you happen to have the skill. So when you had that realization, how did that impact what you thought you might be looking for from there on out?

Anna VanRemoortel 19:45

I think when I realized that I was able to look at my past experience that and, like, the things I've done that I wasn't necessarily paid to do. So I took my volunteer experience more seriously. I took even like the things I did when I was a college student, like I looked back at those experiences, and I thought, like, what was my favorite thing I did when I was a college student. And I remember like working in ResLife, and I just loved connecting with people and building community and having those like in person interactions, and that I was not getting that in grad school. And so I think the shift from skills and, like, a very resume focus, like, this program is not about fixing your resume and cover letter, which is, if I signed up for those kinds of career change programs, like, I would not be where I am today, like, I needed a shift to strengths, and to take my unpaid experience. And just like my general interests, and like how I presented myself with my friends and family, I needed to take that experience more seriously.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:46

Well, I think that... you mentioned identity just a minute ago. So go back to something that you had said, and that was a struggle for you to let go how you were thinking about yourself and what was wrapped up in your identity. The thing that people don't realize about identity, most of us don't realize that your experiences regardless of whether they are volunteer, they're paid, they're at one type of role, they're at another type of role, they're out of a PhD program, whatever they are, like, those are, it's much healthier to look at my identity and the combination of my experiences, as opposed to I do this thing, or only look at certain type of experiences, because we really get wrapped up in that. But it's much healthier to say "okay, nobody can take away all of my collective set of experiences, whatever they are. And that can be a portion of my identity." And that is so much more of an effective approach, I'll say, but also a healthier approach too, like, there's a lot of great evidence around that at this point.

Anna VanRemoortel 21:47

Yeah, I think that was so important when I was changing careers. Because if my identity was tied to my academic job, and I felt like I was just not excited about it, I didn't feel like I was doing good work, because I wasn't excited about it. So if I tied my identity too closely with that, I just, I was not feeling good about who I was as a person or who I was as a professional. And so I really needed to just separate that and kind of see myself beyond an academic role, and then rebuild that confidence because I definitely lost a lot of confidence in grad school because I tie my identity so close to that. And it's tough with career change because when you're leaving one career, and you're like, untying your identity from that you can feel really lost. And I spent some months unemployed. And so like, what am I going to tie my identity to now about experiences that I actually enjoyed in my past and not my current job? Or my employment status?

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:43

Yeah, absolutely. It makes me think of a totally different question. And I'm now very curious, as you got into the actual transition, what would you say were the hardest parts for you?

Anna VanRemoortel 22:57

Yeah. I think the hardest part was everything that led up, maybe, like, the first and second session with Alistair, like, I was very wishy washy. I even, like, met with him and I was like, "I think I'm gonna leave." I'm kind of like, still, like testing the waters. And he was like, "make a decision by the next session." And I was thinking, like, "Oh, my God. I can't do that. I can't make a decision like this. This is too big." I thought I needed more time to gather more data, ask for more advice. But honestly, I didn't.

Anna VanRemoortel 23:30

Yeah. Oh, my God. So I think the challenge was like, moving from a very passive role to a more active one, where I was actually taking a change and making something happen for myself, because I was so good at consuming career content. I mean, I listened to you guys for like a year and a half before I did anything, and I read books on career change. If there's a book on leaving academia, I already own all of them. So I was very good at just consuming that content. And I think that kind of speaks from my experience being a grad student, too. So the most challenging part was in the first few sessions, where Alistair was like, "All right, like this is kind of like the end of the passive part and the beginning of a more active role." So I made a decision to leave the program. And then I started telling my friends and family, like, I'm making a career change. And once I was like, out of my head, and it was like, out in the world, like, oh, I put this out there, like, everyone knows about it now, it was so much easier to just like, be honest with people. I felt like I was just hiding it for so long. And I was like, ashamed of wanting to leave a PhD. And I mean, like, it makes sense. Like some people said, like, "No, don't leave. You're going to regret this." I had professors tell me that I would regret it. But then I also had people tell me, like, "No, you're not going to regret this." I had other people who had completed their PhD say, "I regret staying, you should leave now." So it was really hard to step away from all the advice I was getting and to just focus on myself and actually just taking a step.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:30

You research, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:09

I think that's something we haven't really talked a lot about on the podcast, particularly the idea of once you have made that decision, and once you start interacting with other people in an active way, that it feels different, in some ways. So many wonderful ways, I would say, maybe there's some less wonderful ways, but it certainly it's harder to go and live what you actually want. However, you know, I very much felt where you described that I sort of felt, like, when I was in, it's been quite a period of time ago, but you know, when I was in a role where I stayed about 18 months, it felt like I was living a double life. I felt like I was, like, not being honest with everyone else, like my wife and my boss, and like my friends and everything else. I felt like I was like, having to hide this really terrible thing almost.

Anna VanRemoortel 26:07

Yeah. And I remember like, even before I met up with Alistair for those first few sessions, I was still doing, like, networking calls, like, I would often like, reach out to people that I thought were doing interesting work. But I would always approach those conversations, like, "I'm a grad student, and I'm interested in your work." And they were kind of confused, like, "But, like, my work is not what you would be doing in six years, like with a PhD. Like, why are you interested in my job?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:35

Why are you here?

Anna VanRemoortel 26:36

Yeah, and like, I felt, like, awkward and kind of ashamed. And I felt like I couldn't tell them the truth. And then once I was... I finally just like, kind of put it out in the world, then I could approach those conversations. And I was like, "Hi. I'm a grad student. And I'm thinking about leaving my program, and I'm interested in the work you do." And then we're able to have an honest conversation. And it was just, I got so much more out of those conversations, because I was honest with them about where I was at in this whole process and I didn't feel like I was hiding anything.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:04

That's really interesting. It shows up, too, in the real world, it shows up in interactions. And actually, before you and I had hit the record button, you said something to me about, like, yeah, even my, like, family and friends have told me I seem happier. And then I had told you that, yeah, like when we, like, you literally sound different, you literally sound happier. And your sounds different compared to when you and I chatted, you know, all those months ago. So, that's just evidence of what you're saying. I think, like, if you can be more of yourself, and not have to feel like you're hiding something, or however that shows up for different people, then it changes those interactions.

Anna VanRemoortel 27:47

Yeah. And I think like that kind of authenticity frame was present throughout all of the modules that I went through with Happen To Your Career, like, I remember, even like with the, like, networking, like the testing your career, those kind of conversations, I felt like I could just approach it with more authenticity, and even like interviewing, I felt like, I just had better practice like non hyping things throughout this whole career change process. I was able to go into an interview, and just be more authentic and connect with people and be like, "These are the strengths that, like, I know I have. This is what I know your organization needs." And it just felt like more of a collaboration, like, let's work together. Like, let's see if this is a good fit. And I wasn't like, "Oh, like just give me anything like, I'll take any job. Like, I'd be happy with anything." I was just much more open about where I was, what I needed from a job and like what they can offer. And if it was a good fit, great. If it wasn't, I was happy to learn that then instead of actually taking any job that they would give me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:50

How did you adapt that into as you started doing interviews, as you started having other interactions, functionally, how did you adapt that type of mindset or approach where you're willing to share more and have more authentic conversations? Was there anything that you did in order to make that easier for yourself?

Anna VanRemoortel 29:11

I think a few things. I think the first step was just rebuilding confidence. And thinking of myself as a professional that was, like, worthy of people's time. And honestly, like a lot of this happened before I went through coaching. Like grad school, it was like a tough time, like, my mental health wasn't great. And so I worked with a therapist for like two and a half years. And that was really essential because I just needed to process a lot of things and figure out, like, who I was outside of the student role, because most of my life I've kind of been a student, which has been very low on the totem pole of any organization. And so I felt like I had kind of learned this behavior of acting like a student and coming into these conversations like, "oh, well, I'll take whatever you can offer me thanks for even talking to me." And I had to really separate that and regain some confidence again. And then with you guys, like the scripts really helped a lot like I remember, even when I was, like, negotiating my salary for the first job I had with my current organization, I was watching the videos that you've recorded about, like how to have these conversations. And I had never seen them framed that way. Like I always thought I'd be going into like an interview or like a salary negotiation with this weird power dynamic. Like I was asking them for something and just hoping that they would give me anything, but the way your organization frames and all the modules and like, even the email templates, it's just framed as like a collaboration, where I have more confidence, which makes me look like a more attractive candidate, too. And then yeah, and like, even when I was negotiating my salary for my manager role a few months ago, like, I understand that nonprofits have limited budgets, like, I understand that they couldn't offer me like, you know, a million dollars, and so I was like, aha, I was like, "I understand that the budget is limited. But let's work together and see if we can make this an attractive offer by being a bit more creative with, like, vacation days and professional development, like what are some other tools that we can use to make this a great opportunity for both of us." And so that mindset shift, both from like, regaining confidence, and then also using those scripts, that is what has just, it's really changed the way I approach conversations today, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:32

I've heard that feedback quite a bit where like, I was just having a conversation with another person who's been on the podcast in the past, Laura Morrison, and she had said something similar in that, hey, like, this actually, literally changed how I... like the approach that I was using to be more authentic, and just try and work together and collaboratively and in a partnership to figure out how to create wonderful opportunities, like, I'm now found that over the last four years, I'm using that literally in my job every day, with that same type of approach and mentality and some of the skill sets that she built during her change. And that was really interesting to hear it in that way. But it sounds like that was a little bit the case for you, too, or has been the case.

Anna VanRemoortel 32:17

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:19

You've done such a great job with this through doing things that many people in the rest of the world might not do, and are difficult. And it's created a different set of results for you, which is so wonderful. So I really appreciate you taking the time and coming and sharing your story and experiences. And I'm so excited that this transition led to even something better within a few short months too. So cool to see.

Anna VanRemoortel 32:48

Yeah, it's been a wild ride. And I'm so grateful to you and like your team and Alistair, it's just, it was so great to go through this process with a team. Grad school can be isolating, leaving a career in starting something new can be really isolating. And I put all of that in the context of a pandemic, like this program, like, career change that, like this is what I needed during this time. This is what allowed me to actually want something better, like, if I hadn't reached out to you guys, I think I would still be, like, getting my PhD.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:18

PhD land. Yes.

Anna VanRemoortel 33:20

Yeah. Which, like, isn't bad. I mean, like, all my friends who are in the program, like they're having a good time, like, that's great, very happy for them. It's a great program. But yeah, it just wasn't a good fit for me. And I'm really happy I did something about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:39

Many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they wanted to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:43

Hey, I hope you loved this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And if this has been helpful, then please share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your co-workers that badly need it. Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 35:01

I had been in a role for about 10 years and we had done amazing things. I had built a team, we had grown the business, so much success, so much fun, but I was at that point where it was more about maintaining and incremental growth. And I was ready, I was hungry for that next thing to challenge me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:19

When my youngest son Grayson was born, I remember a shift that took place for me internally, and it went something like this. In my head, it sounded like, "Okay, I now have three small kids at home, and I am at work or commuting like 60, sometimes many more hours a week. And when I'm not there, I'm stressing about work. So something's gotta give, something's got to change." Now, this is similar to what happens for a lot of people. And maybe it's bringing a new child into the world. Maybe it's your favorite coworker find a new job. Something happens externally, where you decide it's time for a priority change, a priority shift. And making that decision alone can seem life changing, but it can also be kind of terrifying. It can seem like, "Okay, I want to leave. I want something new, but has my entire career, all my degrees, my experience, all the time it took to get here, has that been for nothing?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:27

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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Making An Amazing First Impression (On Purpose) With Vanessa Van Edwards

by

on this episode

Studies show that people make a first impression in less than 7 seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to make a great impression – especially when you are having a job interview.

So what can you do to use those 7 seconds (or less) to your advantage?

Vanessa Van Edwards, author of “Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication”, shares exactly how you can do this.

What you’ll learn

  • The importance of knowing what first impressions you’re making
  • How to give off the right cues to show charisma and trustworthiness
  • The science backed research that Vanessa uses in her new book
  • First impressions and how your LinkedIn profile is perceived by others

Success Stories

Download New Tab

Vanessa Van Edwards 00:01
And the way that I want you to think about cues is like recipes. So there are 96 cues, it does not mean that you should use all 96 of them. In fact, that would be like trying to put everything into the same dish. It's actually much better to think about, what cues are you already naturally using that you want to leverage or level up or pump up, or reason or purposely great? Those are your staples.

Introduction 00:28
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:52
You're on Happen To Your Career. We've had hundreds of episodes, about how to set yourself up for success during the career change process from way before the actual interview to where you're leveraging psychology, to where you're doing test drive conversations, and everything that happens in between all the way to negotiation, you have one good chance to make a wonderful impression, at least the first time around. In fact, studies show that people make a first judgment in less than seven seconds. That doesn't give you a lot of time to make a great impression. So the question is, what can you do to use those seven seconds or even less to your advantage?

Vanessa Van Edwards 01:38
In those first few milliseconds of someone seeing you, they are getting very quick, but very simple cues, just looking at your picture, looking at your gestures, your expression, your posture, your colors, but they're also very quickly looking at the first few words of your headline. So just like we talked about the verbal cues for your first 10 word editor mouth, you also want those first 10 words in your headline to matter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:59
That's Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa's the lead investigator at the science of people and is renowned for teaching science backed people skills to audiences around the world, including at South by Southwest, which I've been to in the past and love, MIT, CES, not only is she a speaker and researcher, but Vanessa is also a national best selling author, including her newest book "Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication". In this book, which I've read, I love, she talks about the tiny signals we send to others 24/7 through our body language, facial expressions, word choice, vocal inflection, and how they have a massive impact. And how we and our ideas come across. Our cues can either enhance our message or undermine it. So today, let's dive into the conversation with Vanessa. Here's her describing her early career trajectory.

Vanessa Van Edwards 02:58
It seems like if you look at the trajectory of my career, it seems very random. But when I look back, I know there were specific reasons what I did each thing that led me to be able to do what I do now, which is weird. Like, I have a weird, weird job. When I was asked, you know, in elementary school, or even in college, "what do you want to do with your life?" You know, YouTube wasn't a thing. There was no such thing as YouTube, there was no such thing as like writer meets vlogger, like, it just wasn't a thing. So I didn't realize that I was actually building lots of skills that got me to here. But the biggest one is when I always have had a natural inclination towards language. So in high school, I took Spanish and French and it seemed very easy. For me, math and science were okay, but wow, I just love those languages. And then in college, someone said, oh, you should take the hardest language.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:47
Well, hold on. Why did you feel that was a good idea at that time?

Vanessa Van Edwards 03:51
Why? That's it. Why did I think that was a good idea? Because someone was like, oh, you know, "if you are able to add Chinese, Mandarin to your repertoire, you'll get a job anywhere." I thought it would be great to get a job anywhere. So I enrolled in Mandarin classes and loved it, like immediately loved it. So I ended up majoring in Chinese International Studies. I actually think the reason I was supposed to do that was because I ended up meeting my husband studying abroad in China. I study abroad in China, and I met my husband. He was also studying abroad from George Washington University. We fell in love, 15 years later, you know, we're still together. We have a baby. We got married five years later. So I think that path was like a romantic path. But here's where I think the language piece ended up being important is I was very good at languages, and at this time, I was also very, very awkward. And it was that horrible time in your career, where you're going on tons of interviews, you're trying to network, you're doing those information sessions, you're trying to make long lasting friendships, like, at that point, I was doing the most people in everyday that I've ever done, and I was quite bad at peopling, I'm a recovering awkward person. So it's very hard for me to process lots of social information. I also have a problem where I misinterpret neutral cues as negative. So I always would, like, my joke with my husband, I come home from a party and I'm like, "Is she mad at me?", "Does everyone hate me?", "Did I do something wrong?". He's like, "No. What are you talking about?" So because of that, and this was in 2005, I remember specifically, I watched a very big interview at the time, which was Larry, on Larry King Live, Lance Armstrong went on saying that he had never doped. Now, of course, we know later that he definitely had it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:29
We all know how that ends.

Vanessa Van Edwards 05:30
Massive and open skin. I remember watching that interview. And he tells this massive lie, right, like huge lie, and then lip presses– presses his lips together. And I remember watching thinking, "what was that?" No, I didn't realize the time that was the very first cue I ever consciously spotted. And I thought, as I started doing the researchers, as I start looking into like, you know, nonverbal textbooks and body language research, and I was like, "Oh, it's a lip presses." Lip presses, kind of, seen as a universal sign of withholding or holding back. And I wondered, "What if I could study cues like I study foreign languages?" You know, in foreign language, the very first thing you do is you learn vocab words, and then you begin to put them together. And so I thought, "Well, I don't speak people. I speak English, but I don't speak people." I really have a hard time misinterpret facial expressions. I don't know what to do with my hands when I talk. I have no idea how to submit...present myself as confident. What if I could look at confident people, and catalog all the cues they use down to the gesture? And so that was the start in 2005 of this research, where I slowly started to catalog every cue that humans send. And that's what a cue is a social signal. Little did I know that 17 years later, I would have a book called "Cues". And that would be my entire career. That was a very fast forward, I'm happy to dig into, and that was sort of the seed that accidentally got me into this path.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:50
What else happened along the way that really helped to cement that for you that really helped to confirm that you were on that right path?

Vanessa Van Edwards 07:00
I think pretty early on, I had distinguished there are two kind of types or buckets of cues, there's positive cues that highly charismatic, compelling people use. And there's negative cues that whether they're athletes, or politicians or business leaders, they have these negative cues when they're lying, or they're hiding something. So okay, very simply, I want to show less negative cues, and I want to show more positive cues. So I took a video of myself giving a presentation. And I was like, let's see, look at the cues I use, and let's see what language I'm sending. And it was so interesting, because it was like my little transcript. I had a little transcripts, and I was writing down all the cues next to my transcript. I'm very scientific really guy, I learned in a very black and white way. So I had a transcript of my talk. And then I was writing the cues in the margin. And it was like, negative cue, negative cue, negative cue, negative cue, positive cue, negative, negative, negative, negative negative, I looked at this sheet, and of course, it was color coded, because, you know, that I like color coding. It was all red. By the way, that is the reason why cue is red it's because I had too many negative cues. And I had no idea. I had no idea that I was sending all excuses. I worked really hard on that presentation, right? Like I had prepped the perfect slides, I had great answers. I had great statistics and didn't really matter, right? Like even I had this perfect presentation, I was giving away all of my, I didn't know it at the time, I was giving me all my competence. That was a big aha moment for me to realize, I need to take control of my cues. But there is no accidental, right? And that's a lot. That's a big mistake of people who are very smart, is they show up, they think my ideas can speak for me, right? I have such good ideas, my ideas will speak for themselves. And then we get into the room and we wonder why people are on their phones. We wonder why we don't get called back into the interview. We wonder why we're interrupted or not respected or not paid enough. I know, it's because we are accidentally sending cues that don't serve us.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:50
We'll talk about that for probably more than a few minutes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 08:55
I'm ready.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:57
Here's what I'd love to focus in on. I can't tell you the number of conversations that I've had over the last 20 years working as an HR leader, working in recruiting, going into interviews myself, you mentioned interviews and as an example, a very visible example that I think almost everyone can point to in some way or another where it's a situation where you don't necessarily get immediate feedback. Sometimes you do, sometimes you have other people's cues. And sometimes you have, you know, someone expressing their intentions immediately. But a lot of the times, it's a we're ending it and we're gonna find out. And that creates somewhat precarious situation where you don't necessarily know how you did or why you did and so many people I've encountered over the years are surprised when they think something went really really well. And then lo and behold, you know, they came in the second place, or they came in, not getting the job at all, whatever it might be. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see in, let's just say that type of situation, that type of personal interaction where you want to allow people to like you because people are basing a decision at least partially, maybe subconsciously on that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:12
Yes. Okay. So first of all this has happened to you, you are not alone. So this happened to you were you think that date went great, that meeting went awesome, that interviewer went well, and then all of a sudden, you realize you didn't get the job, they didn't call you back, they didn't write back, you are not alone in that. And the biggest mistake that I see actually is a mistake that smart people make, very successfully make this mistake, which is they under cue, they under signal. So here's why this happens. You have an interview and negotiation pitch, okay? And you're really excited, you prepare, you know, you prepare answers, you script out stories, you prepare for the hardball questions, you remembered the good questions, you remember their name, right? You think a lot about the verbal and verbal cues are important, right? That is one area of cues. The problem is, is when you are so focused on the idea, when you are so focused on delivering answer, especially like agenda, I think a lot of very smart, organized people, this was me– I had an agenda in my head I had to get through, right. And so you walk into the interview, and you're so focused on the agenda and some of the memorization and memorization can actually kill charisma, that you're just like deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, which means you're under signaling with your body, you're under signaling with your face, you're delivering with a vocal power that's memorized, right? So if I have a memorized answer, it's going to sound scripted, it's going to sound inauthentic, even if it isn't, because you've rehearsed it so many times, you rehearse the emotion out of it. So a myth that people have is that to be powerful or impressive, they should under a moat, they should be stoic and hide all their cues. That is so far from the truth. Highly charismatic people are actually very expressive. They're just purposefully so. They know how to express warmth and trust, they know how to express competence and productivity, they know how to express a disagreement or underwhelmed with them something they don't like. And so that is the biggest thing you will make is they under signal because they don't know what to do with their signals.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:00
That's really interesting. And I gotta tell you, this has been really kind of fascinating. I read the book in the last three days or so here.

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:07
Whoa, cool!

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:09
It was wonderful. And I will tell you, first and foremost, that my favorite part was actually, here's a little teaser for everyone because we won't have time to talk about everything. But the part where you decoded the Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. And that was fascinating, partially because I'm a fan of, you know, Leonardo da Vinci's work and some fact, yeah, let's be honest. Also, it was really, really fascinating to look at it in a completely different light. But the other bigger reason, this has been interesting for me is I got a concussion last Sunday playing ice hockey. So I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. But what has happened is because my brain is healing, all of the cues that I do on autopilot on a normal given day are actually more challenging. So it was really interesting to go through the book, and then in some ways, relearn many of the things that I've been doing for years and years, and now they're actually hard. My wife and I went to a group dinner last night, and it was a struggle for me to do some of the cues that I would normally do on autopilot. So here's my question for you, you know, as people are beginning to pay attention to this, maybe for the first time, maybe after a concussion, I don't know, whenever they need to, how would you advise them to start practicing this?

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:31
It's interesting, because I wonder if that almost gives you a little bit of a blank slate, right, like to retest and retry cues is kind of like an interesting way to think about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:39
It's been a weird experiment.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:40
Yeah. Like that's like a very cool experiment and went great timing with the book, not horrible timing for a concussion.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:47
It's never a great time to get to that concussion, but if that would be, you know, about that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:52
So there are 96 cues in the book. And the way that I want you to think about cues is like recipes. So there are 96 cues, it does not mean that you should use all 96 of them. In fact, that would be like trying to put everything into the same dish. It's actually much better to think about what cues are you already naturally using. So hopefully, as you're reading, and this is what people have been telling me as they read, which is so great is "oh, I didn't realize I was doing that cue and that was serving me." What cues are you're already naturally using that you want to leverage or level up or pump up, reason or purposely great? Those are your staples, right? Like those are like the favorite things, your favorite foods you like to cook with. They tend to be a lot of your dishes. Great. The next thing we think about is, like, what are the dishes that sound really good? So what are the cues as you're reading, you're like, "Ooh, I like that cue. I want to try that." And slowly start adding it, trying it on, right, like see if you like the flavor. The first time you might not love it, right, the first time we try it any cue, you can feel a little uncomfortable, a little bit foreign, but I want you to try it in three different types of scenarios with three different people. And that's because some cues, like, I use some cues a lot more with my daughter and my husband than I do professionally, right? Like, one's dessert, one's dinner, you know, if we're going to keep going on the food metaphor, I like food, you know, we should think about that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:08
We'll see how far we can push this food metaphor.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:10
I want to keep pushing it. It's almost lunchtime, I'm gonna keep pushing. So like, you're gonna figure out what goes in which scenario, which made me change for places. There are going to be some cues that you do not like, right, you have food allergies to those cues. And that's also very empowering, because I don't want you to do cues that are inauthentic. So start this cue by cue. First, getting very purposeful with the cues you already use naturally, those are the best. Second challenge yourself, I want to try a cue a day or a cue a week, I want to try it on. And the other way that we can practice this is spotting all 96 cues. So seeing in the next few weeks, can you spot cues on your friends and your colleagues on reality TV, in movies, that's also training a very specific part of your brain? So they've actually identified that we use very specific parts of our brain to identify cues, there's an area of our brain called the fusiform face area, this is a specific area of our brain that we use to decode facial expressions. If we are not used to doing this, if we've never done this before, it can literally feel like exercising a muscle for the first time, right. So you're gonna have to start with like smaller weights, right, and then work your way up. So even just learning to spot the cues, is also when you can sort of begin to try them on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:22
First of all, I really appreciate that. Because long before I knew anything about cues, I had a variety of mentors that made me watch a video of myself over and over and over again, it was so painful at first, let's be honest.

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:35
It's horrible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:36
Like, at some point it is not that big of a deal anymore, but it was painful for a long time. And the benefit out of it was that I got to see all of those parts and pieces, those different cues in action when they worked well, when they worked, quite frankly, terribly. So I appreciate those other ways to look at it too. And the point that, hey, it's not a case where you need to master all 96 cues. But instead, it's choosing what you're going to bring into your repertoire.

Vanessa Van Edwards 17:06
Yeah. And I think another thing that you can look for. So I think it's, oh gosh, if you can get a video of yourself presenting or speaking, something important, like not just like a little update, but like presenting or sharing something, it's so helpful to code it. Another thing you can do for yourself is I think everyone should know their own nervous cells, right? Everyone should know what tick do you have that, kind of, who your anxiety leaks in that way, when they're different for everyone. There's some typical interesting cues. I talked about this in the book, but what do you do when you knew you were anxious? Right? So you can find a video of yourself where you knew you were sweating it, right? Like during that particular question, or you were really nervous delivering that story, or you even knew you were deceiving someone. Pay attention to what you did not only non verbally, but verbally vocally, like, for example, there's some studies that look at liars and their patterns of their lies. And not every time but they often find that liars will use words like to be honest, to be frank, they'll actually call out honesty, even though they're about to lie, which is a very odd behavior thing. So even pay attention to the type of verbal signals you might be giving out. I think that's a really empowering thing to know about yourself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:15
Let's talk about some specific places where our listeners might be able to apply it. How about this, let's take a real example that one of our clients is experiencing right now. So she's in the process of identifying her next career move. Right? And, yeah, it's a wonderful opportunity for her and for the most part she's having a good time with it. That said, she's in this space where she's now trying to identify what roles are interesting to her and where she wants to spend, you know, the next number of years. And she's going through this mini career experiment that we call the "Social Goldilocks", where she's scheduling a whole series of super short calls with people that have roles that she might be interested in. So in this case, she's doing a lot of zoom calls, a lot of video chat, a lot of like, what you and I are doing right this very second, right? Yeah. So here's my question. I know that you break down charisma into warmth and competence, right? So how can she during those video calls build both warmth and competence very, very quickly?

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:22
Okay. So I'm going to give a really specific formula here, like this is pre video calls that are specific cues we need to see to be able to diagnose someone's warmth and competence. So these are crazy specific, but they really work. First thing is, you need to make sure if you're doing video calls that you are honoring space rules. This is called proxemics. It's a very important aspect of human behavior. And the biggest mistake people make on video is they get too close to their camera so they are all up in their cameras like their face is super close like this. I want you to make sure, I want to measure the distance between your nose and the camera, and I want you to make sure it is at least 18 inches away. Okay, it's the very first thing. And the reason for that is because if it is closer than 18 inches, you are accidentally triggering someone's fear response. When someone comes into our intimate zone too quickly, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's like a digital close talker. It makes us feel like we're being threatened. So, one, right from that very first impression, make sure you are in the sweet spot, which is 18 inches to three feet away from your camera, sounds very silly, but that's how far we want to be in the person that we're talking to. So that's number one, before you even get on that video call, take some measurements. And at my home setup, when I'm in my home studio, I have very specific setups in my room to just set me up for more charisma. Like for example, I have to sit today cuz I'm in a boring conference room in my publishers office. But normally I'm standing, not everyone has to stand. But I have noticed it changes my vocal power. When I'm standing, I just can deliver with more breath. So second, decide if you want to stand or sit, like, decide– do a couple experiments– where do you sound like your best self? Is it standing or sitting? So that's even before you hop in the call. Second...or actually third, and the moment you come on camera, I would love for you to do a nonverbal greeting. So we love this as humans and in person, we know this instinctively, right? We know intuitively when we see someone we reach out, we high five, we handshake, we cheek kiss, we hug, we have some sort of nonverbal greeting. On video that awkwardness that can happen the first seconds in the video it's because our brain is like, "what do we do? What do we do? We can't touch them, what do we do?" I mean, we're trying to, like, think we can't handshake so it's so weird. So instead, I want you to in your head replace the handshake with an honorable reading. My favorite is just a wave. So the moment I hop on video, I go "Hey, good morning. Good to see ya." And I give a little wave, "How are ya?" Right? On YouTube, every single one of my YouTube videos, I start with a double handed "Hi", both sides. So third is some sort of nonverbal greeting. And the last thing I would say is we've dismissed verbal a lot in this interview. But verbal does matter. Of course, words matter. And this is the third area of cues. There's body language, vocal, words, and imagery. Words, also really important, especially your first 10 words. So in your video calls, I want you to think about the first 10 words out of your mouth. Oftentimes, they are accidentally negative. So people will hop on a video call and they'll be like, "Oh man, the weather, those COVID numbers. I'm so tired. I'm so stressed. I'm so busy." And it's like we just default to it. We don't even think, "Can you see me? Can you hear me?" That's actually the base engine is when you say "can you see me? Can you hear me" and you're leaning in like this, it's like a double way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:34
It's like the double entendre.

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:36
It's like a horrible space, no greeting, terrible start. So I want you to think about before you even hop on your call, what am I opening with? What's my opener? And this can be very simple. "Happy Monday." "Happy Wednesday." "So good to see you." "I've been so looking forward to this. Thank you so much for having me." "Hi, team" It's not like you have to start with a speech or a toast, it's just something small positive that you can add.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:00
I love that. And thank you for going specific. That is incredibly helpful.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:06
Okay, good. And it's this checklist. I mean, this is how I learned charisma, I am not naturally charismatic. And so I have to think about what is the formula and there are social blueprints, there are blueprints for how we like to interact. And if we know how to read those blueprints, we all feel better. Everyone feels better. It's a win for everyone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:22
It does, it impacts everyone. You know, one of the parts that I loved in the book you had made the point about it becomes contagious, if you are expressing cues that, one, indicating happiness or indicating anything that's positive, quite frankly, then the other person therefore feels more positive. And consequently you feel more positive as well. So, it really is. Like it is all linked together.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:52
And I think we...this is like a gift we can give to the world. Like I know that sounds super cheesy, but you know, we are desperately needed connection– now more than ever. And our cues are contagious, right? So if we show up as our warmest, most competent, most confident self, not only does that make us look good, which is great. That's a happy side effect. But we're also infecting other people to feel like their warmest was almost a competent self. And this because of very specific neural feedback loop, which is when we're with humans, we cannot help but suddenly mirror them. Now the more we like someone the more we mirror, the less we like someone the less we mirror. It's a little bit harder on video that's still done, it happens even more in person, actually, even happens on the phone. We tend to mirror the vocal patterns the person we're talking with. This is a natural response because, as humans, we want to feel as the other person feels. So if we're with someone and let's say that they're sad, they're having a hard day and they're pinching their eyebrows together and they're rolling their...they're pulling their mouth onto a frown and they're worried and they're anxious, we will subtly begin to mirror pinching yourself or pulling our mouth down so we can feel as they feel. And so if you show off with really confident, powerful verbal and nonverbal, other people are more likely to also mimic our competence or confidence and then feel better and more confident themselves. This is a way that I think we can act that is like giving gifts, right? You're giving these gifts of competence and confidence. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for others.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:16
A long time ago, I heard someone say that, you know, one of the best gifts we can give is listening to other people. However, I would argue that, to your point, one of the best gifts that we can give is not just listening to other people, but maybe even in how you listen and interact with other people. So very much appreciate that,

Vanessa Van Edwards 25:36
And like adding the engagement, right, like we can't listen actively or passively. But if we listen actively, we're actually creating contagion, which is super cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:44
Yeah, I like it. You mentioned imagery. I'm gonna change topics on you here for a moment. Because, I'm fascinated by the imagery side. And literally right before this, I always have this routine where, you know, anybody who I'm going to be talking to, I will click on their LinkedIn profile or their website or something else, like just to get a picture in front of me. So I can, you know, imagine the conversation that's about to take place. That said, I clicked on your LinkedIn profile, and you had this post about a launch party that you were doing. And one of the pieces in there was, hey, you know, you want me to take a look at your LinkedIn profile or the picture in there. And I was curious about that, in particular, because I think that is something that many people don't give a second thought to, that was actually the imagery side, but partially, you know, LinkedIn, which is becoming more and more and more widely used every day. So tell me a little bit about what we should be looking for or could be looking for. Let's say that we want to convey confidence and likeability in a LinkedIn photo, for example.

Vanessa Van Edwards 26:44
So what's happening and I think you're absolutely right is we are forgetting that we are very rarely getting a true first impression anymore. Why? Because everyone is googling us for clicking on our links. So our first impressions are actually happening digitally, right? If people have searched you beforehand, which is a lot of the time, right, like a lot of interviews, a lot of meetings, even like I'm now meeting colleagues digitally, before I'm even meeting them in person, you want to make sure that your digital first impression is exactly how they want to come across in person. And luckily, this is actually easier, I actually think it's easier to maintain a great static digital first impression, it's harder to do it in person, we have to make sure that they align. The biggest mistake I think a lot people are making nowadays is they have this amazing digital first impression, and it doesn't match up with the real self, or they have a terrible digital first impression doesn't match their true self. So we want it to be accurate, that's very important. And we think about imagery. So there's a couple, there's two kinds of cues that we're sending in our digital first impression. In those first few milliseconds of someone seeing you, they are getting very quick but very simple cue. So they just looking at your picture, they're looking at your gestures, your expression, your posture, your colors, but they're also very quickly looking at the first few words of your headline. So just like we talked about the verbal cues for your first 10 words out of your mouth, you also want those first 10 words in your headline to matter. It's usually it's a very quick snapshot, but I don't want you to do is to go sterile. That's the mistake actually see verbally on impressions as people use either buzzwords or they use really sterile words like they're just their general title, or company that used to do this workout. Is there a way that you can set yourself up for success by using the kind of words you want people to associate with you? So think about what is your ideal first impression? When people meet you, what do you want them to say about you? Collaborative? Trustworthy? Competent? Powerful? Consider using those words in your headline. Remember, people are very triggered by those cues that associate you more likely to associate with those words, if they're true, they always want to make sure they're true. So think about using words that carry more power that are purposeful in the first few lines of your headline. On the imagery side, you have lots of choices. So we're constantly sending out imagery cues, that's the colors we wear, the props we hold, the props we wear, the props behind us. And so I think instead of making those sterile, a lot of people have, you know, white background today, unfortunately, I have a background.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:06
You have the red.

Vanessa Van Edwards 29:07
Yes. So that I knew I was like, "Oh, I'm going to be in a really horrible conference room. So I'm wearing red, friends. I'm wearing red today." Because I knew I had to balance out the boringness was behind me. So I want you to think about, you know, if you're going for a traditional corporate professional goal, yeah, you want to wear a business suit and a tie. If that's not your vibe, if you want to go more casual, if you want to be more in a team easy going natural setting, take off the blazer and put on something more casual. Your background, if you want to be in a traditional setting, you want to show a traditional setting, but if you want to be doing something more adventurous, more exciting, a little bit different, consider using a more exciting, more interesting background. So I think that we have to match all those cues, like, people often think, "Oh, it's a good picture of me. Therefore it's good enough." It's not just about being good or flattering photo. It's a contextually good photo, so you look good and like yourself and your context what you're wearing, what's behind you, what's your holding is also on the money.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:05
I feel like that is a lens that is very commonly asked, like, I think about questions that we've been asked over the years, and most of them are, "Hey, what's good versus bad." However, I don't find that that's a particularly useful way to look at anything for that matter whether we're talking about imagery, whether it's photos, whether we're talking about headlines, it doesn't matter.

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:26
You're absolutely right. It's not good or bad. And that's a really important distinction. In fact, I'll give a very specific example for a prop. So I have a student who wants to pivot his career from corporate leader to politics. He's in a new phase of his career. He wants to be an activist. So when he was in the corporate part of his career, he wore a business suit and tie, right. So we were talking about, okay, well, how are we going to signal this change? Right? This is a massive change in your careers, and you're gonna be blasting your network, you're gonna be fundraising, you want to signal this. So what's a very easy way, I'm going to give you a little pop quiz here, let's see, can you think of a really easy way to signal... I'm running for office. What's the prop? Can you think of it? When I say, you're gonna be like, "Oh, of course."

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:08
I would say something in the background, or you're at a White House looking or... Tell me.

Vanessa Van Edwards 31:15
So you could totally do a monument right behind you. Absolutely. But a flag pin.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:21
Obviously!

Vanessa Van Edwards 31:22
I mean, when you see someone in a room, and they have a flag pin on, you're like, "So politics?" Like, we associate that small, tiny visual cue with either political ambitions or a strong stance. And so we changed the picture, we took off his time, because he wanted to be a little bit more, you know, the people, he's much more civically minded. So we took off the time, and he's still in a business suit. And he added us a little bit, a little US flag pin. And that was a completely different signal or visual cue that spoke for him. Now, his first impression is much closer to where he wants to go. And it's a really, really small, subtle change. But if that cue is helping speak for him, I think that that's why I'm so glad you mentioned good versus bad, is your cues can work for you. Right? Like if you want to signal something ahead of your first impression, or without you even having to say anything, those visual cues can help you with that– a flag pins is one of them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:14
So do you feel like you have to, since you have an entire book on cues, do you feel the pressure when you're at something like this to have all the cues that you want to? Tell me about that. What goes on in your head?

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:27
I feel free, finally, actually. There was many years where I was trying on the 96 cues myself, right? Like I was like trying this one. I'm like, I have some that I like that I don't like, like, for example cue, I don't use this the thumb pinch, right? Like this is a favorite of Barack Obama, he has a fist and he puts his thumb on top. And that for me, I don't know, just like, am I holding a wand? Like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:47
Harry Potter's.

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:48
Yeah. Like, you know, it's like Leviosa. Like, I don't know, it doesn't work for me. So there was many years where I was trying on these cues, and then when I would find one that hit, I want to talk about it. But because I didn't have this, you know, language, I hadn't cataloged them yet, I was sort of like I discovered this recipe that I couldn't share. So actually, no, I felt so much relief now that we're all talking about these cues. Because I feel like I can be myself, I can use the cues that I find natural. And when I don't find one that's natural, I can be like, "Oh, that was weird. I don't know why I did that cue". And so in a weird way, I'm really happy that I can have this shared language with my partner, with my team, with my colleagues, like, my interviews are more fun now, because we can talk about specific things that work and don't work for us, for me, for you. So now it's been so much easier. Actually, it's been so much easier.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:06
That is fantastic. What advice would you give to people who really want to get started mastering, not all the cues, as we said earlier, but really identifying what is going to work for themselves and then get going on it if they had to do just one thing? Well, just one action or activity, what advice.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:01
It's kind of a weird piece of advice, but I think it's the one really specific thing you can do, which is... there was a specific study I mentioned the book, such a funny, funny study. They had speakers come onstage and give a short presentation. Then they had speakers, think of Steve Jobs, and channel Steve Jobs and give another presentation. Just this exercise immediately improved the speaker's performance. They stayed on stage longer, they felt better about their presentation, they use more dynamic gestures, they had better vocal power, like everything got better simply by just thinking of Steve Jobs. So what I would say is everyone should have like a speaking or a charisma role model. I love The Rock. Okay, I think The Rock is super charismatic. I had a breakdown. I'm just accusing my YouTube channel because I wanted an excuse to watch eight hours of interviews of The Rock and I found that when I channel my charisma role models, my own nonverbal, my verba,l my vocal changes and I can try on cues. So very simply, over the next few weeks, I want you to channel whoever your charisma role model is and see what you know, what you do. You know, are you trying to use in different gestures? Are you using different vocal cues? Does that make you feel more empowered? Those can be the first few cues you can try to add to your repertoire.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:10
That is fantastic. I very much appreciate you taking the time and making the time. And by the way, the book is "Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication" small signals, incredible impact. And thank you for coming on and giving us so many specific examples. I appreciate it very, very much.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:29
Oh, my goodness. I want to thank you so much for having me for letting me share all this work. For anyone who's listening if you're a recovering, awkward person, and you're trying to make your cues work for you, remember, one cue at a time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:44
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and taken the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamored with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team and we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. The really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that scheduleaconversation.com, and find a time that works best for you. We'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamored with, Hey, I can't wait to hear from you.

Speaker 3 37:06
As I've noticed that I get a lot more meaning out of the work that I do, out of the people that I hang out with, out of the experiences that I have, when there's less freedom ironically, within which I get to choose from. So I think, to me, freedom means the appropriate boundaries and constraints within which to play with full freedom.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:26
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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Don’t Worry, Be Happy: How Success Looks Different For Everyone

by

on this episode

As humans, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to one another. This is a bad idea, especially when it comes to measuring success. My measure of success may not be the same as yours. And that’s OK.

That’s because success looks different for everyone.

After working with thousands of people, we’ve observed that when you worry about other people’s opinions (even if it’s family or friends), it could negatively impact your potential success.

What you’ll learn

  • Why you need to define success for yourself
  • How outside opinions negatively impact your success
  • What you need to do to get out of your own way
  • How to finally stand up for yourself

Success Stories

"When I started I was afraid of making the wrong decision! My career was incredibly important to me and I didn't want to screw it up or waste time making a move I wouldn't enjoy! Scott helped me learn what my strengths are and what is most important to me… but more important than that I learned about what I can't stop doing that I have to have in my work to make me happy"

Rhushi Bhadkamkar, Senior Consultant, United States/Canada

Scott has been a tremendous help in bringing focus to my business. Scott enlightened my path towards concentrating on my strengths and doing what I love. I recommend Scott Anthony Barlow to anyone who wants clarity about what they should be doing, and the next step to make your business successful.

Jody Maberry, Began Copywriting & Marketing Business, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

I greatly appreciate your help in bringing this along because I wouldn't have had the confidence to negotiate and to be where I am today without the help of a lot of other people. You played a really significant role in it. I'm not going to be that everyday person that hates my job, I'm going to stretch and I'm going to aspire to be better and I'm not going to make that everyday salary. Thank you Scott for putting this out there for all the people that are trying to do a little bit better and trying to go a little bit farther. This is awesome. I love this. This thing that you do, the whole HTYC thing, from the paperwork all the way down to the podcast and just helping people understand that there is success out there and it is attainable but you've got to work for it.

Jerrad Shivers, Market Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

Scott, and Lisa and the whole team it's been a pleasure to work with you. I’ve been talking to everyone about your program and think the best of the work you do and the tools you put out. It took me a few months to look for outside help. That was the thing I needed. Particularly as someone who has been successful it was hard for me to say I could not do this by myself. I’m a smart person I should be able to figure this out. As soon as I had my first career coaching experience it completely turned around my approach to find a new job. It completely gave me the power back and the tools I needed. If you know exactly what you want to do, you probably aren’t listening to this podcast, but if you don’t know there are a lot of tools, and resources, and people out there that can help you. For me that made all the difference.

Laura Morrison, Senior Product Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory
Load more
Download New Tab

Celena Singh 00:01
What if I won the lottery on Friday? And somebody in the meeting said, "Hell would freeze over, it would never happen." And a week later, I put in my resignation for work, and the subject line said, "I won the lottery." And the main line said, "Hell froze over and what that meant, and I will be resigning in two months."

Introduction 00:27
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:51
As humans, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to each other more than a little bit. Sometimes this can be a great thing. It fosters friendly competition, setting goals to achieve. But many times this is a terrible idea, especially when it comes to measuring success. My measure of success probably is not the same as yours. And that's okay, as it turns out, and that's because success looks different for everyone. Now, I think that we all know this, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier. And after working with thousands of people, we've observed that when you worry about other people's opinions, it can negatively impact your potential success. And this is true, even if it's your parents.

Celena Singh 01:34
And their advice was, you know, "Keep your head down. Do your job. Don't, you know, make any trouble and, you know, don't get yourself fired" because we are, you know, my parents migrated from another country over 50 years ago. And that was the mindset that they came here with. And I was like, "Okay, well. I have to do, you know, what my parents say, and, you know, do all the right things."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:55
That's Celena Singh. As a child of immigrants, she had the privilege of growing up with two different cultures– the one her parents brought over from their old country and the one here in the United States. The difficult part of this is that she didn't want to disappoint her parents. So she ended up staying in her job way longer than what she wanted to. But spoiler alert, if we fast forward, Celena actually just recently joined the HTYC team as our book project leader, which is pretty awesome. So there's a great end to the story. But listen as my conversation with Celena begins, you'll hear what led her on this journey in the first place, how she transitioned and I want you to pay attention to some of the really what many people might look at and call "extreme decisions" that she had to make in order to get where she wanted to go. Let's first go back to over 25 years ago.

Celena Singh 02:55
I started my career at Hydro One around 1997. Prior to starting at Hydro One, I really wanted to become a sports broadcaster, and I went to school for about a year. And then I had an opportunity to purchase a house at a very young age. And I purchased the house with my parents' help and sports broadcasting was like a dream after that. So I had to find a job where I felt that I could make some money and my parents would be proud of me. And I was able to, from a resource, I was able to find out about this project that where this company was hiring and long story short, I was able to secure a job with Hydro One and I thought "life is made" my parents were like, "Okay, you've won the lottery. You've got up for life." Yeah, exactly. Woohoo. You know, like, "Hey, little old me, I found this great job." And their advice was, you know, "Keep your head down. Do your job. Don't, you know, make any trouble and you know, don't get yourself fired" because we are, you know, my parents migrated from another country over 50 years ago. And that was the mindset that they came here with. And I was like, "Okay, well, I have to do, you know, what my parents say and, you know, do all the right things." And I started 23 years old at the company that I worked at for 24 years, and I made a lot of changes in the company, meaning changes in roles. I truly never felt like I belonged in any role. I started at the very bottom as a call center agent, and I moved into billing, I moved into metering, I moved into supervising, I moved into managing teams that I had no idea, I wasn't an engineer or any of those careers where people were normally managers, but I had something and I didn't really quite know at the time what it was because I just did whatever I was told and shifted where I thought, you know, where people told me I needed to go. And COVID, I will say, and you know, beginning of COVID, something shifted for me. I think it shifted actually a couple years before for that, but I really wasn't listening to my inner mentor, so to speak, my inner... myself, like, what I really truly wanted, I was doing what everybody else wanted me to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:09
When you say something shifted several years before COVID, what do you feel like it was at the time that you were not listening to that shifted, or what prompted that shift?

Celena Singh 05:20
Experiencing some not so great employees at work. And because I worked in a unionized environment, I was being kind of told to do, you know, my job, which I was trying to do, and then was kind of getting in trouble, which I was not used to ever getting in trouble my entire life. I was getting in trouble for doing my job. And I started to better understand, it took quite a few years to understand what a unionized environment meant, because I grew up on a farm, you know, my parents have had a farm for a very long time, and you did everything on the farm, and you didn't complain, everybody worked together. So I went from that environment to doing what I was told, and then getting in trouble for doing my job. I had, you know, grievances, like everybody gets these things. So it's, like, but I took them very personally. And it just kept happening. And I think it was 2018, the shift actually happened when I was sitting in a meeting in another mediation meeting with guarding an employee and just something that happened. And the mediator brought me into a room, and it was just her and I and she said, "I probably can get fired for saying this. But I'm going to say this to you." And she said, "This is going to continue to happen to you if you don't make a change." She said, "I would highly recommend you either find a different company that is not unionized to work at or start your own business" because she said "you are a badass, and you need to do that. And this is not the place for you." And she said that I was clinically cold, but not in a bad way. Like she said, it's not a bad thing. She says, "You hold your composure." At first, I was like, "What did she say?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:01
"What do you mean?"

Celena Singh 07:02
Yeah. And she said, I was clinically cold. And she said, "You've held your composure for all of these years." And she goes, "I don't know where you've put all that stuff, but you need to do something else and deal with that." And I went, "Okay..." and then I'm like, "Am I gonna get fired?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:19
What happens next?

Celena Singh 07:20
Yeah, so anyways, it actually made a huge shift in my thinking, I thought, "Oh, my gosh, nobody has ever said something like that to me." And I thought, you know, I was doing all the right things, I was working hard and working overtime and changing jobs, and, you know, sacrificing my health and my marriage, and who knows what else and all of a sudden, it's like, you need to run as fast as you can from here. And it wasn't the company, it was, what my limiting beliefs, my beliefs that I was programmed into, all kinds of things. My parents are amazing, and they have taught me a lot of things. But some of the things I feel for myself and for the next generation is important to shift that thinking. And that's kind of where my thinking shifted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:04
I think that's always a really fascinating and also difficult time for many people where we start to realize that what we grew up with, maybe has served us well, or certainly potentially served our parents well, but is no longer serving us well. And I'll only speak for myself personally, however, that was definitely and continues to be very, very challenging to even, one, recognize where it's happening, and two, to be able to change those pieces. So kudos to you for beginning to recognize at that point in time that that was happening, because many people will go through their entire lives without recognizing that that's at play. What were some of the biggest takeaways that you began to realize, or what were some of the biggest areas where you realized that type of thinking was no longer serving you?

Celena Singh 08:55
I started seeing the people I was hanging around with, you know, it made a difference to me, like I would be talking to some friends like on the side of my corporate role, I studied to become a yoga teacher, as well as I studied to become a holistic nutritionist because of my health issues that I was, not struggling with, but I was noticing so many things. And so when I was hanging around with people in yoga and hanging around people from a nutrition side, not everybody, because that has its challenges, too. I was seeing like I was a different person and I didn't know what imposter syndrome was, but I felt like that's what it was. I mean now I know that's exactly what it was is, I can be myself and my, you know, the areas that I really enjoyed and then I have this more than one mask at work and it was like "okay, this is not right" like all of these things that people are telling me is not right and as I was kind of changing like standing up or, like, standing up for myself and others for different things, all of a sudden, I could see people... I don't know if they felt threatened or maybe they felt intimidated because I always just used to do whatever I was told and then it was like, "I don't like myself like this" like, it's now it's like time for me to look in the mirror and say like, "what were my actions in some of these things that happened?" And it's hard to do that because it's like doing, like, a 360 interview on yourself, or something like that on yourself, right? And asking other people, and I was asking people in environments like, you know, in my yoga environment and my nutrition environment, because I felt like people would be honest, but not mean to me. And it didn't have to be mean, like being honest. It was great. Like, I love the honesty. And I started taking courses on emotional intelligence. And we actually had to do exercise as part of our emotional intelligence program to ask eight people some questions about how do you manage your emotions? How do you react? Do you respond? How are you in different things? And I was terrified to do that. And I did it. And then I was pleasantly surprised of how, well... I was pleasantly surprised about the feedback. And then again, I was like, "Celena, you're so hard on yourself all the time. Of course, everybody thinks you're amazing. Like, why don't you?" And that's where I had to start down on bit of a journey of really getting to know myself better, and what I like and what I don't like, and really what I want to do in life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:11
Do you remember one of the first times where you began standing up for yourself? I heard you say earlier that, "I had always just done whatever people had asked me to do or told me to do and that began to change" it sounded like as you started getting more comfortable with what you wanted, and yourself. Do you remember one of those first times? And what happened?

Celena Singh 11:33
The first time that I can, I mean, there's many but the one that really, as soon as you asked me that question, it was last year on... I can remember the date, it was last year on around March the 6th, and I was in a meeting with a few people. And it was only have like, say, less than 10 people. And I was asking for some support on some, it was actually COVID protocols that I was working on which, you know, pandemic happen all the time so I must know how to do this work. And I was asking for some support, and I wasn't receiving the support that I was asking for. And I felt... because I asked a couple of people before the meeting, does this feel like a reasonable ask? And then all of a sudden, I ask, and it was like crickets. And so in the meeting, I asked a question, because someone was like, "Oh, you can do this" so I'm like, but there's 10 other people I can think of like right away that could help with this. They have the skills, they want to do some of this work. So why not, you know, give them the opportunity? And they kept saying no, kept saying no. And so I made a comment, and I said, "What if I won..." it was on Wednesday, let's say and I said, "What if I won the lottery on Friday?" And nobody said anything. And they said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "What if I won the lottery on Friday? What would you guys do? Like, I know all... I have every COVID protocol in my head. I've documented some of them. And what if I won the lottery on Friday?" And I said, "Okay, what would you do?" And somebody in the meeting said, "Hell would freeze over it would never happen." And I said, "Oh, you don't think that could happen?" And a week later, and it wasn't because it was I had any bitter feelings, I just did some work. And I put in my resignation for work, and the subject line said, "I won the lottery." And the main line said, "Hell froze over and what that meant." And I said that "After 24 years, I've decided to do heart centered work, and I will be resigning in two months." And that was probably the first time I ever felt like I was my true self. Because I felt, like, so good about it. I have no, absolutely no regrets. And I will add that I had actually signed up with Happen To Your Career on the day that I made that or week before I made that decision. And I knew that Happen To Your Career would help me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:49
I don't think I entirely realized that those were so closely intertwined. So tell me about that decision, because that is, by no circumstances, a small decision. It is by no circumstances, a lightweight decision. And also, I had just heard you say that in making that decision to leave this organization in which, it sounds like for 24 years never really found a fit in any way whatsoever. I believe that's what I heard you said earlier.

Celena Singh 14:19
Yeah, that's correct. I never felt like I belonged.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:22
Yeah. In doing so, it also sounds like that was the first time that you ever really felt like yourself. So what led... take me through what it took to make that type of decision?

Celena Singh 14:33
It was really sitting down and when I read through, okay, I'll just say this, that when we read through what the Career Change Bootcamp would do, I was like, "Okay, you know what? This is what I want. Like, I need to go through this to find myself, to understand..." You hear companies and I'm not just talking about the company I work for, I'm just in general, about core values and know what matters to you and my core values or my personal values have never lined up with corporate. And so I feel like no matter where I went in corporate because of this, you know, the corporate I was used to, the corporate that when my parents came to this country, that's what corporate meant, was I wouldn't belong there, because I just didn't line up with a lot of those things. So if someone's going to say, you know, for example, "We're one company." Okay, what does that mean? That means something to me would mean something different to you. So how do we... I want to work, I think that for me, I want to work somewhere where I feel like, when someone says, a core value, we're not using it as a, "well, that's a core value" it's just blended into your everyday, right, what your values are. And I feel like after 24 years, and looking at what the company, you know, this company gave me opportunities, and that they gave me the opportunities, or did I create opportunities based on working, you know, and the roles that I was at, I mean, it was just... I was thinking about how my parents get, like, "what my parents gonna think if I decide to do this?" And my husband was extremely supportive, and we had been talking about it, you know, on and off. And I feel like he knew how loyal I was to the company. I think he just kind of thought, "Well, we'll have a plan" as we normally do. I'm a planner, and it may not happen. And I, you know, was seeing, like a therapist, and just some, you know, just some help, just trying to just talk to some people that were not, you know, close to my life, like they would be, you know, unbiased. And so there was, again, my emotional intelligence coach, and just a few people and they weren't making this, like, I wasn't looking for someone to make the decision for me, which was amazing, because they were not, like, they were not there that says, "Hey, I'm here to talk to you, and let's, you know, do our thing." And it came down to, I want to do better for the next generation, I want the next generation to do better and how... I felt like a hypocrite, you know, if I didn't do this. Like, I'm like, okay, I have this cushy job, and I can do it for the next seven years, retire with this amazing pension. And then I have, you know, five nephews and three nieces who I love, and some of them already doing some of these things that I want to do, you know, at my age, and I'm like, "I have to do this." And it's like, okay, so when I talked to the pension coordinator, and when they gave me all the information, it was like, it really didn't matter about the money, it was the person... the pension coordinator said, "I cannot believe that you're doing this, because it's just nobody does this." He goes, "I have so many people who have these conversations" I think you were in HR, Scott, people talked to you about it in the past is that, you know, "I want to do this, this and this, and this." And then he goes, "99% of people don't do it." And I said, "Oh, I'm gonna do it." Yep. After you... since we just talked, I said, "I'm good. You send me the paperwork of what we just talked about." And within an hour, my husband had half an hour notice, and I sent out the email. Because I knew it was the right thing to do. Everything was lined up, I had a plan to, you know, look at my career going forward. I didn't have to really worry about, you know, money, which you know, how many people can say that, I didn't have to worry about money. I'm not rich, but I have enough that I can do what I'd like to do in life. So that's kind of where I have a long way of saying how I got there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:14
You know, I think that there's so much in here that you just mentioned. If we're peeling apart the layers, first of all, let's acknowledge that you are a planner. I think you've done a really nice job creating a situation for yourself to where you could make this type of decision. Because you've done a nice job with planning and with money and other things like that to where that decision becomes possible. And you've built a foundation for yourself to make different types of decisions for your life, which I think is amazing. And a lot of people don't realize that that has to, in many ways, come first. And the second thing is, two, and I'm not just talking about money, but I'm talking about prioritizing what is most important to create a foundation for other things, too. And another example of that is something else that I think you did really, really well here. At some point, you started practicing prioritizing what was more important to you. And it sounds like you've done such a great job practicing that in small ways as you began, you know, attending yoga and other things like that. You were bringing those tiny pieces into your life in much smaller ways that then added up to you be able to make larger, more declarative prioritizations. And that's something that is not easy to do. And also on the outside, I think everybody else on the outside when you hear that type of story, it's like "Okay, well, just one day we decided to just like do the thing" but there was so much leading up to that that'll allow you to do the thing and I just want to say first of all, congratulations because that's super cool that you've made that type of decision for yourself. And second of all, I just wanted to unpack for a moment, like all that you said up till now that led up to you being able to do, like, do the thing, which is amazing.

Celena Singh 19:57
I think the way that you just do and the other people say it too is, "I don't think I, you know, I give myself, and I think others, we don't give ourselves enough credit for saving our money." I mean, I started saving money when I was 10. And, you know, working on the farm and my little envelopes. And like I said, it's not just about money, it's just about, you know, so many other things like, you know, so then what are you going to do? And how do you want to be? And, who do you want to be around? How do you want to spend your time? You know, all of those things and not, you know, setting some boundaries because it's really about, what is it that I want to do, and not, again, what does everybody else want me to do with this stage of my life now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:34
Yeah. And I think that what's not obvious to so many people, especially as we talk about stories like yours on the podcast, and how people made one type of change from one to another, or left a role, or in your case, a whole series of roles that were not a fit over a period of time, it's not always obvious what are all those parts and pieces that lead up to it. And I really look at career change of any kind, or defining and developing and finding each of our ideal careers as a continuous process, as a continuous refinement process, where you're just building the stage to the next level of refinement to allow you to thrive. And I think that, on one hand, as I think about your story, there's little tiny elements of that there. But on the other hand, too, I am really very curious about when you look back, what do you feel like was most difficult for you to get to the point where you made that decision? As you think about everything that led up to it, you know, 24 years of career as you look back, what were some of the most difficult pieces?

Celena Singh 21:45
I think getting out of... number one is getting out of my own way. And that self doubt and the fear, because I really didn't talk to a lot of people about it beforehand, which in the past, I would have probably talked to so many people, and again, that just introduces so many layers of okay, well, this person said this, and this. And again, I think COVID helped with this by working from home as I was home, like, all of the time and I had meetings, but it did kind of take away from the environment where you had to make small talk with people. So it was more like you could focus on, like, other things like, oh, "You know what? I really like, you know, not getting... I like getting up early, but I really liked fitting in my workout in the morning, instead of working out, you know, later on in the day." And so I think it's getting out of my own way, not thinking about what everybody else would think, thinking about wow, like, if I do this, like I would be the first person in my family to do something like this. And you know, in my family, it's like, you know, my father started working very young, my mother started working very young, and they still work in their 70s, which is okay, it's good for them. And there is a balance, and we didn't have that. And that's where I was thinking, "Well, they're not gonna understand, like, they're gonna be like, what do you do? What are you going to do all day?" And I think it was just kind of going, but that's okay, that they can feel that way and other people can feel that way. And it really was, "What do you do? What do I think? And how do I want to live? And, what examples do I want to set?" You know, and again, going back to the next generation of... and even just like, what does Happen To Your Career talk about is meaningful work and really embodying that, right, is doing things like... in order to do things that mean something, it doesn't mean that you have to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's actually probably you're working less and gaining so much more. And so it was just kind of a shift in mindset and really all the things I was learning, whether it was yoga, meditation, all types of things that I was learning, it was really embodying that and not just going, "Oh, I have all the knowledge. Now I know what to do." It's actually embodying and practicing all of these things consistently. And that's what really led up to the decision.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:52
When you think about what helped you along the way, I heard you say earlier, getting out of your own way, but also I heard you say, try not to worry about or try not to think about what other people are thinking. And certainly that has influenced a lot of your choices in the past and a variety of ways, both good and maybe potentially less good for you. However, in this case, you were able to move past that and focus more on what you wanted and being okay with the situation if someone else thought, "Hey, that's not the right thing for you." So what helped you move past that? It's really what I would be interested in understanding because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it.

Celena Singh 24:35
Setting boundaries was one thing with a lot of people. My parents thought I was crazy. They said, "Can you go back? Like, can you retract that email?" And I was like, I don't want to. And I said, "I can, actually" and I gave myself actually two months, not just because I was going to retract, it was more I wanted to make sure I felt like I owed the company that two months to, you know, transition all of that good stuff. And it was like, I had to set some boundaries with my parents, I had to have some really hard conversations with them because I live right beside them too. So it's like, you know, they're like, "You can't do this, like, you know, this, this and this." And I went, and we there was all like, they're amazing people, it's just that was what they believed, now you just keep working. And, you know, what about your pension? You're not going to get all of this. And I'm like, "I know. I know that I've worked all of these years. And those things, they, you know, money, you know, when we have to live and all that good stuff. And I want to enjoy life." I said both my parents started working very... have been working since... my dad was six when he started working, my mom was like, 12. And I said, "I want you to be proud of my career, and all of the other things you don't even know that I can do that I want to improve on." And they're like, "But what do you mean?" And I'm like, "Did you know that I'm going to start, like, I would like to start a podcast?" And they're like, "what is that?" You know, they're like, "How much money is that going to pay you?" I'm like, "Well, that's the thing. Like I've set my life up to..." so I explained them "I set my life up. So I don't have to worry about that. And that I can shift. I don't need to you know, all of these things that I used to think that made me happy, I don't need those things anymore. I want you both to see that the hard work that you've put in and sacrifices, now that I don't have to work as hard. And then the next generation doesn't have to work as hard." It definitely helped having that conversation. At first they were looking at me like I had three heads. And I said "Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can be in a normal mindset to do it. I mean, you definitely need to be in a mindset where it's okay what everybody else thinks. But you don't have to do what they say. It's okay. Thank you for your feedback. And be very conscientious of who you're asking for feedback from" because, yep, some people in my life would have talked to me for hours about why this was the wrong decision. So my circle of friends really changed after I made the decision. I had many, many people sending me emails, asking me what lottery I won.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08
I didn't see anything on the news.

Celena Singh 27:10
Yeah, exactly. Saying I won the lottery of life made no sense to most of the people I worked with, because that's what I felt like, I felt like I won the lottery of life. So that I heard on a podcast, I think it was just on Monday that you had with Liz, and she was talking about the book, the second mountain, I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's a book that I read in 2019." That it was such a major book in my shift, as well as that book. And there's a book called "A Choice" and the "Gift", like all of these books, there's a little piece of it that helped me to make, you know, that change and going okay, leaving, I felt like it was in that valley. And now I'm coming up that second mountain and now I'm, like, just like, "Hey, you know what, the sky's the limit." I didn't think there was any other company or any other place I could go, you know, with my age. And just because I spent so many years in a company and the culture that, frankly, it's just very difficult to break that mindset that you may not fit in anywhere else. I didn't fit in there anyway. So it's okay, I will fit in somewhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:15
I think that that is definitely something that I've heard many times over in conversations with people that, you know, what if I don't, and then whether it's fit in, or any number of other things after that, like fill in the blank here. And it's that line of thinking that is really normal for us as humans, it is built into how we're hardwired. And it is a big component of human psychology. And I think the studies that I've seen on how we evaluate loss, and much, much greater and we give so much more weight to that potentially, even loss that isn't even a real thing, like you said, you know, "I didn't fit in there anyway." So the fact that you are perceiving that you might lose something that you didn't even have, is still getting time and attention. And that's normal for us as humans, however, being able to move through that is very, very difficult, and being able to understand that that's what's at play, and again, I just want to say congratulations on that one, you began to recognize that and we're doing something about it the entire time. And also it leads me to the next question of you afterwards, after you left, began experimenting, it sounds like with a variety of different areas. And I'm curious, would you be willing to share some of those experiments? I know you did start a podcast and we'd love to hear more about that. But also what other ways have you experimented and also what have you learned about what creates a much more fulfilling career for you?

Celena Singh 29:39
One interesting thing when I was working with Alistair is we did the design experiments and I really love doing that. So, you know, I started doing informational interviews, I reached out to a few people that, you know, through other contacts and I really enjoy talking to people about you know, their career, not just to careers, but just getting to kind of know them and what they're doing now and so I really enjoy doing that, the informational interviews and I apply for a job, a role actually, with my favorite sports team and which is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:13
Wait, hold on. How have we not had this conversation? Have we had this conversation?

Celena Singh 30:17
I don't know why.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:18
You're a Leafs fan?

Celena Singh 30:19
I am a Leafs fan.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:21
Ah, very cool. We are huge hockey fans here. Seattle has given us the Kraken which personally are having a mediocre first year ever, but we'll get over it. Either way.

Celena Singh 30:33
I'm a Leafs fan. They haven't won in 54 years.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:35
Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. Who's like the Boston Red Sox of the NHL? Yes. Pull off the curse. Okay. All right. So you're a Leafs fan. I like you even more now. And also, at the same time, you accepted a... or you applied for a role.

Celena Singh 30:52
I applied for a role, which was a... it actually posted, like shortly after I retired from my job and it was at almost like an apprenticeship to work with a team and they had a coaching apprenticeship and a management. It was like mentorship or apprenticeship geared towards diversity and inclusion, that was part of their diversity inclusion and one of their initiatives was to hire two people either, who are African-American or indigenous or part of a marginalized group. And my husband actually sent me the posting, and he said, "You totally need to apply." And I read it. And I talked to Alistair about it. And, you know, I actually ended up saying this on my podcast, I talked about it, it didn't work out. I mean, but going through the process of applying, they asked to do, not just send your resume, they actually also asked you to do a video, or a cover letter or a slide deck on who you were, like, personally. And so I did a slide deck. And I had no idea what Fiverr was until Alistair told me what Fiverr was, and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:58
Context, Fiverr is a place where you can go and like... I've used Fiverr many times, you know, when we needed to get some graphic design done, when we need to get a project created. It's a place where people with different skill sets can post jobs or what they call gigs to be able to have people that have those needs meet up with the people who have the skills to be able to do them, kind of, like an Upwork or similar.

Celena Singh 32:23
Kind of like to go for Bolton boards, right, like they used to put stuff on job boards. So now it's like this. So I actually hired, you know, worked with somebody on Fiverr to put my... I actually did a slide deck and I put pictures in it of my, like, who am I and how I connected with the Maple Leafs, like when I was three years old. So like around 1977, because of my dad. My dad started watching hockey, my dad, you know, came to Canada, as we're from in 1970. My parents originally from Guyana, and my dad wanted to, you know, be the best Canadian ever. So he you know, loves hockey, loves, you know, we have a baseball team. And I will always, you know, wanted to be like dad, and connect a lot very closely with my dad. So I wanted to know everything about hockey. And so I put a lot of that in my presentation about me and you know, my connection with my dad and the team. And also where I grew up, I was the only, well, everybody in my class was white in first eight years of my life. And so knowing about hockey was everybody talks about hockey. So I mean, I was pretty popular because I knew all the stats, and I was really great at sports. So then people stop teasing you or bullying you because you're like everybody else. And I was actually better because I was really great at sports, like I was amazing at sports. And still am, like I still love sports. And so I applied for the job. And I was not the successful applicant. And I was okay with that, because I received a really amazing letter from the General Manager. And it was you know, they basically just said that they really liked my presentation. And basically, there was a better fit, and I was okay, because I really enjoyed the process more than anything. Like, I would have done that job for free, or what I would have learned there. And I think I feel like I had something also to offer, not just what they would have given me, I had something to offer. So I think it would just been a great thing to, you know, tell my, you know, my nieces and nephews, kids when I get older, you know, another thing that I did, which is pretty cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:31
That's amazing. What do you feel like you learned out of that experience?

Celena Singh 34:35
I learned that there were just so many opportunities out there that I was not aware of, and that I have a lot of transferable skills, I have a lot of life experience that it means something and it didn't feel like it ever meant something before so and I feel like every, you know, whether it's roll on my podcast or whatever I'm doing, I feel like I'm worthy of it and I belong with, you know, with the things that I'm doing now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:00
Why do you feel, from your perspective, because you've lived this a little bit, but what do you feel makes it so difficult when you are in the same organization or same role or same anything for a long period of time to be able to see what else is out there? Because I just heard you say two things that I believe some of the biggest challenges. One, I heard you say that it was difficult to just flat out didn't know all the things that could be out there. And you're right, there's so much out there, and even things that aren't actually out there can be created too. And then the other thing I heard you say, too, is that, well, it sounded like it was difficult to understand what the skills actually transferred outside of the environment that you'd been in so long. So on one hand, what do you think that makes it especially challenging? Why? Where did you see that for yourself? And then on the other hand, I'm curious what helped you begin to see that.

Celena Singh 35:53
I think you get very comfortable when you're in an environment where you can stay in your job, you can, you know, go in other jobs in the company, and you just, "Oh okay, so I've got all these things in place, you know, I've got the pension, yay. My parents are gonna be happy, I've got this, I've got that." And then this comfort, you feel comfortable. And the thing is, when I thought I was comfortable, actually, that's when my health would bother me more, because it was inside was going, "no, you're not comfortable." That's not what comfortable means. Like, that's not the only thing that you need to be comfortable later in life. And that's where I was like, "I really need to start paying attention to what is my body telling me. I mean, I love to exercise and I listen to my body that way. But I wasn't listening to my body when it came to these messages that you know, these signs that were coming to me through my health going, no, that is not what being comfortable feels like." And that's where the shift happened is when I was talking to people outside of my corporation, who I was friends, working with Alistair and I think with all the coaches, you know, you have your accountability team know what happens when things get hard. And not one person on my accountability team was somebody that I worked with, like, and because I wanted it to be... because I knew this was going to be something different, so I already knew I wanted to leave that environment, that corporate environment, and I thought, "Well, I don't need somebody saying no, you need to stay here." So the accountability team members that I had were either people who were self employed, or who had done something, maybe a different story, obviously different story than mine, maybe didn't wait as long as I did. So that really helped me to kind of see like, "Okay, so these feelings that I'm feeling they're actually true, like other people are saying, like, yep, you need to listen to those things." And I learned some skills on how to do that, whether it was meditating, or understanding better what is fear, like fear was a big thing, self doubt was a big thing. Who's gonna want to hire me after spending 24 years in the company? You know, I had to work hard for those roles and interview for them. But I knew exactly what I needed to do, where, you know, it was getting out of my comfort zone and doing things that, you know, getting into the areas that I really wanted to and going, "Yeah, I can totally do this if I want to. And I can learn things. I have transferable skills, and I'm really good at learning things quickly, adopting really well, I love... I didn't realize how much I like change until I left my company" because we talked about change all the time and I think it's that fine line that people want change. But then when it happens, it's the... it's like, "oh, my gosh, all this change", right? So I got into that kind of, you know, habit of going, yeah, we want all these changes, and then when they would happen, people wouldn't like them. And it was be, like, "No, but this is amazing." And how do you sell that if people like around you are just so used to change happening take so long? And I was just like, "Oh, we can change this really quickly. Let's do this and this and this." Like, oh, this is how people spend 25 years in the company, and walk away with a pension and then go, "I really don't know what I did", like, that should make a difference. You know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:53
I think that's fascinating that once you remove yourself from that environment, that you realize that "Oh, I actually love change in so many different ways" it sounds like you didn't fully know about when you were there. That's really interesting.

Celena Singh 39:09
I was afraid of change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:10
Yeah. When you think back, I want you to go and put yourself in the shoes that you were in three, four years ago, when you started getting inklings of, "hey, this is really not right for me. And it's not been right for a long period of time." And you started... just were starting considering, "Hey, maybe there could be or should be, or might be something different" because I think that's where a lot of people are at in one way or another where they're just considering "Hey, should I make a change?" And you know, quite frankly, a lot of people would consider this type of change a pretty, pretty large change, right? So what advice would you give to those people that are considering "should I make this change? Should I prioritize something different in my life?"

Celena Singh 39:52
The advice that I would give is, I think it's really hard to do this and I really feel like people sat for 5 or 10 minutes and thought about, you know, instead of looking at, like you're looking at a menu and think like, there's so many things on the menu and go, "Okay, I've only picked the same thing every day or every year for how long." And there's so many things on there and think about, like, "What other things do you want on that menu?" And you don't have the solution it, it's really like, "What are your values? And what is it that you want? And do those things actually match up?" And it's good, and knowing that and surrounding yourself with people who... a very small group of people, who will be very unbiased with whatever you want to, you can talk to people, but I think having that conversation with yourself and saying, "This is what I want. This is what I don't want. How am I living my life right now?" And then, you know, looking at solutions, like possible solutions, I think, but doing those exercise, like that exercise, it seems like it's easy, it's not simple, or simple, it's not easy in doing it, I feel like it will make that shift, of course, this makes sense. I need to do this. And it'll help to take away the fear and the self doubt. And like you said, it doesn't happen overnight but it's taking that one step towards, you know, what you really want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:15
That's amazing. I love the idea of thinking about it as a menu and then asking, "Hey, am I okay with what's on the menu right here? Or do I want there to be more on the menu? Or do I need to go into an entirely different restaurant? I don't know."

Celena Singh 41:27
Exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:29
Yeah, that is a fantastic way to think about it. I know I said this earlier, but I just wanted to say again, really, really nice work here is always very difficult. Because when I get to have these conversations with people like you, Celena, who have done such a great job prioritizing different things than they were prioritizing in their life, and continuing to prioritize those pieces and parts that are most important to them going forward, we can never represent all the things that had to happen and all the work that had to be done in order to get there. It just seems as if it can be so easy and it is not easy, and I know that. So really, really wonderful job. And congratulations again. I appreciate it. I was super curious about when you said sports broadcasting earlier, was that tied into some of the reasons that you love the Leafs and hockey, and so many sports, what caused you to be interested in sports broadcasting?

Celena Singh 42:22
I watched sports from, you know, the time I was three years old, until when I started, I did sports broadcasting for a year, I always saw men doing it. And I thought I can do that. I know the stats. I know all this stuff. I never played, unfortunately, my parents couldn't afford, you know, for me to play. And I just... I was so good at the stats. And I just loved just when I would watch, like, there's a lot of great broadcasters out there that I would like to listen to, and I would like, "I would love to do that." Just to, maybe get more females interested in sports, right? Because they're, you know, my mother could care less to watch hockey. And the reason that you know, when I said I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, originally, she got it, because I used to drag her to the, you know, the local drugstore to buy like a... I don't care about my age, because at the time I was like, I don't know, 9 or 10 years old, it was like 25 cents for like the Saturday paper. And I love to cut the pages out, like, the pictures out and make scrapbooks. And then I would write little things about what I would say if I was a broadcaster. And that's really why. And I think that's why I started my podcast because I can do that now. And you know, I don't talk about sports all the time. And I love being in front of, like, watching you on the mic there is just... or just hearing you on the mic, you know, on your podcast, I was like, "I want to do that. I think it's so cool." And it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of fun work because whatever I put out there I put, you know, use a sports, you know, I put 110% into it and more. I put my heart and soul into that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:51
That's amazing. And I think it's so fun to see how little tidbits of the... like once you start paying attention to what you want, again, a little tidbits of the past start to pop up these little indications. So that's really fun to see that happen in that way for you. That's awesome. Anything else that we didn't already talk about or cover that you think would be useful for our audience to know? And if there's not anything that's totally okay, but open mic time, Celena.

Celena Singh 44:18
I just want to thank, you know, have you read the book "Playing big"?

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:22
I have had it quoted to me so many times that I feel like I've read it but I have not actually read it.

Celena Singh 44:28
I just started reading it two weeks ago and the person who told me to read this was... I was saying to her that "I was feeling some self doubt about where to take my podcast next. I want to start interviewing people." And she's like, "But you're so good. Like you sounds pretty good. And you know, when you're speaking yourself. So what's going on?" And I'm like, "I just found this self doubt that I'm not going to be good at it" and she goes, "Who's good at it?" Llike she goes, "Have you heard some of those?" And I said "No, that's true." And in "Playing Big" they talk about how fear is defined in two ways and how this actually helped me even with this podcast today, you know, this interview is there's two types of fear– one is the what if, worst case scenarios. And the other is what happens when you're in a place where you know, it's bigger than you expected. So expansion happens or energy gets better, or you actually connect to with your true self. That's a different type of fear. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I was totally feeling the other type of fear. And I had no idea. I thought it was the what if that, oh my gosh, what if this happens, you know?" And I don't know, it's something about me that I've learned. And I think that, you know, it's important for people to really look at both of those types of fear and know that there's different ways to navigate them. It's not a one stop, you know, oh, just get over the fear, go get some, you know, hypnosis or something. No, it's more of, like, allow that fear. So sometimes when I meditate, it's like, there's some fear that will creep up. And that's why I listen to the music that I listened to after because it really helps to, it really, truly grounds me to go like, "No, I can do this." like, ground. And then yeah, I can do this. And it's the inner critic versus the inner mentor, they call it, which is amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:11
I love that.

Celena Singh 46:11
I love it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:19
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and taken the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamored with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team and we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. The really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that scheduleaconversation.com, and find a time that works best for you. We'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamored with, Hey, I can't wait to hear from you. Until next week, adios. I'm out.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Achieve More Than Meaningful Work (& How To Ask For The Help You Need)

by

on this episode

Years ago, I wanted to learn more about how some people became what I now call Happy High Achievers – people who were successful in both their career and also in the other areas of life.

Fast forward to when we started HTYC, we had the goal to help many more people in the world become Happy High Achievers, not just to get to meaningful work. 

So what do you think stops people from making career changes to much more fulfilling work? What stops people from becoming Happy High Achievers?

What you’ll learn

  • Why you don’t need to run away
  • How “powering through” isn’t always the answer
  • When your lifestyle you’ve grown accustomed to might hold you back
  • Why you can’t do it on your own
  • Why you don’t need to have everything figured out

Ready to chat with cindy?

Success Stories

I am so thrilled taking your CCB Program! It probably saves me thousands of hours groping in the dark on my own in the journey to find work I love.

Tina Nguyen, Dentist, United States/Canada

"When I started I was afraid of making the wrong decision! My career was incredibly important to me and I didn't want to screw it up or waste time making a move I wouldn't enjoy! Scott helped me learn what my strengths are and what is most important to me… but more important than that I learned about what I can't stop doing that I have to have in my work to make me happy"

Rhushi Bhadkamkar, Senior Consultant, United States/Canada

during this last transition to Seattle, while working with Lisa, that help was just what I needed right then to go from where I knew I could go to where I got.

Mike Bigelow, Senior Project Manager, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

The role is meeting my expectations… totally owning the marketing function. And luckily the founder/president is always forward-looking – he just presented us a huge strategy doc for the next year. So there will be an opportunity for us to grow beyond our initial audience, which is great. I applied (against conventional wisdom!) and went through a lengthy interview process. I did use the resume/cover letter chapter quite a bit to customize what I used to respond to the ad. I also found that using the Interview chapter was super helpful in formulating “SBO” oriented responses, and I even used some of them in the interview. Having those “case study” type responses was really helpful and I believe cemented my candidacy. BTW – they hired me completely over Skype and phone! I never met anyone from my company (in person) until last week at a conference.

Erica Fourrette, Marketing Director

Load more
Download New Tab

Cindy Gonos 00:01
We do have that mentality of, "I can do it on my own." And eventually, folks will come to the conclusion that, "maybe an expert is somebody that I should be talking to." And an expert is not your spouse or your significant other or your parents or a friend. But I think that a lot of times people stall on the process because they really feel like they can do it on their own.

Introduction 00:26
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what it does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change. Keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:50
Back in the early 2000s, I started studying what makes people successful. Early on, it was very clear that some people were successful, they achieved a lot, but gave up everything else to do it. Now, when I was researching this, I didn't want to know about those people who destroyed all of the relationships with their kids or other people that they really cared about to go after some other version of success. Instead, I wanted to know more about those people who prioritized both. And those people who became what I now call "happy high achievers", people who are successful in their career and define success on their own terms, but also in the other areas of life that mattered the most to them. People who had great relationships with their significant other and a career they love or people who are highly wealthy and are happy people to be around. When we started HTYC, it was the goal to help many more people in the world become happy high achievers, not just to get to meaningful work. Since then, we've learned more than a lot. Here's the question I have for you, what do you think stops people from making career changes to much more fulfilling work? What stops people from becoming happy high achievers?

Cindy Gonos 01:59
But I think just taking that first big step and saying, "I don't know" it's okay to not know before you get on a call with me. It's okay to not be sure before you make that appointment. It's okay to feel all those feelings before you do this. But the biggest thing is just to do the thing. That would be my best advice, Scott, is do the thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:19
Do the thing. The answer is counterintuitive. That's Cindy Gonos, our Director of Client Success and the very first person that you meet when you talk to us at HTYC. I asked her to come on today to be able to share what she's learned by having many hundreds of conversations over and over and over again, with people that want to make this type of change. Now, it turns out, it's not the work or the knowledge or even developing the skills that often stops people from becoming happy high achievers, it's the fact that most people never ask for help. And if they do, often asking people that aren't in a position to help them. In this episode, today, Cindy and I will chat about what we believe are the five biggest beliefs that stop you from ever taking the first step and asking for help. Cindy, welcome to the podcast, officially.

Cindy Gonos 03:06
Thank you, Scott, for having me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:08
Where in your career have you seen this pop up? This idea of struggling to ask for help or even not asking for help or being challenged in asking for help and that stopping you from something somewhere that you want. Where have you seen that pop up for yourself?

Cindy Gonos 03:22
Sure. I had a really amazing opportunity, Scott, to open and run a swim school for children. I was very, very excited about the opportunity. And I felt like I was ready to, no pun intended, dive into anything to help make the swim school successful. I learned very quickly that one of my responsibilities as the General Manager of the swim school was to also be a lifeguard, the head lifeguard, if you will. And unbeknownst to my owner, or any of the folks that was helping me with training, I have an absolute phobia of water, terrified of the water, absolutely terrified of the water. And when I went into my lifeguard training, I just kept telling myself, "you're going to be fine, you're going to do this, you're going to be fine." But the fear that I had was absolutely paralyzing. And it was really difficult for me to admit that, it was really difficult for me to admit that I needed to ask for help. So I went through the first day of lifeguard training, just floundering around, struggling a lot, but really trying to put on that brave face. And at the end of that day, I went to our lifeguard instructor. And I just said to her, "This is really, really hard for me, and I'm really, really afraid." And she was able to calm me down. She was able to talk me through it. She was able to tell me all of the reasons why I could do this thing that I was so afraid of, and I did it. I became a lifeguard. I became an awesome lifeguard. And at the end of lifeguard training, when I got my certification, I went to my car after training and I cried so hard because I was so absolutely proud of what I had done, but I was able to go in with confidence because I asked for help with that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:03
That's amazing. And I think that that pops up for so many people. I know I've experienced that. I can't even count the times in my career. I would love to say that every single time on the other end of it, I went and asked for help, that is not the case. A lot of times I just struggled through it. And sometimes I didn't even get where I wanted to go, because I didn't ask for help. And conversely, the other times where I did, it wasn't as big of a deal every single time in so many different ways. It often requires the same degree of courage that you described, or transparency, to be able to say, "Look, I'm really struggling with this. I don't necessarily know where to go from here. But I do know that I need help." So that's what's really interesting to me. And I'm curious, you and I had a conversation prior to the evolution of this episode. And we had identified that there's really five main things that we've seen over and over again, stopping people from asking for help. What is the first one that you've seen?

Cindy Gonos 06:00
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the first thing that folks will say is that they have that feeling that they don't want to just run away, or they don't want to let others down. I think so often, we take career paths, because it is expected of us, right? It's the expectations our parents have, or our partners have, or the responsibility that we have to our families or to our children. And one thing that I heard from a couple of folks that I talked to is that even getting on the call with me took a lot of courage. And that courage was to accept the fact that they weren't running away from something, but that they were actually running towards something that was better and more fulfilling for them. And that takes a lot of courage.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:45
I think that's, on one hand, fascinating that that is what it feels like. It feels like if we are making a change, we are failing at something, we're running away from it, as opposed to the... what very often is, is trying to make an intentional change, and intentional improvement in your life, or your work or your career or whatever else. And I think that that is, I don't want to necessarily, you know, take us down a bunny trail, but it's really interesting that that is what we've created in our society that when you're trying to make that type of change, the first thing that we think of is, "Oh, crap. I'm failing at this." And that causes us to not go and ask for help to make a change. So that's a whole nother episode unto itself. That path that is expected of us, tell me more about that.

Cindy Gonos 07:33
Sure. I think when we start our careers, a lot of times what we do is we look for the logic in what we should do. We look for that path that's going to give us success. We look for the path that's going to make us safe. And I think safety for some folks means stability, as far as finances go. I don't think that we're focusing enough on the safety or fulfillment of ourselves. So it's almost as if we feel as though we're letting other folks down by not having that predetermined societal version of success, right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:11
Yeah, that whole idea of doing what's expected. I think the really interesting thing about that is studying happy high achievers, or would be happy high achievers, there's always an evolution in there, there's always an evolution where you are initially focused on what other people, you know, whether that be people that are close to you, or societal versions of what we think success is. And there's always this evolution in the switch that happens, it's not usually overnight, it's usually over a period of time where we start focusing more and more on what we personally define as success and what we expect of ourselves. And that's something that takes practice in so many different ways. And I think we underestimate that and just how much practice we can get, once we are doing that with someone else that can help us. So that whole asking for help, literally is stopping that in so many different ways when we're not doing it.

Cindy Gonos 09:06
One thing that I hear a lot of folks say is when I'm on our first time calls, because I'll do all the first time conversations, is a lot of times your folks say, "I know I've been really lucky. I know that I've been really fortunate." And I can feel them hesitating on the but. They almost feel that guilt of saying, "I know I've been really successful but I'm not fulfilled." They tend to trail off on the end of that sentence. Because again, it's that expectation, the... "I know that what I have makes me fortunate compared to others" or "I know that I've been successful." But but but... is the thing that they're... Yes, they're trailing off on. So it's great to be successful. But if you're not fulfilled, if it's not meaningful, then are you really successful in the way that is meaningful for you? So.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:54
I love that. What would you say is the second biggest way or second biggest thing that stops us, second biggest belief that stops us from asking for help?

Cindy Gonos 10:04
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a running joke in my house, we love Arrested Development, it is one of our favorite shows. And we have a daughter who was very picky eater. And we would always tell her "Amber, you know what, it's dinnertime. You just need to keep your head down and power through, just power through." And I feel that a lot of folks take that throughout their careers that they don't want to feel weak. So they justify staying in a situation that they don't necessarily want to be in by saying, "I just need to power through this. I just need to keep going." So that they don't feel that weakness or again, that sort of failure, where maybe they just aren't trying hard enough, maybe they're just not pushing through enough. So I think a lot of folks fall into that mindset of "if I can just power through this tough time, or I can just power through these last 10 years of unhappiness through to the other side." So that's one thing that I hear a lot is folks having that mentality of just put your head down, just keep your head down and power through it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:01
I've definitely heard people say, "Hey, I only have X number of years left till retirement" quote, unquote. And that might be like three years, that might be five years, it might be 10 years. The other day, I heard someone tell me, "I only have 32 years left to retire." I was like, "Oh, no. I'm so sorry." And it's that idea. Somewhere along the line, we've gotten the idea that we just need to power through, and maybe some places that can serve as well. But I found that generally, when it's something that goes on for years, we're not talking about, like, "Hey, I just need to power through this project that's going to last the next two days." But we're talking about, "I just need to power through years at a time." Like we only have so many years on the planet. So you know, regardless of what your beliefs are, like it's a relatively short time, and just powering through isn't necessarily going to serve you and the other people really, really well.

Cindy Gonos 11:56
Absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:57
What do you think is the third biggest belief?

Cindy Gonos 12:00
Oh, man, yes. This is the one that kills me. It kills me a little bit inside every time I hear folks say it. There is this misconception, I will call it a misconception, that in order to find fulfilling work, that for some reason, folks are going to have to be poor, they do not want to be poor. So if I'm talking to someone about ideal career or roles that they're looking for, I always ask what their salary requirements are, what would they like to see themselves ideally at a salary. And when they start the phrase with, "Well, I guess I would take..." and then they insert a number, that is a really quick indicator to me that they are expecting that they're going to have a lower standard of living or lower income in order to have meaningful work. So I'll ask them, I will question them, "Why did you choose this number?" And I always get the same response, "Well, if I want work that I really love, I know I'm going to have to take a pay cut. I know I'm going to have to sacrifice some of my income." And that is absolutely positively just not the case. So I think that stops a lot of folks from even taking that first step. They have that sense of financial security, and they're so afraid that they're going to jeopardize that, that they just don't make any moves forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:15
Yeah, if I feel like I want to keep up the lifestyle I've grown accustomed to, and I feel like making a change is going to force me to give up that lifestyle, then I'm not very likely to move forward in one way or another. And what's so fascinating is that it is so ingrained. You and I, when we had a conversation the other day, I remember talking about this, and we're saying that it is literally every conversation that shows up, every conversation that we're having with someone who we are potentially working with to help make this type of change we're talking about, we always are addressing this in one form or another, I feel almost like sometimes we are releasing people of that belief that if you are doing something meaningful, that it must be done for less money or less compensation, or in fact, on the other end, we don't see that. But we don't see that when people are going through the efforts to do work where they are contributing at a higher level in different ways than what they're accustomed to that is requiring them to accept a lower value, in fact, we see it very much the opposite way. But ultimately, I mean, everybody gets to choose. So if you're going to choose, I'm always going to choose to keep my my salary at the same level and the head after that, because I know that if I am upfront, accepting that I need to do that it's impossible or I can't do that, then I'm making it impossible for myself.

Cindy Gonos 14:36
Yeah, I agree. I think that so many times folks undervalue their strengths. And when we work with folks, that's really where we want them to be is working within their strengths. And I think that once they're able to see the value in their strengths, then they're able to see that they can keep the lifestyle, they can have a better lifestyle than what they've been accustomed to, and they're in that place where the work is meaningful, their bandwidth is longer, they're able to work better and work harder, and it feels really, really good for them. And it's this really magical place that they don't think exists. So it's up to us to break that stigma and let them know, "Hey, sorry, but you're wrong. You actually can do work that you really love and make a really good living that does exist. It is a real thing." So.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:21
It is a real thing. Those, I understand where the belief comes from, it's very pervasive in our society, that accepting a work that is more meaningful is less valuable in one way or another. That doesn't necessarily make it true, that doesn't necessarily make it what's actually happening out there. What do you believe is the fourth most common belief that stopping people?

Cindy Gonos 15:46
The fourth most common belief is that folks really believe that they can just do this on their own. So I have the luxury of working in health and wellness and the health and wellness industry for about 10 years. And you would get into January, right, and you would think, "Oh, man, I'm gonna be so busy, like, everybody's gonna need help with getting healthier and losing weight and doing all these things." And it would be crickets for the first couple weeks of January, because everybody had this mindset of, "I'm going to be able to do this on my own." And then you start to creep into the end of January. And then all of a sudden, you're just getting bombarded with people who have now realized, "Oh, hey, wait, maybe I should probably have somebody who's really, really good at this helped me get going on this." But I think we do you have that mentality of, "I can do it on my own." And eventually, folks will come to the conclusion that maybe an expert is somebody that I should be talking to, and an expert is not your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents or a friend, an actual real life expert who can be your coach and can be your partner through this. But I think that a lot of times people stall on the process, because they really feel like they can do it on their own.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:54
This one's fascinating. We spent, Alyssa and I have spent a lot of time trying to instill this in our kids, because we've realized in the last two years that somehow our kids have adopted this same type of belief, like I can do this on my own. It's like, whoa, whoa, hold on. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. But let's evaluate what it's going to take to do this on your own versus working with someone that knows a lot more than you. And you know, Camden, he told me this the other night, an ice hockey. And when I was coaching this team, he's like "I already know how to do it, dad." It's like, yes, you know how to do it. But have you done it? And, you know, having years and years of experience actively doing it looks differently than just knowing theoretically how to do it. And we find the same thing is true for career change. Like part of the reason this company Happen To Your Career is in existence is because I was trying to figure all this stuff out for myself. And it literally took me seven years to go through and learn how to do it. Now, we have really smart listeners. So if you're listening to this, you know, maybe it takes you five years to figure out how to make a career change on your own in a way that's really wonderful for you and really meaningful for you versus changing from job and having to go to the wrong one and then go to the wrong one again, and then maybe the wrong one a third time. But you don't necessarily have to do that. That often is the difference of asking for help, in one way or another.

Cindy Gonos 18:15
Yeah, I love that. You said that, Scott, because it's true. We have really smart listeners. So could they possibly do this work on their own? Absolutely. I think anybody can do anything, but it sure have a hell lot easier when you have a partner, and you have somebody who's really good at it, right? Somebody who has also gone through the paces with other folks who are going through the exact same things that our clients are going through, they've kind of seen it all. So you're benefiting from the expertise of not just the coach, but the coach's experience with other folks who have gone through the exact same thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:49
So right, so right. I'm still learning layers of this. I feel like every day, for myself, for each new thing that I'm learning or taking on. What do you feel like is the fifth and the final belief that stops people?

Cindy Gonos 19:04
Sure. I think the final belief that really stops people from asking for help is they, and I don't know why, I can't tell you why this is, I'm a human too, so I, a lot of times, feel the same way. But folks feel like they need to already have it figured out before they ask for help. So it's kind of that you know, before you go to the dentist, and you're flossing as much as you possibly can, and you're like "I'm gonna brush my teeth the very best that I can" when you know the dentist is going to clean your... Or you're really trying to get your hair looking good before you go to the salon. I feel like when I talk to folks, what I hear so much is "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up" and that's okay. That's why we exist. That's the very best thing that we're good at helping people figure out is what they want to be when they grow up. So I think people feel like they need to already have it figured out and they absolutely do not. They don't even have to have a little bit of it figured out in order to ask for help.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:58
When you pull back and you look at the bigger picture, there's some level of absurdity to it that we think we have... and you and I were talking about this the other day with ducks in a row like, we think we have to have all of our ducks in a row before we go to get our ducks in a row, or go to get help for keeping all our ducks in a row. And it's like, "Hold on, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever." Because if we already had it all figured out, why would we be ever asking for help? And I think to bring us all the way back around what I've seen in studying happy high achievers and would be happy high achievers is that those are people, who, along the way, get more and more practiced at asking for help, where they need it, how they need it, anticipate in and even working through all of the mental challenges and sorting through all of our own personal beliefs along the way. So I'm so glad that you said that, that is definitely something we see over and over again here. What can people do? What advice would you have for them if they're thinking about a career change? They're in that place where it's like, "I just... I'm not sure if I should. I'm not sure what it would take." What advice would you have for them, Cindy?

Cindy Gonos 21:03
The best advice that I can give is to ask for help, whether that's checking out our podcast, whether it's scheduling a call with me, I love to talk with folks about their career change. It is what I do all day, every day. And I want folks to feel comfortable with doing that. If it's not the right time, or if it's not the right fit, I'm always really honest with folks, but I think just taking that first big step and saying, "I don't know" it's okay to not know, before you get on a call with me. It's okay to not be sure before you make that appointment. It's okay to feel all those feelings before you do this. But the biggest thing is just to do the thing, that would be my best advice, Scott, is do the thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:42
Do the thing. You've heard this on past podcast where we've said, "Hey, you know, just email me." And part of the reason that we've done that in the past is just to try and make it easy to be able to ask for help. So I feel like it's appropriate here. So I promise you, I will introduce you to Cindy. You can contact Cindy directly, you can always contact anybody on our team directly. But to make it super easy, just to email scott@happentoyourcareer.com put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And what we'll do is, first of all, I'll introduce you to Cindy directly. And then we'll ask you a little bit about your situation, your personal situation. And then we'll help you figure out the very best way that we can help support you or what type of help you may need, even if it's something that we can't provide. Either way, we'll be really transparent and upfront with you. Because this is what we do. It's what we love to do. So Cindy, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And thank you for sharing all the observations that you've seen over the last many hundreds of conversations here. I appreciate it.

Cindy Gonos 22:44
Thank you, Scott. Absolutely. This was fun.

Speaker 3 22:52
Fear is defined in two ways and how this actually helped me even with this podcast today. You know, this interview is there's two types of fear. One is the what if worst case scenarios. And the other is what happens when you're in a place where, you know, it's bigger than you expected. So expansion happens or energy gets better or you actually connect with your true self. That's a different type of fear.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:16
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.

Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!