Free Up 30 Hours A Month To Focus On Your Priorities: The Magic of Automation

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It takes a large amount of time to do a career pivot – and even more time to make the bigger changes that we discuss often on this podcast. Even though you end up with a role that fits you and delivers what you really want in your life, it can be difficult to find the time to make it happen. But you’ll never “find” enough time – you have to create the time.

HTYC’s own Scott Barlow and Phillip Migyanko discuss specific tactics that you can use to create 30+ hours a month to focus on your highest priorities

what you’ll learn

  • How to set up your environment to save you time
  • Removing time for things that need to be done (but aren’t adding value to your life)
  • Tips on effectively prepping your meals to save you time (and give you healthy options)
  • Adding back time that is being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions
  • How you can have a manicured lawn without ever mowing (only half-joking!)
  • Creating systems for things that we do all the time
  • The importance of time limiting during your career change

Success Stories

when I went through Career Change Bootcamp and starting to work through all of this – deep diving into what I wanted to do, my strengths and ideal career profile but then this opportunity presented itself! I went “wow, this checks almost all my boxes on the ideal career profile and seems to be a really great match.” You've heard this so many times from people you talk with – The journey is not what you think it's gonna be. You think it might be a straight line from A to B, but it's like a jagged curvy line that can go all over the place. Follow where things are leading and be open, because you just never know what's gonna be around that next corner. I'm so excited. I am the chief philanthropy officer at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada. And that's really kind of a dream job.

Karen Senger, Chief Philanthropy Officer, 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

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

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Phillip Migyanko 00:01
Where all this comes down to is the intentionality of things. So there are times where we've got the same thing. We have things that go in certain places. I've got meal prep time. But I think one of the biggest things that we do, really, for our clients that are going through this actual career change is what we're thinking about is, how much time are they actually spending reaching out?

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 00:47
One of the biggest things that we hear again, and again, and again, as we have conversations with people all over the world, not just here in the US, but every place across the globe, is the issue of time. Time, because it takes a large amount of time to do just a normal career pivot, normal career change, let alone for the types of career changes that we've discussed on this podcast again, and again, and again, where you're really maximizing for what you want out of life, what you want out of your career, and want to be able to, you know, grow and show up in the ways that you want to, that's a different type of career change. And as it turns out, that also has a tendency to take more time. And the reason this becomes a question is because, where are you going to get all this time? Where is that going to come from? And that is... that's real, it's a real challenge. So we thought, well, hey, this is something we are helping people reconcile with every single day. So why not do a podcast episode about it? We do this for ourselves, when I say ourselves, I'm talking about our entire team. And we also do this for our clients across the globe. So I have with me today, our Director of Client Success, Phillip Migyanko. You've heard him on the podcast many times before, but he's back today to discuss, how do you not save time, although we're gonna talk about that too. But how do you even create time in some ways for yourself to be able to divert towards career change, or anything else that might be even more important in your life too. Phillip, welcome back to Happen To Your Career.

Phillip Migyanko 02:23
Nice to be here, Scott, and super excited to be diving into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:26
One of the things that we're going to do here, our goal is to talk about enough different items that collectively, if you applied them all, you don't have to apply them all, even if you do get just one thing from this episode. But collectively, we're going to give you enough different items where potentially if you did apply them all, you could save 30 plus hours per month that you can then divert to focus on your priorities, your priorities, being family, friends, priorities being career change, which is certainly what we've had most of our questions on. But that is our goal today. So no small task, right? It's definitely not an easy thing to do, but well worth it. So I'm realizing there's a lot of people that could probably benefit from this in multiple ways. We're going to talk about some of the things that we've personally done in the past to save large amounts of time. And then we're also going to talk about, specifically, and Phillip, I think you have some of these ideas already. We're chatting about this yesterday, long before we hit the record button about some of the best ways that we've helped our clients save time as they're going through their career change, too. So yeah.

Phillip Migyanko 03:30
You know, it's such a big thing, because I think you're right, Scott. One of the biggest things that we talk to people about when we begin working with them, or even before that process is essentially how do you save time, because we all know that this career change process essentially takes takes time to do and it's not, like, there's going to be magically, like, 30 hours gonna, like, come to your front door, like an Amazon box. It's more like we got to find those in places. And usually that comes to about, you know, saying no to some things, or one of the biggest things is I think it's setting up your environment to save time. And one of the things I always recommend for my first time clients is reading a wonderful book called "Atomic Habits" by James Clear because he talks about really setting up your environment to do so. But you know, for example, I've got a client who I'm working with right now, and we'll call her "Leah", and right now she takes her coaching calls in her bedroom, where her desk also happens to be. So we're doing our coaching calls, she's sitting at her desk, I can see her bed right behind her. And what we found after working together, after months and months is that, really, she's just thinking about work all the time because when she goes to bed, her beds right there, when she gets up, her desk is right there and it's all because it's physically in the same room. So she would be getting up at 6:30am getting right to her desk and start working. Then, like, working, taking some breaks here or there and really not stop working till 9 or 10pm. And obviously, this meant that she was just not giving herself a break and really never disconnecting. And I don't know about you but I've talked to a lot of people like that, especially during times where a lot more people are working remotely. And more and more people are and very much that it lengthened out her process in getting things done. Because from a mental bandwidth standpoint, she was just focusing on work all the time. So we, for me and Leah, we stopped, we looked, we're like, "Okay, how can we figure out how to basically set up your environment, so you're not thinking about work all the time?" Now, she lived in one bedroom apartment, it's not like we can move the desks to another spot, and it'd be a good fix for her. So instead, we literally took her physical laptop every single day. And at 6pm, which is the time that we agreed on that work with stop, we had calendar reminder, we had like her master schedule, we had things that were set up in her life where she knew 6pm was the time that she was stopping, including having conversations with her boss and all of her co workers and setting up her work to do so. But she would take her laptop, physically put it underneath her TV, that was also the spot that we agreed on that it would be out of sight, out of mind and put it there. And what we found over time is that it not only actually saved her, really, time, but that mental bandwidth that I was talking about earlier, and this also translates into getting things done faster. But what can happen for a lot of folks is we accidentally or unintentionally set up our environment that doesn't help us really save those big pieces of time. And ultimately, it makes us take so much longer than it needs to in the whole career change process. And that's what we really found working together. I know you found the same thing, Scott, when, like, setting up your environment, or really those time saving aspects.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:42
Yeah, I was thinking about it. We, my wife and I, and ourselves as a family, we spent a lot of effort and energy trying to set up our environment in a way that really allows us to accomplish what we want to or to spend time in the way we want to. So I love that you're calling this out as an entire category to itself. And so I mean, we do, I'll give you just two really super quick examples of ways that we do that. You know, one way is, this is gonna sound ridiculous, but we have a lot of hockey gear. I'll say that.

Phillip Migyanko 07:12
Oh, yeah, I've seen it. There's a ton of hockey gear.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:14
Yeah. So when we have the team up here last time, Phillip, you and Kathy went and played hockey with us, we're kind of...

Phillip Migyanko 07:20
It was flat on my face, guys. It was flat on my face.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:23
So we're pretty big ice hockey family, let's be honest. And so therefore we have a lot of gear, like, we just have tons of it and it would entirely take over our garage. But more importantly than that, like, there's time associated with every time we're, like, in the car, out of the car, all the things. Plus, hockey gear smells terrible. It smells terrible. So what this meant is that, you know, when my son started playing hockey early on, is that everything was just devoted to, like, the shifting around of hockey gear. And at some point very quickly, it became a thing. And it's like, oh, my goodness, why are we spending the time like moving the hockey gear from one place to the next is just terrible. So what we did, is we actually set up drying racks in the garage that work with everything else. And then in the summer, when there's less hockey gear around those drying racks shifts to lifejacket racks, they're basically sitting there for us to use the paddle boards that we have also stored in the garage. So taking a little bit of time to... and we literally custom built some stuff in there that allowed us to put the bags on the rack, everything to dry, and it just ended up saving us small amounts of time, like less than five minutes per day. But over the years, that adds up that five minutes, then you know, turns into an hour over the course of roughly a little more than a week. And then that hour turns into many hours. So just... we have no desire to spend time and effort putting away hockey gear and just moving it around.

Phillip Migyanko 08:49
That's a good point too. Because I mean, you're like removing a lot of those things that don't need to be done and really aren't adding things to your life overall. And I think that's a really interesting concept. Because, you know, we always think about adding time, but it's really about removing those things, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:03
Yeah. And that's a great point. And that really is the next category on its own, too. So we've got five categories we're going to give you today. Phillip, you mentioned the first one, which is setting up your environment to be able to save time. And then the second one is, what you said, removing time for things that maybe need to be done, but just, you know, aren't the actual tasks or whatever, are not adding that much value to your life, like putting away hockey gear, like I just think it's necessary, but I just don't really care to spend my time that way. So the third category is adding back time that's being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions. The fourth category is adding systems to things that you might do all the time and the fifth category, it's a bonus category. And we're going to give you some ways where as you're making your career change, you can actually save time during the career change itself. So we'll give you examples on all of these but the next one that you mentioned, where we're talking about removing time for things that need to be done but maybe aren't adding damage value to your life from doing the task itself. So a couple quick examples. And I know Phillip, you have a bunch of these too. We were chatting about these yesterday and I bet we have more that we don't even know about. Like, we wanted to have this conversation yesterday but didn't have time for the whole recording. So one example is lawn mowing for me. I mowed the lawn as a kid. I had the makings of a lawn mowing business way back when. I do not care to mow another lawn if I don't have to in my entire rest of my life. However, you know, the homeowners association that we live in freaks out if our lawn is a foot long, so it must be done. And, you know, what we... At first, we thought, "Well, okay, how are we going to do this?" Because most lawn services charge like 60 to 80 bucks for the size and type of lawn we have. And I don't really want to spend, you know, 60-80 bucks and this was quite a while ago. But what we started doing is we started having a neighborhood kid mow our lawn for 20 bucks per time. And you know, that ended up being a total cost of $400. And save me about 25 hours worth of time every single year, especially during the summer months when that lawn is growing frantically. So now, we've actually transitioned it over. My son, I don't know if I've ever talked about this on the podcast, Phillip, have I told you this before, like when each of my kids turned 12, I'm helping them start a business?

Phillip Migyanko 11:17
Yep. And I think McKenzie opened up a cupcake.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:20
Yes.

Phillip Migyanko 11:20
That I want to be an investor in but that's another subject for another time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:23
Yeah. So my son, who just recently turned 12, decided he wanted to start a lawn mowing business. So he's mowing our lawn. He's renting our lawn mower from us, which I wanted it to be a real business and have real business learning. So yes, he's renting our lawn mower from us. And then the way that that happens is he mows our lawn. So now at this point, he's doing that. And there's the additional bonus of we're spending time in a way that I want to and I don't have to mow the lawn. Right? Fantastic. All the way around. Phillip, I know that yesterday, you mentioned that meal prep is one of these things that saves you a ton of time. So I'm curious about that.

Phillip Migyanko 12:00
Yeah, so meal prep is such a big one. And we all know it. And sometimes it's one of those big things that we need to do. But one of the biggest things that we do is at the beginning of every week, we're always thinking about always the next week or sometimes two weeks ahead where we're kind of deciding which meals do we want to be having, make sure they're prepped and ready to go for dinners. That we have really busy days, you just want to have things ready to go by the time to make things but also that they're healthy, that they're nutritious, all those types of things. So what we do is we'll get all of our groceries on Saturday or even earlier in the day Sunday. And then we spend about two or three hours on Sunday, some upfront time planning both of our lunches, but also all of our dinners for the whole week. And that just saves so much time because really we're just rotating between 10 different meals, we're getting through the less decision fatigue about, which thing do we have to eat this week. And what's that look like for lunch this week. And I always have a problem because sometimes I forget to eat lunch because I'm just like helping and talk to people so much. So having things ready to go on Sunday for the whole week, it's been super helpful for us, and essentially putting a little bit more time early in the week to save time later on. So we can spend time just like talking or being together and have your dinner for ready to go. But Scott, you guys use an app and you have somebody who makes those kind of meal preps for you, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:11
Yeah, we've turned this to an entire system.

Phillip Migyanko 13:13
I'm super curious about that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:15
I know, I said that we talked about systems later. Here's one small tidbit of an example of how we've done that. So we use a service called eMeals in the habit in the form of an app. And the way that this is structured is they actually will, based on what your dietary needs are, like, whether you want to eat paleo, or you want to eat keto, or you want to eat comfort food, like, you can choose just about anything that's on there. We subscribed many years ago when they only have like two meal plan options. But now they have many, many, many, and they're really very, very, very good too. So you can make all of those choices. And then what happens is when the next week rolls up, you can just click the button and say, "I want to eat that. I want to eat that one. I want to eat that." and then, this is the really fun part, it will transfer all of the information that in the form of list items that you need to purchase over to whatever other app of your choice. So whether that is like Safeway or Kroger or Walmart or, you know, insert your service here that might deliver your groceries or allow you to do pickup, it just transfers all that information over there. It's integrated together. And then with the click of a button, it sends it over to, you know, Walmart or Trader Joe's or wherever it is, and boom, it's there. Now, you can press the order button in the other app, and then it can show up at your doorstep or you can go pick it up. So we go and pick it up once a week. So the extra advanced portion of this is if you don't love the meal prep portion, you could have somebody else do it too. So that's something that we've been experimenting with over the last couple of years and that's worked out quite well. What we've settled on is that works really well for us for lunches and breakfast. We still prefer to make all of our own dinners. That's just something that we'd love to do. But the whole system around it just has it show up so we can go to the grocery store, pick it up, take a total of 10 minutes to do that, and it's exactly what we wanted without all the time spent planning. So that in itself estimate, I was talking to my wife about this the other day, it now happens... it used to take about, let's say, 105 minutes or that translate to about 91 hours per year creating a menu and then go into the store and shopping and everything and that was on the low side. Now, it takes less than 35 minutes a week for everything to happen in total. And it costs less than $30, by the way, per month. So yeah, there's another example here. So what about this third category here, adding back time that's being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions. This I think might be possibly the most valuable one. Realize sometimes I didn't realize in many cases and still to this day I'm pretty relentless about tracking how I'm spending my time and setting up feedback loops so that I can understand how I'm spending my time in ways that are accidental so that I can edit it out versus just do that year after year after year. So this first one, get ready for it, it's going to make you cringe.

Phillip Migyanko 16:06
Oh it made me cringe when I thought.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:08
Oh my goodness, yeah. Okay, so it is canceling Netflix. I know. But here's what I found, we actually, and we do still have Disney plus if that makes anybody feel bad. I don't know.

Phillip Migyanko 16:20
Yeah. Because there's, you know, you can put shows you're watching. So cancel any of the subscription services. But yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:26
Yeah. But by canceling Netflix, what I would do, and I love Netflix, I'll be the first to say they have an amazing service. They have wonderful movies, they've done a really nice job, I think, of produced, like, changing their business model to now where they're producing a lot of movies as well and series and everything else that goes along with it. But I also have noticed that just experimenting with it saves me about 35 hours per year at a minimum and that's probably a low estimate based on what I found. Because what happens is I would find an episode of something and then I couldn't stop watching it, could not control myself. Yes, I know we talked about lots of things, like, where I think people are assuming there's tons of discipline there. I have zero discipline when it comes to an amazing series. So I'll just literally binge watch when I'm supposed to be working. Like, that is a real thing that has happened. So I've realized that that is not, you know, a year later when I think about that, it's like oh yeah, I didn't actually want to spend my time that way. I just felt like I couldn't spend my time any other way after I saw that first episode. So that's one way.

Phillip Migyanko 17:28
But, you know, it's interesting. That's like me when I'm, like, trying not to eat a chocolate bar so I just don't bring any chocolate into my house because I'm like, if I have a chocolate bar, I'm gonna eat the whole thing at one time. So my decision it's, kind of, discipline is when I'm going through the store, I just don't pick up any chocolate and it's kind of the same thing also with my phone, too. I noticed for me and, you know, one of the other tactics that I were talking about before we were hitting record here was just removing all the notifications from my phone, my computer, iPad, all those types of things because I don't really necessarily want it to be in control of my attention. It's more of, anything that pings me is like I'm being distracted and it removes me from the task that I'm looking to do and it's really easy, you go... if you've got an iPhone, you go into your settings app, you just turn off all notifications except for the apps that you want on and, really, for me too, it's such the social media apps, especially games, all of these things they are designed to have you plug into your phone and the biggest way they do that is notifying "oh hey, here's a new thing for you" "oh hey someone on your photos like something" or "oh this new, new thing" and so you just have to, yeah, we're gonna make that noise a "ooh" thing that's going to be an... But more importantly, it's just removing all of those like little distractions especially notifications on your phone because this little black box that now we carry with us all the time just becomes an Uber distraction piece for whatever is out on the internet and you can really make sure that it's working for you instead of you working for it. And, for me, specifically, that means yeah, no games. I got it. They are all off my phone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:57
And I think you could probably argue that maybe part of, maybe this is also an example of setting up your environment, too, not having chocolate. And I know that's less of a time saving thing, well, I guess it depends on how long it takes. But certainly, the email notification where it is saving and conserving your attention so therefore you are more productive in spending your time in the way that you want to, that is absolutely also an example of setting up your environment but it is minimizing those obstacles and distractions too. You know, something else that... and I know Phillip, you know this and now Kathy, who's on our team, jokes about this all the time because she now is obsessive over this one thing I cannot stand, and I know that sounds insane but it adds up. I cannot stand making, you know, five clicks where I could possibly have just done one click or a keystrokes or here's the example, if my computer is processing faster, and I don't have to wait on it, that is more time that is not consumed if with individual tasks, which means that my tasks that are spent on my computer or phone get shorter. So what I've learned is that, for me, personally, this is not right for everyone. But for me personally, I spend a fair amount of time on the computer. So keystrokes count, and if I'm waiting on the computer to process, then that means that it literally takes longer. And that's something that quite frankly, I can't stand. So my life is infinitely better when I buy the fastest processing laptop, or the fastest processing computer. And for me, that typically cost me about $1,000 more per computer. But I get it back very, very quickly, because I spend a fair amount of time on the computer. And I'm not waiting and more importantly, I'm not frustrated, too, at the every single computer usage. It's now a pleasure to use my computer instead of be mad at technology. So there's another one. And I know that there's a lot of apps out there that can help with that, too. One of the things that we use on our team is this email app that syncs up with Google or Gmail, and it's called Superhuman, and they literally have reduced the keystrokes and clicks that it takes in order to operate that and they've cut it in half. So it takes... where it used to take three or four mouse clicks to process email for one type of email plus all the keystrokes, now you can do that with less, you can actually use the entire email system without the mouse at all, which is so much faster than switching back and forth. Yes, I know that's super nerdy. And I love it.

Phillip Migyanko 21:31
This is not a paid advertisement for Superhuman at all. But I mean, if Superhuman is listening, we will definitely take that. But more importantly, there's so many benefits of the Superhuman app, it really helps just more really schedule the emails for a later period of time, you're less than clicking and clicking back through and overall and it really allows you just to focus on the most important pieces of email because I definitely get lost in just the mountains of emails. And as, you know, as many of them come in, and some of them just aren't important. And I know a lot of my clients or a lot of the people that I talked to is they have like email inboxes that are like a thousand plus, they go, "I just need to go unsubscribe that thing, cleaned it out." But instead, "I'm just gonna give a whole new another email. So then I'm just gonna leave that to one of the site and get this new one. And Superhuman is definitely helpful and the email processing and kind of cleaning all that stuff out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:19
Just makes it easier. Here's another one, this is gonna also sound very, very nerdy. Phillip, you have been to my house, and you've seen my garage. And most people think that it's super organized and everything because it literally has a place for everything. And then also we've built out places for future things, too, even containers that don't have anything in it. But they have a label for when they will have something in it down the road. Yes, that is the level of intensity that is put into the garage. But one of the things that we were finding is that even though we had drastically reduced the amount of consumption that we had made as a family, we were still finding that we were having lots and lots of items in places for things, or I should say lots and lots of items that needed to go to Goodwill, and we didn't have a place for it. So we were actually spending lots of time and energy. And again, I know this sounds absurd, but we were spending more time and energy than what I wanted to be spending trying to figure out what to do with this stuff. So when I had redone the garage and redesigned it, built a staging area for items to go to Goodwill, or to be able to donate to different charities. So it's super easy to get to. Now, it's right outside the door. So it's not an obstacle. And it takes less time to be able to, when we need one to donate something, I can go and I can just put it in this basket. And then when we make a run to, you know, Goodwill or get a place where we can donate that, then it's right there. It's easy. It doesn't take additional time. Most importantly, it's not capturing my attention. But this is something that we found we were doing all the time. Another thing, Phillip, I don't know if you do this, but Amazon has a wonderful, wonderful return system at this point if you have prime. So we can just take it down to the UPS Store, which we already... We send all our business items, we ship through UPS and the UPS Store and we have an account down there anyway. But you can just show them your Amazon app, they'll scan it, and you don't even have to put it back in the box. So if we're returning something from Amazon, then we can just basically take it in and toss it on the counter and say, "Here you go." And they'll take care of everything else for it. So this makes it easier for us to be able to shop at amazon, which of course, they've done a really nice job with. They want us to continue to shop at Amazon. But they're meeting some of our needs and it ends up saving us time versus ordering from other places. Now if something doesn't work, it's so much easier for us to just take it back, it fits in and we have this little staging area for returns that go to places, too, so they don't stack up in our house. Okay, so what are the... now I've given you totally nerdy items. What do you find that you're doing, Phillip, that is out of the normal, we'll call it, that ends up saving you time?

Phillip Migyanko 25:00
That's such a good question. I think one of the, you know, we talked about meal prep, that's such a big one. I think what all this comes down to is the intentionality of things. So there is times where we've got the same thing. We have things that go in certain places, I've got meal prep time, but I think one of the biggest things that I do, and I think one of the things that we do, really, for our clients that are going through this actual career change is what we're thinking about is, how much time are they actually spending reaching out? I did the same thing when I was in my career search. But you might have heard one of our clients on this very podcast, Vicky, who I was working with. And for her, she spent a lot of time in the research phase. And specifically during that reach out phase, there can be lots of lots of places where it can be very time consuming, because so many people like to do the research part. And you don't really want to reach out to somebody if you don't know something about them. And then people get all those thoughts in their head, like, "Okay, well, I have to know what school they went to, the city they live in, the name of their dog, what's all those things before I talk to him just in case those things might come up." And I find, yes, so many people spend a lot of time in there. So one of the things that I do that's personal in my life, but one things I help really focused clients on is we really take those available hours for things that are kind of outside, and we go, okay, so for clients, they might have seven hours, they might have 10, they might have one, whatever that number might be, we look and we go, "Alright, here's the available hours that you have to work on this career change work" and we go okay, so we know in the reach out phase, there's really four big components, sourcing, i.e., finding the people who you're going to reach out to, researching, finding out the unique things kind of about them, and then be able to do the talking points for them. And that's where people tend to spend the most time. And then writing the email actually to them, number three. And number four is actually sending the email to them and doing any of those like and sillery types of things. I have clients who do loom videos, that's a service where you can record a free video that's just about a minute long, and makes it a little bit more personal. A couple other things there. But so many people spend so much time in that second part, that research phase. So what we do is we go "Okay, all that available hours, how can we time block and essentially time limit, which is a little bit counterintuitive to a saving time, but time limit all of those aspects of those four parts of reaching out." So what I do with my clients are, we go, okay, and especially in Vicky and her case, we said, we found that she was spending hours and hours, like five plus hours a week in the research phase. And I said, "Vicky, all right, we now only have two. So we have to find the unique aspects of each person in that two hour time, so we can send out those emails. Because email sent out is better than no email sent out." So allows us to really make sure that we're limiting our time to focus on the best places, and ultimately, again, come back and save more of that mental bandwidth for us. Because if we're spending too much time in the wrong areas and not getting results, it's really not getting us any place. So it's a really good aspect from the time learning aspect. Because we're always trying to figure out where we can best utilize and spend our time and remove the obstacles that might potentially get in the way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:01
Time limiting is, I think one of the most effective strategies and tools that you can have, not just for your career change, although it works particularly well for your career change, or any other area where it's new for you or you have perfectionist tendencies, or you care a whole lot about because those are the areas where we have a tendency to spend inordinate amounts of time rather than just doing it and doing the 80% good enough version and then moving on even though the 80% good enough version might be just as effective in most cases. So thank you for pointing that out. The other other thing I would say here, if you're in the midst of making a career change, pick out just one of the strategies, one of the strategies to save you time elsewhere so that you can make more time for your career change or utilize that strategy that we just talked about in saying "Look, I'm going to time limit myself, I'm going to spend... I'm gonna allow myself 90 minutes in total to be able to spend on this task. At the end of it, I'm going to consider it done." And, you know, just pick out one of these so that you can, instead, utilize that time that you now get back in one way or another to be able to focus on what's a priority for you, in this case, your career change. And here's the other thing too. If you are wanting more of this, these are things that we do for our clients every single day. This is just a tidbit. This is just a small amount of the strategies that we personally use or we personally use with our clients and, you know, we can absolutely help, it's what we are here to do. It's what we love to do. It's what we do every day. So, you know, reach out to us. Phillip is one of the people that gets to have so many of the conversations with people who are trying to decide if we are the right people to help them through their career or... and we're trying to decide what is the very best way that we can support them. So do this, just email me directly scott@happentoyourcareer.com, just send me an email, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And what will happen is that either myself or our team will get back to you. And we'll go ahead and set up a time to chat. And that way we can understand your situation, ask you some questions and figure out the very best way that we can support you for the type of career change that you want to make. And Phillip is, like I said, one of those people that you may very well talk to, and he's really, really great at it. Phillip, what advice would you give to somebody who's in that situation where they're trying to figure out what is the right type of help to get during this career change, regardless of whether we're helping or, you know, they're trying to do something for themselves?

Phillip Migyanko 30:38
Yeah, I'd say the biggest thing there, that's a really great question. Because it can be really different for everybody. And really, the biggest thing, or the advice I'd give to somebody who is sitting in those shoes right now is, the best thing you can do is raise your hand and ask for help and to continue moving forward. Because I usually say this to a lot of people in those calls is that there's lots of people in the world who sit and stay in their same spot and wish they would have done something. And we all know people like that, and then they end up retiring, and then it's not good. And then the difference between those people and the people who send that email to Scott and jump on a call with me or somebody on our team is that they raise their hand, and ask for help, and decided to do something about it. The biggest piece of advice is raise your hand, ask for help. We have a whole team of people here, there's tons and tons of people out there looking for help and wanting to give help. So you're not in this alone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:26
You heard it here first. So Phillip has talked to many, many, many hundreds of people over the last couple of years. And I think that that's great advice well served. If there's anything that we can do for you or anything else that you want to hear on the Happen To Your Career podcast, don't hesitate to let us know. Otherwise, drop me an email scott@happentoyourcareer.com, and we'll be thrilled to pieces to set you up with Phillip or someone else on our team. And guess what, we have so much more coming up for you right here on Happen To Your Career next time. See what's in store.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:04
What if, after going through all the work that it takes to get a job, you realize, almost on day one, that it's nowhere close to what you expected it was going to be. In fact, it's far worse than that. It's the opposite of what you expected is going to be. Well, if you were in that situation, you'd probably start looking for a new role, right? Well, that's what happened to Cheri. You heard her voice in the introduction. She realized early on that her new role was not totally what she expected it to be. She became super unhappy, and started searching for a new job within a month. She applied to a ton of roles but kept hitting the dead end. But here's the thing, if we fast forward, spoiler alert, we'll see that she made it to one of those roles that when she saw it in the job description, she originally didn't feel qualified for it.

Cheri Thom 33:00
I wanted to be a product owner. I have found that I really like that idea of, kind of, being a subject matter expert and, kind of, owning a process or product. And I hadn't been looking for that when I was looking for jobs because I didn't feel like I was qualified for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:17
One thing we see all the time that's really unfortunate is so many people limit themselves to roles that they feel like they check all the boxes for every single bullet point on the entire job description. I see this all the time. You find the listing, you immediately scroll down to all the job requirements, you mentally check off everything as you go. But then you find there one or two qualifications that you don't have, you sigh and then you hit the back button to check on the next listing. No good, right? A lot of times, the people that get hired in those situations don't have all the qualifications, it happens so frequently, I can't tell you how much, you know, coming from my HR days and recruiting days. And certainly, we see that all the time here at Happen To Your Career as we're helping people. But I want you to take a listen to Cheri's story because this is one of those situations. She navigated through all the mental and real challenges that come up along the way. So you'll hear her describe that. 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.

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Intentional Happiness: The Importance Of Being True To Yourself

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It can sometimes seem like many people just get lucky in life – somehow they get the things that everyone wants.

But it’s not really luck. It just so happens that the science of happiness works whether you are intentional or not. 

However, to get the best results in your life and career, you must be intentional in your actions. But how do you figure out where to start?

What you’ll learn

  • The difference between internal happiness and external happiness
  • What led Jen to figuring out what was most important in her life
  • The benefits of being intentional in your life
  • The biggest restrictions to following your purpose
  • How to be true to your whole self in your career

Want to hear more from Jenn? Look for her new book Beyond Happiness in October, 2021.

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Jenn Lim 00:11
For me, sort of selfishly, was when I was down and out. And, like, I was 28, 29 and like a whole trifecta happened to me. I got laid off from my job, 911 happened, like...

Introduction 00:33
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 00:57
I am a total nerd when it comes to anything that has to do with the science around happiness, psychology, and I just absolutely love it. And that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to have our next guest on the show. But the other reason was, because well, I had been a fan of her work for... going on 10 years now.

Jenn Lim 01:25
So it was a selfish, sort of, like, inward look of, well, what is meaningful? So before I got to the organizational stage, I had to do that hard reflection within myself. And then understanding that "oh, purpose" and this was the terminology that is now versus then. But what was it for you? Like, how can I make these big decisions of, where I work, where I live, who I go out with, you know, like, and not have to, like, have a whole conundrum every single time. I realized it was like, Okay, what is the most important thing to me?

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:00
That's Jenn Lim. She's the author of a brand new book called 'Beyond Happiness'. She learned how to identify what was really important to her after she had been laid off from her job, her dad was diagnosed with cancer. All of that was happening at the same time as 911 was occurring and all the global events that followed. Well, after looking internally and doing much research, Jen learned how to be much more intentional and leverage the science in psychology behind happiness. This led to her working as a consultant with Tony Hsieh, the former CEO at Zappos, and later the two of them co founded the company Delivering Happiness. Take a listen to Jen's story, but basically pay attention later on in the episode because she talks about what actually works as it relates to career happiness.

Jenn Lim 02:58
Just, kind of, paint this picture of this journey of like, and, I don't know if you read the book, or just seen the book, or whatever, but one of the things that we talked about is the highs and lows of life, and heartbeats of our life. So for me, sort of selfishly, was when I was down and out. And, like, I was 28, 29 and like a whole trifecta happened to me. I got laid off from my job, 911 happened, my father got colon cancer diagnosed with colon cancer. So all this was like, "wait, what the... what is going on?" Like, I was making good money, you know, that calm days, right? Flying high. I was like, oh, even though I majored in Asian American Studies, I'm able to tell my mom and dad, "Don't worry, I got it." And of course, everything fell. So for me, that was a huge sort of awakening point of "Wait, what is this matter again?" So super existential questions that I think, COVID actually, in the last, you know, 2020 of last one and a half years brought back to our lives. So at that moment, I just wouldn't look inward, because all the things that I thought were important, which was, at that time, you know, I was like, in school and all that money, internal status was like, "I need to make that happen." And then I got it. And then it was like, "Wait, it's gone. And I still feel nothing more meaningful than before." So it was a selfish, sort of, like, inward look of, well, what is meaningful? So before I got to the organizational stage, I had to do that hard reflection within myself. And then understanding that "oh, purpose" and this was the terminology that is now versus then. But what was it for you? Like, how can I make these big decisions of where I work, where I live, who I go out with, you know, like, and not have to, like, have a whole conundrum every single time. I realized it was like, "Okay, what is the most important thing to me?" So that's how it all started. And so this is pre my days at Zappos, pre Delivering Happiness and then through that time for him was more organizations and leaders, and when I say leaders, I mean at every level, like, we're all leaders, right? So when leaders get that sort of lightbulb in their own way, then that's when actual change happens. So that was my inspiration, just like figure out my own life and see what that means. And I was like, "Oh, wait, this can actually be scaled to organizations and teams. And we can actually make this world a happier place" you know, like, all those collegiate type of thoughts and mentality became real to me from a scientific basis, there's the positive psychology and all that, but that's kind of the trajectory of what I've seen, of what actually makes change happen in the world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:38
That is really interesting. And I told you earlier that I've been aware of your work for over 10 years, around 10 years or so now. But I don't think I was aware of, you know, what took place in, sort of like, early career and everything like that for you until I was prepping for our conversation. And now what I'm really curious about when you were going through all that for yourself, and you're sort of having this inward look, do you remember what any of those realizations were for you? Or you said just a moment to go, "Hey, I had to figure out what were the priorities for me. Or what was most important for me." Do you remember where you... any of the pieces that you arrived at at that time?

Jenn Lim 06:14
Yes, sure. It's, like, probably because I had to write this freaking book. And they have to... the way, what are those...?

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:22
Now you're prepared for this conversation. The thing you had to write a book.

Jenn Lim 06:27
Oh, yes. Not the easiest way to go back into having reflections and memories. But there was two things: it was the inward one and the outward one. So the inward one was very, like, existential like, "Wait, what the frick am I doing right now? Like, why does this even matter? And what matters to me?" That turn point, like, that turning point for me was when I saw all these people suffering, you know, like, with the layoffs, with the 911, with my dad, you know, getting diagnosed with cancer, it's almost like, "wait, that's kind of crazy, because I've been spending all this time trying to work, work, work, and make myself established. I have a status for myself, but I'd actually rather be spending time with the people I love" So that turning point was very significant, because then I knew I was making decisions on, number one, the people I love and care about, including humanity in the world. So that was a big one. And then so that was inward. Like what my own purpose is, it's for serving people but being true to myself, number one. Being the authentic self is realizing this is how I'm going to make decisions. And then there was the external side, which is, "What am I going to do with this, sort of, aha moment of like, yeah, I want to be true to myself so what am I do with it?" And then it's the realization, I can connect that to other people, like, what is it that I was brought here for, what I'm passionate about, or purposeful for. And then at that moment, it was like, "Well, I don't necessarily need to be in corporate America or corporate world anymore, I want to actually want to understand how this new realization comes out in the work I do, whether it's passion stuff with art, or you know, creativity, or within the business realm, which has a lot of creativity too." So that's when I realized that's the extension of, number one, I had to be true to what was going on inside, get my values straight, get my priorities straight, make my decision making and cloud, like, all this craziness in my head, sink into groundedness, and then extend that to others. Because I realized that was my number one value as people, how do I have those relationships with others?

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:40
You know, what's really interesting to me is, I heard you say something earlier, too, about, you know, as you had some of these realizations, and then you started doing other different types of work, you started seeing that some of the science actually supported what you had sort of realized for yourself too, as well. And I think that's been a bit of a conundrum for me over the years. If we go back, you know, 20 plus years ago or so, that was... I very much felt that I worked for a number of organizations, well, I'm really glad for the experiences, you know, some of these were considered to be great organizations from people standpoint, and yet being in them and around them, it still felt very non human, and like, I couldn't be myself at work. And then later on, I had a similar experience where, as I started understanding what the research and science says, it's like, "Oh, no, no. I wasn't totally way off pace." So I'm curious, what's behind that for you as you were going along on that journey, as you started work with Zappos and other organizations later on, what did that trajectory look like for you? And what became apparent?

Jenn Lim 09:42
Yeah, as you were sharing your story, I feel like we're totally living parallel tracks. Because here I was going in my whole, like, "wait, what is this all mean?" I thought I had it figured out for myself. And then I came across this whole body of research and the science, like, "wait, there's happiness science in positive psychology", like, this was huge and new. And this was when I started, like, collaborating with Tony at Zappos and all that stuff and implementing that in an organizational level. But that was that moment of like, *ting*, like, "Wait, I don't have to do all the research. I don't have to make myself a guinea pig of everything. I actually can learn from this body of work." So the top things that came from that, sort of, awakening was there's actually scientific lovers that actually focus on not what's wrong with us, per se, but actually what's right with them, and to be honest with those wrong with us, but I should be recognizing that, "Okay, these are the things that can help me get up in that level." So senses of autonomy or control, sense of progress, growing, developing, learning, a sense of connectedness, a huge one, especially right now, when we're on demand and all that, like, "who am I connected to" and I would like to do that in my workspace, ideally, not just at home. And then ultimately having that higher purpose, and that word is being used a lot these days. But really, what am I doing beyond myself was that connection to this greater thing called the world and the universe. So when I came across that, I was just, like, what, like, those are the levers that are scientifically proven. And it became a tool, you know, like being able to say, "Oh, these are the things that I can remind myself on a daily basis, like, what are the things that I can have more control of?" So that's like a personal decision not to go back to the corporate world, but to actually do crazy passionate things and start my own company, co-founded something with Tony, you know, all those things. And then, like, you know, the progress stuff, like, how do I feel like I'm developing in life as a person, not just a worker or employee, making sure my connections are meaningful that how's the weather or you know, who won, you know, the baseball game today, I mean, those are super important. But there's layers within that, that get us really deeply grounded with each other. And of course, that higher purpose that we all hear so much about, but having the ability to feel it on a day to day basis was what that journey became of when I was, like, "Wow, this is happening. This is already existing in the world. How do I connect myself to that?" So that became like, "The Hero's Journey", if you're familiar with Joseph Campbell's work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:20
Yes. Absolutely. Well, and it also leads to another question that I was really interested in asking you. And from your perspective, you know, you're talking about purpose, which is over the last 10 years becomes sort of a buzzword, like engagement, and all of the others that have followed. What do you feel like, are some of the biggest or what have you seen are some of the biggest things that stop people from feeling that sense of purpose, that sense of connection to purpose? What are some of those biggest restrictors if you will?

Jenn Lim 12:52
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is a little too basic in the sense, like, as human beings were resistant to change, and then I'm a huge, like, fan of science and nature. And so I geek out on all that stuff and how systems happen in the world with animals. So, like, a Darwin thing is, it's not the smartest or strongest that survive, it's those that are most able to adapt. I'm paraphrasing here. Because he has a whole body of work, but so that, I think, is where that, sort of, natural selection in some ways, like, the animals and the eco systems and the bio systems that survive or those that adapt. And we are not, as humans, equipped for that naturally, whereas nature animals are usually more equipped, but either that or they not. So I think that's the biggest barrier within ourselves, like, we're so... when we get into our comfort zone of what works, it's so hard to change it because like, why would we want to move away from something that feel safe, and this goes again, back to the prehistoric ages, like we just want to survive, like, our brain works that way. So that we're, when we're primal, I just want to survive. I'm just hitting this, you know, mid cortex versus my prefrontal because I don't want my prefrontal to make decisions because I'm just in this, you know, freeze mode of life. So I think it goes back physiologically, it goes back, I don't want to be eaten by a lion. But these days, there's not many lions going on, at least where I live, I don't know where you're living.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:25
You know, it's pretty crazy out here in Central Washington. To be clear, I also don't want to be eaten alive.

Jenn Lim 14:31
There's different types of lions out there. But basically, that really primal desire to protect yourselves is there but that's why I think we're at a different stage now. We're more elevated and we have the luxury of being able to talk about these things that even my parents didn't have, they were trying to, you know, put food on the table, you know, and I'd love to hear about yours, ancestors as well. It's like now we have the luxury of, like, thinking about these more bigger elevating things that can transcend this survival mechanism, because this sense of purpose that we know that we were born into, it was in us when we came out of our mom's womb, whether or not we tap into that, because there's so much resistance out there is our choice, it's hard as hell, but it's our choice to go back into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:19
You know, thinking about that, and it being your choice... I have, well, it sort of makes me think about a few other things too, at the same time. And, one of the other pieces, I know that, you know, even though you're doing organizational work, right before we got on here, really hit the recording button, we were talking a little bit about how it can't be driven 100% from the organization side to show up and be able to just expect that the organization is going to 100% allow you to just be yourself at work, it has to be driven from both sides in many different ways, which means there has to be work done from the individual, as well as the organization in order to create a, I'm going to call it a situation, that allows people to show up and be their whole selves at work, which is something both you and I geek out about. So I'm curious, how do we distinguish between what are some of the pieces that we really need to do for ourselves versus what organizations can do?

Jenn Lim 16:21
I love these questions. I'm really glad that we're talking again, after all these years of, like, you following this, because it's such a current pressing question to answer, especially right now. Sort to me, like, that asshole that says, gotta read my book, because I don't want to be that person.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:39
The book is great, though. It's worth a read. I will say, I read it, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Jenn Lim 16:45
Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:45
Break down for us. What are some of the lines?

Jenn Lim 16:48
Before the asshole, like, the main saying, like, oh, as I say in my book, that's the line that's like, hard for me to say because, but basically, the separation between what's internal and external. So I kind of touched upon this before. So I'm calling what we are in right now the adaptive age. Like this is Darwinian, this is like, basically, we've gone through all these eras of generations of being farmers, and then industrialists, and then technologists, and then now I feel like we're in the adaptive age. So what that means for me is like, let's control we can within and embrace and adapt to what we can control. So that to me is the separation between inner and outer of organizations. So the inner is like, and as I referenced in the book, a lot about purpose and values. And I go through all these exercises of understanding what really is you can, like, basically guess those will evolve over time, but at least putting a stake in your ground, on our ground, in everyone's ground and say, "Hey, I've done a bit of work" and understanding what that is. So I can draw that line and said, "This is what means everything to me."

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:51
I'm super curious, give me an example of one or two of those exercises that you're referring to.

Jenn Lim 17:55
Yeah, so one of them, first one is the Happiness Heartbeats one, like as you can imagine, like on a heartbeat monitor, the metaphor for that is that, "that's life." And even though we're, you know, my company is called Delivering Happiness, this book is called "Beyond Happiness", it's knowing that those highs and lows will come. And so as an exercise, it's really simple, it's basically storytelling your own life, and identify those highs and lows in your life from childhood. And it's really important to include the whole thing, and I actually encourage people to not just think about work, I think about life, because it's pretty much time we spent on earth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:30
It's mutually dependent on...

Jenn Lim 18:33
Right, or integration. Yes. So when you map those things out, just think top highs, top high moments, three on each side, and then three low moments, and then go to each of those moments and ask yourself, you know, "what values were there not there?" "what people were there or not there?" asking those questions, just kind of dissect it, knowing the highs are as just as important as your lows in determining what that's sustainable happiness is, that's what truthfulness is all about. So that's an exercise that we really encourage, like, one of the first things to do is like, let's just, you know, before we talk about anything else, go into your life, your own journey. And that reflection is really cool. And then the other one is what I call "the wheel of wholeness". So if you can imagine a whole bunch of like pieces in the pie, one of the things that in organizations that I work with, that don't have yet but are working there is to understand not just the employee lifecycle, like "oh, I'm gonna, like, recruit, and then train" and then they're gonna leave. It's more about the holistic life cycle. So the wheel of wholeness is about these puzzle pieces, or these pie pieces that are important to every individual. So it's not just about how they are as employees, but as human being. So the pie pieces are about not just like, "are you feeling gratified or satisfied with your work? it's like, "where are you financially? Are you feeling sound?" Because that affects your psychological state and whether or not you're productive work. If you're freaking out about, "I'm not getting enough", then you're not going to be as productive, kind of thing. And then the other pieces are, "Where are you mentally? Where are you emotionally? Where are you relationally, with people in and outside of work? And where are you spiritually or purposefully?" that kind of thing. So that expands it in a way that we're looking at employees as human beings, knowing that psychological state will affect anytime they move into the work state. So those are a couple exercises that we like to do just because it gives you a snapshot. And then once you check in again, you know what to dial up, dial down, and things to work on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:37
I appreciate you sharing those in detail. That's super helpful. I also recognize that I diverted you from the original question that I asked as well, which was, you know, where, and we can go back to it as well, because you were on a really good trend line there. You were starting to tell me a little bit more about where is that line in terms of how can we think about like, what does the company responsible for or organization responsible for versus what am I responsible for? So I'm curious, any other thoughts that you have on that, too?

Jenn Lim 21:04
Yeah. So I think this we've come to a place like people talk about future work all the time. And it's kind of like, what does that mean? So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:13
Thank you for saying that out loud. Yes.

Jenn Lim 21:16
Okay, like that sounds like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:18
Like engagement or something at this point. Yeah.

Jenn Lim 21:21
Anyhow, that matters to me. But I really feel like this whole concept of this future of work of AI technology and displacement, and re, you know, re skilling and all that, it just got totally ushered in, in quick form in 2020, without us knowing it, and the future work. So basically, those decisions need to be made of who's responsible for what and what I say in the book, I call it not just accountability, but co owned accountability with each other. And what I mean by that, and I know, accountability sounds like, "Ugh, what is it?" It's another one of those words, everyone's sick of hearing it. But I'm thinking about accountability in villages. You remember back in the day, like when we're all in villages, no one was designated certain teams or certain roles, we were all accountable for each other, because we want to survive, fast forward to how dolphins operate, or orcas operate. They're all accountable for their roles. Because one dolphin is a swimmer underneath and like, get all the fish up, so everyone else can eat. And those things are ingrained in a natural way. So what I mean by co owned accountability is whatever position you're in, it's just so important. This is where the twist comes in, too, like to have these conversations, to have that sense of like, "wait, what am I bringing to the table? What are you bringing to the table? And how are we going to work on this together?" Because even organizations that say from the get go, like, "we're gonna give you an amazing employee engagement, and all these perks and all that stuff" at the end of the day is really who you work for, and who you work with. It's like your team, that you really need to have that really honest, transparent communication with. So in some ways, it depends on the team and the organization you work with. But what's really helpful to the conversations in terms that line, the question that you're originally asking, when you come to the table, knowing that this is my, this is who I am, my purpose, my values, and if this engagement or this team is not honoring that, why would I continue to do that? I mean, it's easier said than done for certain times and people but that's kind of where I draw the line, like in terms of, do I want to live in a life of integrity and being true to my authentic self?

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:34
One of the pieces of really simple logic that I always go back to is if you don't know what those are for yourself, it's difficult to ask for them, it's really difficult to have those types of conversations that you're talking about, if I don't understand what I stand for, if I don't understand what I value the most is really difficult for me to articulate that to someone else. You know, another really interesting thing and I'm curious your opinion on this too. But we've found, and I'll give you a little bit of preface or context, a lot of the work that we will do is we'll help people make career changes often what people consider to be the type of sort of unicorn career changes where they're transitioning to a role or organization or situation that does allow them to be so much more of themselves but part of the magic behind that is that they first have to understand what it is that they want. Now here's the here's the part that's really interesting to me, is that I find that in many many many situations where people think it's impossible to create a situation where you can be more of yourself and people look at that and go, "Yeah, that organizations not going to do that" or like, "that boss is never going to say yes to that." But so many of those situations, if you know what it is that you stand for, you know what aligns with your purpose, if you know what you are aligns with what you value, then when you can articulate it and do ask for what you want, you can usually find some resolution that is in alignment. Yeah. So I'm curious, what's been your experience on that?

Jenn Lim 25:07
First of all, I love what you all do. I love what your organization does towards...

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:11
Thank you.

Jenn Lim 25:11
Feel like we're, you know, we're cut from the same cloth basically, in terms of what we're trying to strive for, because you know, who wants to wake up unhappy and sleep unhappy? Because this is our time. And being the best we can. So love that. And you're totally right, it's not easy. And it's not to say that the work that we are talking about is easy at all. But the question is, is it worth the effort if it means waking up every morning, and being able to feel and say, "Look, I don't have to turn on the news, or I don't have to, like go on my feed and I have to see what's going on the world. I am grounded within because I know my purpose and values." And I know that's easy to say. But like, that's why these exercises that I introduce are talked about in the book are so important, because at least it's a line in the sand of understanding that. But yeah, of course, it's not easy to implement. But one of the things I would say, having been on both sides of the table of hiring, and trying to be hired, when someone comes to the table with that sense of who they are, what they believe in, if I put my employer hat on, I'd be like, "this person is who I need, like that sense of like, that's resistance to the chaos around us." That's a sense of like, "no matter what's gonna happen, I'm resilient", you know, I'm already grinding myself. So no matter what, like with your company, if I agree or aligned with your purpose or values as a company, I'm all in because I already know that within me. So from both sides, you can kind of see it's, kind of like, it lights up and it becomes a gauge, you know, coming to an interview is not like, "Oh, I hope I can impress this person. It's just like..." And other person, if I was that employer, I'd be like, "Oh, shit, like, I want to learn from you, too." Like, that's the kind of engagement I think people, your audience, would probably be amazing in changing how we work in life and how we show up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08
Well, I think you made such a great point, too, like, when you're grounded in yourself, and all of those ways that you had mentioned, when you're in that interview type situation or that type of conversation. It's not about "oh, my goodness, how can I impress this person so that I get hired" instead, it becomes much more of a real partnership type of conversation has been my experience. But it doesn't happen without that work. And it doesn't happen without that understanding. You can't just like fake that conversation.

Jenn Lim 27:34
Right, exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:36
Not well, at least.

Jenn Lim 27:37
Not well. And it shows, I mean, you know, and then some people are naturally more introverted and all that. But, I think that if that other person, like if that person that's looking to interview you or interviewing you doesn't see your authenticity, and how genuine you're being about things that matter, then it's kind of like, well, you've benefited from that, because you automatically know this is not going to be a good fit anyway. Because who wants to show up to that every day at work. So it is a very, like exchange a partnership, as you said, of people and personalities, and what it means to be heard and be able to do therefore good work and progress and be connected and feel both ends are being, like, are benefiting from that social contract, but in a work relationship.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:25
So I have two more questions. Let's be honest, I really have like 72 more questions, but we only have time for maybe two more so. So...

Jenn Lim 28:36
If you want to call me at midnight, Scott, we can talk then.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:39
Fair enough. Careful what you wish for. You might get that midnight call. The hardest of the hitting questions first. How often these days do you do spontaneous dance parties? Like I've been seeing that on various forms of your bio for like 10 years. So how often does that happen nowadays?

Jenn Lim 28:57
Well, right now if you're down to do one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:00
Oh, we can... I wish I would have, like, thought to like queue up some music or something. I'm looking around, the same, we can just do it without music like...

Jenn Lim 29:07
Yep, we can. Silent dance party.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:10
Silent dance party.

Jenn Lim 29:12
I tried to get, well, I don't try because it's spontaneous. But it happens. Once a day, ideally more.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:20
Ideally more. That's fantastic. So here's my other actual question, too, well, you know, I'll preface this a little bit too. We have many people in various leadership roles in all kinds of organizations listening, and our audience. And also, many of these same people are thinking about their career and their life for themselves. So I would love to ask, you know, what advice would you give them on two different fronts? Thinking about someone who is potentially going to make a career change and wanting to find the type of situation where they can be much more of themselves at work and then simultaneously, on the other side of that, too, where they are potentially having an impact on an organization to allow that and enable that and make that a part of reality.

Jenn Lim 30:08
Yeah, I love that question. Because I think most of the world is going through right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:14
It has various stages of that.

Jenn Lim 30:15
Yeah. So it's like, kind of, one on his way out, and people aren't showing up to work saying, like, "No, I don't think I need that anymore." So it's really interesting, because the conundrum is you would have thought that everyone's like, chomping at the bit to get a job again, but people are like, "Wait, I don't think so. Like, that doesn't fit my needs of raising my child, or like, the work hours are not good." You know, there's an interesting play going on between who, like, where the scale is between corporate and basically being human being and wanting to work. So I think two things come to mind. One of them is, as you're thinking about these career shifts, not to sound like a broken record, purpose or values, just do those exercises really quick and, like, root yourself in that. It's actually really eye opening. Most people think they know, though, but when they do the exercise, they're like, "Oh, wait, I didn't prioritize that, right?" And then the next thing is, as you're entertaining these different kinds of scenarios, there's two questions I would ask in these scenarios, like, "What's in it for me? What's in it for all?" And when you're able to answer both of those questions, then you have a very clear answer to, wait, because if your purpose values is grounded, then you understand "Okay, this is what's in it for me. And then by answering what's in it for all, then that answers more of that purpose", you know, that 'we thing' instead of the 'me thing' of, what does it serve other people? What does it serve customers? What does it serve society? All that stuff. So when you have those two questions in mind as you go through these changes, and it lights you up, because "Oh, wow, it actually serves my purpose and serves like I want to do something great for society and community. But it also serves me too, because I know I need XY and Z things because that's what I believe in." So that's sort of a simple, like, kind of, mental model to think through and doing this shifts. The other thing I would remind, and it's also a big part of like, why I wrote the book. I use this metaphor about greenhouses. And we, you know, it's kind of like when you're in plane, I don't know, when's the last time you were in plane, but you know, and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:12
I just got back from a month-long trip. So we took a bunch of different planes. So...

Jenn Lim 32:15
Oh, awesome. So you remember that routine of COVID. So you know, the oxygen masks that fall like that whole thing. We're so used to hearing that, like, put yours on first before putting on any walls, but we don't really practice that in life. So the greenhouse metaphor is basically, moreso, wanting to help, you know, we've tried to grow and nurture other greenhouses, but sometimes we forget to tender. So I think that's a big thing about considering these shifts is to have those two things in coexistence, making sure that you tend your own greenhouse, knowing that you want to grow and nurture others as well. And it could be anyone like me, your friends, your family, your kids, you know, all of the above global society, whatever it is, change the world, all these things fit in this society in the realm of the other greenhouse, just make sure you're tending your own as you're doing that for others.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:04
I very, very much appreciate that. And the book that you so kindly wrote in preparation for this interview is "Beyond Happiness". And I really enjoyed it immensely. And I want to hear something that struck me, I actually copied and pasted and wrote it down. And I thought it was really, really great. You had written someplace in there, I can't remember what chapter it was in. But "when life gives us lemons, companies in survival mode, just pass out the lemons until they run out. And if they're thinking slightly longer term, they'll actually build a lemonade stand, but if they're adapting and thriving, they'll use the seeds to plant more lemon trees, so everyone can have a stand of their own." And I just thought that was so useful as, not just a way to think about part of what you're talking about in the book, but just as a mantra for how this whole set of topics that we've been discussing works. So I really appreciate that. And I will probably quote that in the future someplace else, 'cause I love it. Thank you for the conversation. I really appreciate it. I, selfishly, you have been on a mental list of mine of people who, you know, 10 years ago, I'm like, "I'm would love to get to know her. She seems fantastic." And I will say that you are just as delightful to talked to as I had hoped, and maybe even more so 10 years ago. So I appreciate it.

Jenn Lim 34:20
Thank you. Maybe it takes that 10 year incubation for it to happen, but...

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:24
You know, that could be. But I'll take it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:29
Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that 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 35:41
One of the biggest things that we hear again, and again, and again, as we have conversations with people all over the world, not just here in the US, but every place across the globe is the issue of time. Time, because it takes a large amount of time to do just a normal career pivot, normal career change, let alone for the types of career changes that we've discussed on this podcast again, and again, and again, where you're really maximizing for what you want out of life, what you want out of your career, and want to be able to, you know, grow and show up in the ways that you want to, that's a different type of career change. And as it turns out, that also has a tendency to take more time. And the reason this becomes a question is because, where are you going to get all this time? Where is that going to come from? And that is... that's real, it's a real challenge. So we thought, well, hey, this is something we are helping people reconcile with every single day. So why not do a podcast episode about it? We do this for ourselves, when I say ourselves, I'm talking about our entire team. And we also do this for our clients across the globe. So I have with me today, our Director of Client Success, Phillip Migyanko. You've heard him on the podcast many times before, but he's back today to discuss, how do you not save time, although we're gonna talk about that too. But how do you even create time in some ways for yourself to be able to divert towards career change, or anything else that might be even more important in your life too. 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.

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Get Out Of Your Own Way: Stop Blocking Your Own Path To Career Change

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Once you’ve decided to make a career change, there are a lot of things to consider, and possibly several roadblocks and mental barriers to overcome. Often, people allow their own fears to stand in the way to make that change. You know that you want to change – or NEED to change – but you don’t see how you can actually pivot to where you want to go.

Over the years of working with people, it’s been proven that the hard work, the endless days and sleepless nights, and the energy it took to put in the work to make a successful transition in their career is worth it in the end.

What you’ll learn

  • How to get out of your own way when faced with needing to make a change.
  • The importance of identifying your signature strengths.
  • Why you need to evaluate your values, wants, and needs.
  • How to actually reach out to the right organizations (to get a response).

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Cesar Ponce de Leon 00:01
One of my biggest fears at that moment was that I've been working in the legal industry for such a long period of time, eight years of my life, I invested in this to not do it anymore. You know what, I wasted eight years. How am I going to transition to a new career when I have no experience in that career? How am I going to switch into a new job opportunity or even industry when there is really nothing to give?

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 01:00
Once you've decided to make a career change, that's really just the first step. Because after that, you're going to have so many things to consider. It feels overwhelming to try to narrow down the work that you want to be doing and where you want to go. But the fact that you're going to run into many roadblocks, mental barriers, what we call setbacks, and even walls along the way of different types, well, a lot of people get to this point, and then they allow their own fears to stand in the way of making the change that they really wanted. And you know, that at this point, you need to change, and maybe you know where you want to go, but you don't see how you can actually take the necessary steps to get there. After working with people for years, we've proven that the hard work, the endless days, sometimes sleepless nights, and the energy that it took to make a successful transition in their career is worth it at the end.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 02:00
I used to work in the legal industry. And now I work in that nonprofit industry. I work for a large nonprofit company that helps people change in their lives. So that is what I do now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:10
And this is going to be a super fun episode, because Cesar was struggling in a not very fun place for quite a while. And he knew that he wanted to make a change. And he was Uber-frustrated. So he actually invited us to come along for the ride, because he knew that he needed help. So you're gonna get to hear his story today. But he did a few things that were particularly amazing, and also that you can do too. And I wanted to be able to share his journey with you. And he was so gracious to be able to come on and share it with you at the exact same time. Because I think that there's a lot that we can all learn from other people that have just gone through the process of where many, many of you that are listening, many HTYCers out there want to be. Alright, here he is, right here.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 02:59
I mean, there were ups and downs. And obviously, before changing the organization, I was in the legal industry for eight years. I was a paralegal, wanted to go to law school, and then realized that's not what I wanted to do. And then the question came up, what is it that I need to do? And obviously, in that process, you know, sometimes you just think, "Oh, I'm gonna just rock the world." But when you realize that is not easy, and that you need help, that's when you start looking for help. And that's exactly what I've done. That's how I landed into HTYC.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:26
Yeah, absolutely. And we'll definitely talk about that, too. I'm super curious, though. You mentioned law school, and I knew that about your past. But what caused you to realize that law school was not going to be good for you?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 03:39
For me, it was more than likely intentions, because, first and foremost, to understand, you know, what got me there, I guess we need to go through the beginnings of...

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:46
Let's go through the beginnings. Let's do it.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 03:49
So I landed at this job because I needed cash.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:54
Verifiable reason. Yeah.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 03:55
I started as a legal assistant firm, and then after that, I moved up to paralegal. And after being a paralegal, I went to office management. Okay, and obviously, as I told you a few seconds ago, the reason why I took the job is because I needed the money to really pay my bills. And that's how I landed in the legal industry. And for the first month obviously, it was a struggle because you're learning everything, you know, from just doing intakes, right, to just doing a whole variety of things. And that is exactly what I've done. And obviously, it was hard. In my mindset, I thought I needed to persist, because quitting was not an option for me. And once I have learned all of the duties required by my position, I saw something pretty interesting that my boss was making lots of money. He was successful, and powerful. You know, just the fact that you tell somebody, "Hey I'm a lawyer." People automatically respect you, you know, it's like you earn people's respect. And I've seen that and I kind of crave that at that moment, particularly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:55
Yeah, isn't that funny, though, we have so many associations with different types of titles, or opportunities or positions or anything like that. And lawyers, to your point, definitely one of them. And what's kind of cool, though, is that you realize that part of it was something that you craved in that moment. So why do you think that was for you?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 05:13
I don't know. I mean, I guess it was the fact that I wanted to, at that point in my life, okay, as I was growing up, yeah, I always wanted people to, you know, respect me. And to know that if I went somewhere, or did something that the lawyer title was going to come out, and people are automatically going to be like, "okay, now we have to bill."

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:31
Lawyer has entered the room.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 05:33
Absolutely. So that was kind of like the equation part of it, you know, at the moment, and then obviously, as people also picture, I think it happens to a lot of law school students. And by the way, I don't want to over generalize here, but I believe that with some Law School students, they see, you know, the Hollywood side of law, you know, that you're going to go in, and you're going to have this huge case. But when they come to the reality of what the legal job, that the position may look like, they're like, "whoa," you know, I didn't know that's what it was, you know? And at least for my position, I was attracted to the power, the security that comes out of the position, which were attracted to the at the moment. But what led to the change, I guess, just to say, you know, is it really for me, I believe that I think it was my third year in law firm, once I actually got a hold of everything. And I moved back into my role. I guess at that point, I was transitioning from college to the university. And something interesting happened in my life. And that was, I found my faith in God, which that kind of changed my perspective on seeing things, you know, and even my motives, to pursue law, I decided to get a degree in religious studies so that as I were going to law school, you know, I will get a liberal arts degree, to be able to go into law school and what happened, but in that process of studying religion, and just to understand my faith, my values and all of that, I realized "No, is law something really worth pursuing for? Like, if my motives were power before, and chasing high financials, can I do it only with law?" I guess what my major, kind of, helped me realize it at the moment is that law may not be for me, it helped me change my view on values.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:13
Interesting. In what way? I'm super curious about that. Because values are something we spent a lot of time discussing here on the show, but also with our students and clients. And I know you know that, but what caused for you some of the change and how you were looking at values?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 07:27
I guess the changing factor for me was that, first and foremost, I didn't really have an understanding of values until that moment, which I look at some of the basics, and then HTYC reinforced the process. You know what I'm saying?

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:40
Absolutely.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 07:41
I thought that devalues were always the same. I thought that there were a standard that I had to follow at the moment. And for instance, everybody craves for power. Everybody craves with this. And because everybody craves for those things, I should look for them, you know. But when I really came to the realization of studying theology, and doing my religious studies, I started asking, "Who am I?" That's the question, you know, who am I? What is it that really valued reality? Because, am I just looking or chasing for something that is completely false, or completely something that may align to other people's values, but not with mine, you know, or with my core being. And so that was something that I kind of realized. And then obviously, in that process of realizing things, and just understanding the 'Who am I' part of me, I continue to do it. And I was going through a lot of difficult times too, working at a law firm, which, one of them was, I was always fighting with industries to get great results for the client. And a lot of the fights were the first three years you kind of get the energy, but after a long time, your energy, just take it as it used to. And then secondly, I guess, part of my big issue is that you work so hard to get good results, right? As you're in the front lines. But your clients were unhappy with the results that you get.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:56
Yeah, I remember talking to you about that, too. And for you, if I recall correctly, in the way that you had identified, you needed to be able to help people, you had to have some of that positive reinforcement in a variety of different ways, or that positive type of feedback for it to be truly fulfilling for you. So it, kind of, like mashed oil and water a little bit.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 09:18
Yeah, what happens is, you know, like, even we know with the thing of going to law school, I envision disease or pretty much speaking to people, you know, arguing for the case, and just going for it, you know what I'm saying? Later on I realize that helping people is something that I want to do, right, but I want to actually help people change positively for the better. You know what I'm saying as opposed to a legal issue going through, you know, the legal process to be able to solve that issue, I want to be able to help people in order way, which I think is what I'm good at, which is to influence people, encourage them, helping them grow. And I realized that as a result of the why question that I had with myself at that moment, because obviously, if I work to chase money and power, and those things that, they are not bad in and of itself, I mean, we all need security, we'll need some self of knowledge, we have to not be naive about things. But if you paid and you tied those things, and you are not even sure that they fit with what you really value, then you're chasing the wrong things. And that's what happens to a lot of people in America.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:24
What you were saying about values is super interesting to me, partially, because I'm embedded in this stuff every single day. And we spend a lot of time teaching this stuff. However, it's interesting to see it in action. And it's most interesting, where you kind of made this progression, almost, where initially, you're looking at, hey, here's what everybody else is doing. And obviously, everybody wants these things. So we think that everybody wants these things. So we should be doing it too, right? So you kind of went from that point, and that's part of the reason why you were initially interested in law school, and by the way, some people, like, never get to that level of honesty with themselves their entire life. So first of all, kudos to you. And then second of all, after you made that mental transition, and started looking at, hey, here's some of the ways that I want to help people, here's what's really incredibly important to me. And here's what lines up with my values. I'm curious what you began doing after that point. How did that change your daily life after you had some of those realizations?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 11:28
Well, for me, again, just weighing the pros and cons of deciding what was really making me happy at the moment, oh, and I realized that at the law firm, I was not as happy. I was fighting all the time, it was a lot of toxicity, you know, just getting good clients that were ungrateful for the hard work that you've done for them. And I was doing a lot of case auditing and case management, which was okay to me at some point. But it was not how I wanted to help people. The legal part of it, it's amazing, because you help people through it, you know what I'm saying? But I guess when I came to the realization that, why did I really want to, when I was honest with myself, and realized that maybe it wasn't too much of the power, maybe it wasn't too much of the money, but it wasn't the influence. And then I came to realize, okay, how do I want to influence now? Is it at the courtroom, fighting for cases and defending clients and what have you, or with something that I'm great at, and that's where HTYC came, so helpful to me, because it kind of helped me define what my strengths, what I'm good at. And not just that, you know, because obviously, HTYC, you know, kind of gives you the platform for it. But I also went out and seek out for confirmations for other people, which it came to the point that those were my strengths. And now I don't know what the true North Point looks like. I don't know what it is, I kind of know what it looks like.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:48
Yeah, and for a little bit of reference too, for everyone that's listening, first of all, that's awesome. And second of all, what you mentioned there is, one of the things that we'll often have people do through the career change bootcamp program, where you're actually going out and seeking out some of those validations. And we have people do that in some really specific ways. But, and it sounds like you were hearing back and getting those types of validations about your strengths and what you were great at from other people. Is that right?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 13:18
Yeah, yeah, that's what it was, you know, obviously, people were saying, "hey, you're this, you're that, you know, these are your strengths, you're very good with this." And then I was like, whoa. It's crazy because obviously, without them telling them what the process was with HTYC, I was like, I got those planned. And it was amazing to just hear those confirmations from others. But this is at the level of HTYC after I made the decision to get to HTYC. But before that, I kind of knew that my thing was influencing, okay. And then you know, weighing the pros and cons of continuing in the law firm. I said, "You know what, I'm going to move on" because obviously, I came to the realization that love may not be exactly for me. And after that, obviously, I did some research on personality tests. I think I took them all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:07
I remember you emailing me and saying that, like, "I think I've taken all of these."

Cesar Ponce de Leon 14:11
Some people may not your audience, I went through, like, Myers Briggs test, and I don't even know how many to the DISC profile and whatever you want to name it. Okay, so once I got these results, I'm like, "Okay, great. So I get the results. Now I start applying to every job that I can. And I started applying and applying in the conventional way, right that people do it all the time, right? Go on indeed.com. I'm gonna go to all these websites, and I'm just going to start applying to all of his jobs. And what that did for me, it actually was more frustrating because I wasn't getting any responses. I think I only made it to one interview and then that interview, which I was not prepared for, that they never called me back. Understandably enough, you know, I wasn't prepared for it. So they didn't call me back. So I spent most of my evenings applying to different jobs and got no results. And that kind of made me anxious. And a little bit upset, to say the least, because I was like, you know, I'm applying to all of these jobs. And I'm doing all of these things, and I'm not getting any responses whatsoever. And that's what actually made me feel stuck. It made me, you know, kind of lose my confidence but I was actually starting to believe in myself. So I was like, you know, I'm a great influencer and this or that, but started losing my confidence. I was like, you know, what, maybe I'm not good enough. I started feeling stuck. And what a lot of people go through is that when you read those job descriptions, if you want to be this or work for this position, right, you have to have 5 or 10 years of experience in doing this, this and that. And I'm like, I think I just graduated from college like two years ago.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:48
It's fairly demoralizing, or like, even if you've got 17 or 19 years experience, or I don't know, 10 years experience, or whatever it might be, like, it always seems like no matter what role you're looking at, it's like, "Ah, that's ridiculous. Why do I need 15 years of experience for that? Why would you ask for that? Like, I can totally do that." And then yeah, it's depressing. So that's where you were then, it sounds like before you came to us, and you've gotten all of this information about yourself, you've gone through every assessment under the sun. And then you've gone on the demoralizing sending off application train. Was that the point where you began to look for help? Or what happened after that?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 16:28
To answer the question, yes. But first and foremost, that's when I came to my... to the realization that I was like, "You know what, I can't do this alone. I can't do this alone. Because obviously, one of my biggest fears at that moment was that I've been working in the legal industry for such a long period of time, eight years of my life, I invested in this to not do it anymore. You know, what I wasted eight years, how am I going to transition to a new career when I have no experience in that career? How am I going to switch into a new job opportunity or even industry when there is really nothing to give? And I think that a lot of HTYCers right now, in that moment, but let me tell you, let me give you an encouragement that that's just a mental thing. Okay, once you pass that mental barrier, which that's what we discuss in the bootcamp, right. Once you pass the mental barrier, okay, you're able to do those things. Now, I'm not gonna say that you're just automatically one day in the morning, going to wake up with no fear, because one of the things that I did was doing things with fear, okay, but I did them with fear. And that is what got me results.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:29
That is such a great point. And I think for some reason, we all have this impression, I'm either going to be able to do these things, and I'm going to be 100% confident and I'm going to be able to do them with no fear or I'm not that type of person, so I just can't do them almost. Some reason we don't allow the latitude for the in between which is reality, which is exactly what you just said, like, you are scared, it is scary. And you also have to do the things, whatever the things are.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 17:56
Absolutely. Because obviously, you know, people have this assumption that okay, you know, if I stopped people right now, I'm not going to have the symptoms, okay, it's like a scar, when you have an scar, your scar ain't go and be gone tomorrow, okay, your scar is going to be there until it fully heals. But regardless, you know, you have the scar or not, we have to continue moving, we have to continue using your arm and moving forward. And that is something that I kind of learn at that moment, or going through the process that even if I'm scared of calling companies, calling you to hiring managers or whatever how to get it done. But before we get to that, the question was, you know, how you got to HTYC because at that mental barrier, huge mental barrier that we're talking about, did not give me peace, it gave me a lot of anxiety, stress. At one point I was so stressed that I was almost... I felt like I was detached, you know from society. I remember my birthday last year to my birthday dinner, I had to step away and go to the restroom. Because I was so afraid and paralyzed at the moment that somehow I started feeling detached. And when I started seeing those things in myself afterwards, I was like, you know what, I need help. This is obviously what's causing me all of these problems, staying stuck, paralyzed, you know, it's affecting my health. And I need to take a proactive step. Now, obviously, with that, I went ahead and researched you know, for a few coaching programs. And then one day I was in my car in that Friday, and I said, I think I searched for how to change careers or wherever. And that's how I landed to your podcast. And it was so amazing. It was such a blessing because I feel like you were very real. Okay. And you had very good knowledge of the situation. You knew what you were talking about. And not only that, you know, I felt that I could relate with you and the team. And that was amazing because after that, I was like, I need to subscribe to this podcast, listening, listening, listening. And then at one point, I was like, you know what I think I need to communicate. First and foremost, one of the things that I always tell people is that if you're going through something you have to share, you know, your struggles, you have to out, don't keep them in, because if you keep them in, most likely, you're not going to take action, you're not going to be proactive. And that's just going to delay your process. And I think I needed to tell my problem to somebody who has experience in it. And that's what I did. That's how I reached out to you, I think I sent you a pretty long email, which God bless you, if you read the whole thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:25
I read the whole thing twice.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 20:27
That is something that I want to tell people is that one of the things that immediately got me more interested in going with you is that not only you took the time, because anybody could say, "Hey, thank you for your email, give me a call, or I'll give you a call. You know, when you have a few minutes." You actually responded, you actually broke down that email into small segments and recorded a video explaining the situations and that video was specifically designed for my situation, which, that blew my mind. Because quite frankly, I've never seen anybody doing that before. And that actually got me motivated. Because I'm like, first and foremost, this guy, Scott, is taking his time to really hear my problem to understand what my problem is. And he's actually offering solutions on how he can help me transition from where I really like to be in the future. And that's why I decided to go and sign up with HTYC to help me make that transition.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:23
Well, I sure appreciate that feedback. And that means a lot to me, it's something that we are very committed to doing in a variety of different ways. We are very committed to making this really challenging process, I'm going to call it a process. Sometimes it's more like a bit of a hell than a process. But we want it to be personal because it is personal. And I'm super, super excited that you found a way too. Actually we're going to hire more people, because we get so many of those types of emails now that I'm finding it difficult to respond to those on my own. And many of our other team members are... have been helping out. So it's a cool problem to have as the company in the podcast and everything has grown over the last number of years. So I'm so glad you found it that way. But I was super curious, though, because you went through this. I mean, just like you said, a year ago, you had your birthday dinner, and you felt completely detached at that point. And now you've been in this role for months. So in between, what do you feel like was one of the most difficult parts for you in making this transition and actually doing the work? Let's start there.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 22:33
Well, sure, I'll share some with you. One of them was overcoming fear, because obviously, even going through the process, I think that I guess with HTYC, you get certain weeks, you know, where you do different tasks, which by the way, are amazing tasks. But even when it's time to do the work of calling, hiring managers and getting a hold of people is you still have the fear, you're like, oh, you still have it. And that, kind of, like, pushes you to do other things. And to me, that was a challenge, overcoming my fears. But as I mentioned to you a few seconds ago, at one point, I had to come to the realization, if I let my emotion drive me through this process, then I'm not gonna get anywhere. I had to come to the realization of saying, "okay, objectively speaking, I need to start taking actions and follow Scott's advice and recommendation and a need to be in communication with him to let him know what's going on." Because you did something great, okay. You overcome fear with good and the good that you have done is provided strategies to help me overcome those hiccups and issues that I was going through. First and foremost, you understand that once you come to the realization of what fear does, okay, you get too stuck and paralyzed. And when I realized that was a problem, I decided to take action. Action in following, you know, one of the strategies that you recommended, at least to me was, okay, you need to actually go to the hiring manager, or even the executive of the companies to be able to understand more of the position or to get your foot in the door and things like that. They don't even respond to my resume on Indeed, how are they going to take my call? But the reality is completely different. But it was the fear that was blocking me. But once I said, you know what, I have to actually do something proactive to be able to get to the decision maker. And that is exactly what I've done. You provided amazing scripts, which people should know that because, you provide everything, brother, so that's why I am so thankful. And then obviously I tell her that script according to my needs, and you know what, it went really got me the opportunity to bypass a lot of gatekeepers and get to the hiring managers or the decision makers. And that's how I landed at my job. I had to go to the decision maker of the company, who was, you know, the Chief Operations Officer, and let him know, "hey, by the way, I'm interested in your organization, I'm interested in the company. And obviously, I don't know too much about the industry. But I want to know, and I want to get to learn more of it" and keep it and say, "Hey, great! Thank you for letting me know." And then he asked me questions. "What is it that you like about the company? How did you get to even this decision?" He asked me very deep questions, which, by God's grace, I was able to respond to those, and then, Scott, you know what he did, he started following up with me and started giving me small projects to large projects. And that ended in a job, but I guess overcoming the fear of saying, "okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call the higher ups and just try to get myself through it, and talk to the people that make the decision."

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:37
So many people get stuck in those fears. And I definitely hear what you're saying about once you got to action, like that was the thing that helps with the fear, ultimately. But I'm curious, what was an example of one thing that worked for you to be able to take you from that place, you know, they're not even returning my calls, when I'm going through the regular process all the way to making the calls from them, and moving through that fear so that you could get to that action at least one or two times. Because after you started seeing that, hey, this is working. But there's... it seems like sometimes there's a big gap in between there. And I know it's different for everybody. What was one thing that worked for you to force yourself to take action, if you will?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 26:19
Well, first and foremost, I guess it was a process. You know, I wouldn't say that it was one thing particularly, but I know that when we were going through the bootcamp, we talked about relationships before resumes, right? But in order to send your resumes, I think that there is a step. I don't know if it's before or after that, but that was select an ideal companies that you'd like to work for. Okay. And establishing a relationship with those companies. And to me was, okay, how am I going to do that by send them an application, and they're just gonna throw it away? How can I stand out in a way that would be different, you know, unconventional, if you will?

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:00
Yeah, absolutely.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 27:01
What I've done particularly in that situation is based on your advice, right, was to get their email address, get their phone number, bypass the gatekeeper. To me in that situation, particularly, I actually attended a non profit organization. And I volunteered before but not as a high level volunteer. I never know who the execs work for the company. So I had to actually find out, we don't ask the questions to people, who is the one of the execs here and that's how I got to the Chief of Operations, who makes the decisions for their organizations. And so I had established myself, I had to introduce myself to this person, I had to start building a relationship, you know, asking him questions, personal, and that's something that I want to tell is that we have a corporate mindset that we have to ask, "what do you do?" because it's all about personal love that's what it is. You have to be able to give love in order to get some love. And I think that's one of the things that I mentioned before in one of the comments for the HTYC bootcamp, in order for you to receive love, you got to give love. Okay? And love is authentic. You don't just go to somebody and say, "Hey, I love you. Can you please help me out with this?" I established that friendship, because this is actually one of the organizations that I love the most. And that's the one that I needed to prioritize, I then went ahead and told the person, "I've been attending and coming to this organization and done some volunteer, but I really love it. I love what you guys do to help people. I love the fact that you, I genuinely care for people, and that is something that I am very interested. And I don't know how that's going to happen. But I am here available for whatever you guys need." I didn't really say I'm looking for a position, but I said, I'm available for whatever you guys need. And I know that for some people, that's a hard thing to do. Because if they actually go up the ladder, and you reach to a certain level, sometimes you have to come to the realization that you may have to step down the ladder to be able to potentially get back up in the right field. Okay, but not a lot of people are willing to accept that. And that's what the question does sometimes, sometimes you may need to bring you down here to potentially get you up here in the field that feeds you particularly. So what I've done in this situation, I told the person, "look, whatever you guys need me, I'm here, and I'm available." And guess what this person did, keep it in just this base me and say, "Okay, get away from here." He said, "Really, I thank you so much." And then we kept in touch. And then I told you that I was going to the Middle East for vacation. And I was intentionally thinking of him. And I went, and based on our conversations, I got him a small souvenir that was very meaningful. And then obviously, when I came back, I said, "Hey, I went to the Middle East, and I got these gift for you, I hope that you appreciate it, that you value it." And that gift obviously came as a result of listening of the things that this person told me. And he said, "Oh, thank you so much." And then he actually started following up with me and give me a small project. And here's the key, okay, he told me, "even though you told me that you're interested in even knowing that even volunteering the company, I still don't know you as much. And I want to get to know you. So we're gonna work on some projects together."

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:27
Very cool.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 30:28
A lot of companies, not only they look at your strength, but they also look at your character. Because character means a lot. I think that a lot of people see that 20% on top of the iceberg, but they don't see the 80% that goes underneath. And the 80% that goes underneath has to do with a lot of hard work. And that hard work is called character. If you have the character to be successful, you're going to be successful. And I guess that's what they were trying to see, you know, because you remember Scott, I volunteered for like three or four months. And then at one point, I was like, I'm just gonna just dump it off the truck, because I was already getting drained. But it was that volunteering persistence of being available for anything that landed to an opportunity. Now when people say, what did you do? You know, with those five months, I did everything, Scott. One day actually had me direct traffic outside. Okay. I was like, how can I help and they were like, "okay, just get a jacket." Okay, and no directing traffic outside with my orange sticks.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:27
I love it.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 31:28
At that moment, I was like, you have to be kidding me. Like, it's cold. I'm here directing traffic, I thought I was meant for more. But it was at that moment that I had a realization that maybe one of my issues was pride. And that in order to be able to succeed, I needed to be more humble in the tasks that were given to me. And that was a big turning point. Because after that, I said, okay, I'm just gonna... even if they haven't washed dishes, I'm going to go ahead and do that. The optimism that I'm doing something great, you know, and even if this opportunity doesn't work out, at least I pop or something that was meaningful, and beyond yourself. And I had to come to the realization of being optimistic about it, and know that a better opportunity was gonna come in spite of whatever the outcome was gonna be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:20
You know, what's super cool about that is, one, your point about finding for something that is meaningful to you, I think that I've seen so many people succeed, and so many people never even get close to opportunities, because they were or weren't willing to fight for something that was meaningful to them. And I think that looks completely different to different people. Now, I think that part was absolutely super cool. And I think the other parts, I just want to clarify, because I think there's danger here that some people can look at your situation and say, "Hey, do I just need to go and volunteer? Or do I just need to get out orange sticks and go drive traffic for some organization or something?" And people I think would be missing the point which is, that you were not just willing to fight for something that was meaningful for you. But also, you were willing to invest the time and energy into building a relationship with people that you wanted to be around.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 33:15
Yes, that's the heart behind. The heart behind this story is to let the audience know that if you want something, you have to be able to be willing to accept whatever challenges come. And secondly, obviously, to fight, because if you're stuck, and you're paralyzed, and you're going through the process, believe me, there were times that I wanted to quit, there were times that I did not really follow through the schedule, there were times that I was like, you know what, I want to clean my room, because that looks more appealing to me than doing what I'm supposed to be doing. But at the end of the day, do you really want to get out of there? And will you do whatever it takes to get out of there? And that's the heart behind, you know, just you have to be willing to do and like you say, right now you don't have to deal with traffic, you know, you don't have to do any of those things. But you have to be willing to accept some challenges, especially if you're trying to get into a huge company, or change of organization, or whatever it is, okay, or even start your own business, you have to come to the realization, there will be challenges, and you have to be up for them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:16
Yeah, absolutely. That is so cool. I am delighted as the right word, I don't use delighted often, but I'm so delighted that we got to, one, have this conversation, and, two, you got to share your story with the HTYC audience. At the beginning, you were talking about how just a little over a year ago, you found the podcast and you were flipping through it on your phone and everything like that, and then ended up subscribing. And now a year later, just a year late, you're on the podcast, and you've been in your role for four months. And that is such an amazing story. And I appreciate you taking the time and opportunity to actually share it with us.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 34:50
Yeah, I'm so excited right now. I mean, because I've never thought that would be in your podcast. Like being able to share my story, you know, and obviously, right now I'm into catalyst. I'm not going to say that I got to the perfect place, you know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:02
I don't think anybody gets to the perfect place necessarily. It's a continual revision.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 35:05
Absolutely. But what one thing that HTYC did help me is to affirming those values, you know, affirming the strengths, affirm on what is it that, you know, I'm looking for NBA season, because obviously things change. As you heard my testimony before I was in law school of power and things like that, you know, you had think that your values change over time, okay, and depending on your convictions as well, and what HTYC gave me is hope, to say, "I will be okay, that it is possible to change from one organization to another" one of the things that I was actually doing in going through the process, and I think I don't know if I told you this, we were in the process of buying a home with my family as well. And there were some conflicts, you know, in the whole transaction, and whatever. But I also got an offer as a marketing consultant for a large communications job, which when I got the job offer, the manager told me, "we know that you have zero experience. But one thing that we really loved about you was the fact we were able to relate with you, and that you are teachable. Okay, because there were other people coming with mass marketing degrees, and some even master's degree applying to the position, but we really like your personality." So to me, that was like mind blowing, because I was like, wow, but because of what I was going through that process, I had to turn it down. And I was volunteering with this other organization, which to me, that was my priority. But it is possible, okay, to change of industries, even if you don't have the degree, even if you don't have the major. A lot of companies are looking, for instance, the company that I'm working for was looking for character. Now this other company was looking for one of the characteristics of character as well, which is teachability. Are you going to be able to learn? Are you going to take on tasks and be willing to be okay, with, you know, the responsibilities? You know, are you willing to be molded into what they want to mold you to afford that position, particularly? So that's another one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:57
That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. And yeah, you did share that with me. And I totally actually forgot about it up until this moment. So that is behind the scenes, actually, I don't know if I've ever told you this. But one of the ways that we measure success, behind the scenes, for our students and our clients is, can we get people to the point where they have the capability to get job offers, and they also understand themselves well enough to be able to turn them down. And that is something that has happened so many times, when people go through this process, it boggles my mind. But at the same time, that is super cool. And that makes me happy, because that's one of the ways that we evaluate success for ourselves. So awesome job, and congratulations again.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 37:44
Thank you so much. Thank you for helping me. You and your team were very, very huge part of it. And I always tell people, when you go through situations, don't do it alone. Always seek for counsel of somebody who has experience and in this situation, you have experienced if you're, you know, just listening to the radio show, you're thinking oh, you know, I can apply, I can do this, you know, myself, you know, I'm just going to look for a couple of inspiration things from Scott. Call him, okay? Because you don't know, he actually works in strategies of helping you succeed through this moment. And he will hear you, and he'll go through the process with you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:25
I am a total nerd when it comes to anything that has to do with the science around happiness, psychology, and I just absolutely love it. And that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to have our next guest on the show. But the other reason was, because well, I had been a fan of her work for going on 10 years now.

Jenn Lim 38:53
So it was a selfish, sort of, like, inward look of, well, what is meaningful? So before I got to the organizational stage, I had to do that hard reflection within myself. And then understanding that "oh, purpose" and this was the terminology that is now versus then. But what was it for you? Like, how can I make these big decisions of where I work, where I live, who I go out with, you know, like, and not have to, like, have a whole conundrum every single time. I realized it was like, Okay, what is the most important thing to me?

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:29
That's Jenn Lim. She's the author of a brand new book called 'Beyond Happiness'. She learned how to identify what was really important to her after she had been laid off from her job, her dad was diagnosed with cancer. All of that was happening at the same time as 911 was occurring and all the global events that followed. Well, after looking internally and doing much research, Jen learned how to be much more intentional and leverage the science in psychology behind happiness. This led to her working as a consultant with Tony Hsieh, the former CEO at Zappos, and later the two of them co founded the company Delivering Happiness. 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.

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Career Change 180: When A New Career Actually Doesn’t Fit

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Not all career changes work out – the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

So what do you do when you realize that your previous career actually fit you? How do you pivot back into that career path after some time has passed (and the field has likely advanced)?

Louie shares why he changed careers from medical imaging into IT, the struggles he faced when he made that change, and how he pivoted back into medical imaging, ultimately leading him to career and life happiness.

What you’ll learn

  • The importance of learning what your true values are
  • What to do when your new job is killing you (and not doing your family any favors, either)
  • The value of making professional connections
  • How to use your connections to make a pivot to career happiness
  • How to prepare yourself to return to a previous career path after several years

Success Stories

I feel like this course gave me the umph I needed to get myself going. It kept me organized and gave me action items, which were crucial to helping me move forward. I feel like I have a clear picture of what I want and more action items for getting there . I don't feel as overwhelmed.

Justyne Palmero, Marketing and Communications, United States/Canada

If you're ready to make the change, if you're willing to give yourself the time that you deserve to figure out what's right for you. If you're willing to take that time, I think Happen To Your Career, and the Figure Out What Fits course, can be great for a lot of people, if you're feeling stuck, and you don't have to bridge that gap to where you are. I think this is a great, great course to really break everything down and give you what you need.

Nicole Mathessen, Art Director, 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

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

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Louie 00:01

I've been working in that for about 15 years[a]. And I decided to take a left turn and go into more of an IT role, Medical Imaging Informatics. So I had moved into that role and about three and a half to four years[b] later, I decided, you know what, this is very interesting. I like to know medical imaging informatics, but it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like it was a perfect fit for me.

Introduction 00:29

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 00:53

People make career changes all the time. That's a normal thing. Unfortunately, many of those career changes are not great moves. In reality, what we find when we meet up with so many people after they've made a career change is that they're just running from portion of their past job, whether it's a bad boss, a toxic environment, trying to raise their salary, trying to lower the amount of stress and responsibility, when instead, they should be figuring out what they really actually want. And then run towards that. So what happens if you've had that situation? What happens if you have made a career change only to realize that your previous career actually fit you much better? Technology and culture can advance or it can change quickly. How do you pivot back to your previous career path after some time has passed? And make it even better?

Louie 01:54

After I put my mind to "Okay, what do I want to do, you know, for the next several years, if not till the end of my career and that's, you know, what I really enjoyed?" I just needed to, kind of, get out of my mindset that I was for so many years, and I think actually stepping out of the role in a three union and then coming back, I have kind of a new outlook on things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:12

That's Louie. He went to college for medical imaging, he spent years then afterwards working in the 3D imaging field. And, as you might imagine, he felt like, someplace along the way, he needed a career change. But once he made that change, he quickly realized that his health and his family life were being very negatively affected. Listen, as he shares why he changed careers, from medical imaging into IT and the struggles that he faced when he made that change. And most importantly, take a listen further in the episode to how he pivoted back into the pieces he loved most from his previous career, ultimately leading him to much more happiness more often in both career and the other areas of his life.

Louie 03:02

I started out in college as an X-ray technologist and radiology and went further into a degree with the medical imaging. So I learned about CT and ultrasound and MRI. And in school, I did a research paper on 3D imaging. So there's a lot of applications of free of the heart, free of the vessels, the bones, things like that. There's additional application that you can be involved with, they go along with the software of like, a CT or MRI machine. So, it was a very new area of medical imaging, I found it very interesting. So I wrote a paper about this certain topic. And by writing the paper and reaching out to different people, I was able to get a job working in this very new and up and coming Software Technology. At the time, it was only in the university setting. A lot of researchers, a lot of vendors were working, collaborating with clinicians on developing this technology and making it, you know, fast forward probably 15 or 20 years[c], making it a very mainstream part of medical imaging. So I've been working in that for about 15 years[d]. And about four years ago[e], I decided to take a left turn and go into more of an IT role on Medical Imaging Informatics. Had moved into that role, and about four years later, three and a half to four years later[f], I decided, you know what, this is very interesting. I like the, you know, Medical Imaging Informatics, but it just didn't feel right, it didn't feel like it was a perfect fit for me. So I, kind of, did some, you know, recollecting of what I like to do and what I was good at, the kind of work that I enjoyed, and I came to the decision that I kind of wanted to get back into the 3D imaging work that I, you know, that I've done for so long. So the reason why I reached out to Scott, to you and your team was medical imaging, a very dynamic department and field and I've been out of the area that I specialized in for four years[g]. So I knew I needed to reach out via LinkedIn and in my contacts and get, you know, just get back in the game. So I wanted some help because I know that I really had one shot to reach out to my network and want to be a little bit more methodical and really get some tips on what direction to go and how to handle that. So I found some of your podcasts online and I thought, "man, this sounds really great." So, you know, the rest is history. I went through and went through the bootcamp that you offer and ended up reaching out to a lot of my contacts within medical imaging. And, one, before I even started pursuing a specific job that I have now, I learned a lot about my field, but I didn't even, I guess I was in a vacuum when I left the 3D imaging area.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:26

That does happen a lot.

Louie 05:28

Yeah. So I really found out how much I didn't know in a field that I've been in for 15 years[h]. So, you know, it was a learning experience. You know, I just started putting pen to paper and reaching out to people and requesting time, you know, like the bootcamp leads us to do. That's, kind of, a long summary of how I got to where I'm at. But that covers on past, present, future.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:49

That's perfect. We're gonna come back and talk about several portions of that. Because, one, I'm really interested because I haven't been able to discuss it with you firsthand up until now. But then second, I'm really curious, would you be willing to share a little bit of light on some of the big events that led you to deciding, why you needed to change in the first place? It sounded like, one, the work environment at your previous role was requiring a lot. Is that putting it mildly?

Louie 06:20

Yes, sure. I was new in the field. The opportunity that presented itself to me was because of the rapport that I built with some of the physicians that I work with, and some of the administration. I was suggested for this position but it was new. I'd had a little bit of IT training and, kind of, a beginner type certification, but I hadn't worked in the field directly. So I stepped in and worked really hard. I learned a lot. But it was just a lot to take on with the day to day work, and the train to learn and understand a lot of the science behind, and the technology behind what I was doing. And then, you know, the last year of my position, we went home and everybody worked from home for COVID. So I think everything happens for a reason. But I think that going home and working from home was nice, and everybody's had that experience now on a grand scale. But I think what that did was kind of put me in a vacuum. And I still need to my other teammates to, kind of, directly interact. I mean, we had zoom, we had web meetings, but it's just not the same. I think working from home now I understand that, for me, personally, a hybrid approach would be great. It's nice and convenient to work from home. But there's always that people factor that you're not going to get unless you go out and with the team and meet and talk around the water cooler type things. So that played an impact, and I can tell that for sure looking back that, yeah, I felt kind of on an island. And I just, you know, like I said, eventually just felt like I was trying to fit in, I was trying to work really hard. And I wasn't going anywhere, kind of, like running on a treadmill. So with that, I thought "okay, it's time to start looking" and really, after I really put my mind to "okay, what do I want to do, you know, for the next several years, if not till the end of my career, and that's, you know, what I really enjoyed?" I just needed to, kind of, get out of my mindset that I was for so many years, and I think actually stepping out of the role on 3D imaging, and then coming back, I have kind of a new outlook on things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:03

So that's interesting. Tell me about that for just a minute. When you say, you know, I needed to get out of my mindset that I was in for so many years. What do you mean by that? What mindset did you need to get out of?

Louie 08:14

I think that I was in an environment up until when I left for about eight or nine years[i]. And it was very exciting, because I brought a new technology to a health system that they hadn't been introduced to it officially. So what I did was establish a team, establish protocols, work with physicians, you know, I put a public relations hat on and reached out to different specialties and service lines. And that was really exciting. And our volumes increased, and it was great. But then things kind of plateaued. I mean, it wasn't a bad thing, because we were still busy. And I just didn't feel like I was growing, which wasn't a horrible thing. But then I had this opportunity presented itself to me and I thought, you know what, I think this is a way that I can grow. And I did. It was fascinating to get into the IT world. But after, I guess, you don't know what you don't know. And so getting into it, I learned things, I still think it's interesting. But as far as the day to day work, I wanted to get back into subject matter that I worked so long in. It's just stepping out of a role that you've been stale in or in a vacuum, come out and look at it and think "okay, I need to take another approach to this." So now the environment that I'm in, it's also very new, this organization is much bigger that I worked in before. A lot of the structure to build this area is already there. And it's not... all the way it's not on me. So I can go in this department and share my expertise and my experience, but we're not really starting from the ground up. So it's different, you know, I'm not the go to guy anymore, so to speak. I do have a lot of experience. I'm sharing that with my teammates, but there's a lot of pressure off, I can leave at the end of the day, come home and not think about work until the next morning and that's, you know, prioritizing family, my health. It's becoming a perfect fit.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:49

So what's so interesting is I remember having a conversation with you. Geez, when was that? I guess that was about six months ago almost, five, six months[j].

Louie 09:59

Yeah. I think last November[k].

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:01

Yeah. And one of the things that you told me that you wanted, because I think I had asked you, "Hey, you know, how much do you know about what you want and what great looks like for you in the next role?" And you said, "You know what? I think would be perfect, and I know not everybody wants this, but I would love to just have..." I think you said, "less responsibility" initially. And then we, kind of, pinned it down to as, like, a different type of responsibility, because you wanted to be able to come home and focus on your family, and not worry about everything else that was going on. So it's so fun to hear you say, "Hey, guess what? Now I can come home, and focus on my family and my health, and everything else, and just not worry about..."

Louie 10:44

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Scott, because I did say that. And, you know, I answered my own question and granted my own request, I guess.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:51

So that's really, I think, fascinating on many different levels. Partially because I got the impression a little bit at the time, it's like, "Hey, I know that I want this, but I'm not sure how much I believe that is possible for my next step in some way or another." And I might be oversimplifying here, but how has your perspective on that changed from that conversation 5-6 months ago to now you making the change and having some of those opportunities where allows you to focus on your family and been more of the way you want to and allows you to focus on your health, and more of the way that you want to versus how you were thinking about it back then?

Louie 11:28

So I think when I first got out of my role, my past role that I left, my health was, and I won't get into all the health details, but I was tired all the time, it started affecting my health. And at the time, when I left my old position, I just wanted to have a job. I knew what I wanted to do, and I needed help to get there. But I was willing to take, really, to take anything that wasn't where I was. My wife and I started working on budgets, and I thought, "okay, what can I work as far as salary? You know, a bridge job, or can I take a job to get to my next job?" But my main focus, my main priority, even till today was my health and my family. I didn't really necessarily want to move up into, like, management or industry where I'd be traveling a lot and up all hours of the night. So that helped me kind of curtail my idea of where I wanted to go. And then you know, ultimately, you want to have a good job, great hours, great pay, you know, you kind of make a list of things that are, you know, the pie chart of, "okay, I really want this and this is okay" and, kind of, rank those things in rind. And really, the way that this opportunity came about is it's a little bit of everything. It's a great balance. I think there's growth, and there's excitement in the job, I feel like I can be a part of the team, I think I've already added some of my experience to help things off the starting block. But again, I don't see in my position right now, I mean, I might have opportunities to move up and over in my new role. But for now, in the short term, I'm completely fine with doing what I'm doing and relaxing and not being overstressed. You know, I have my time back with my family, I'm healthy, I'm in better shape than I was when I was a young man. And I enjoy what I do. So it's, you know, it's kind of a win-win. So my ideal career, I can't think of anything better than I would... that I have right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:12

That's pretty cool in so many different ways. And I think that, as I listened to you talk about it, too, I think what is coolest for me or what I think is most impressive, as I look at the change that you have made is these pieces that you had decided that you want are not always popular pieces either. Like it's not always the socially acceptable thing to do, like, you know, for most of... this is especially common in the United States, but it is in some other countries too where it's like, "Hey, you need to move up, you need to move up, you need to have this type of growth." And you don't have very specific ideas of what that means. And for you, you tried that out a little bit, in some ways. And determine, "Hey, this is not right for me." And then decided that, "Hey, I'm going to direction that is right for me and right for me right now, that allows me to focus on my family and health and the things that are most important to me at this point in time." So kudos to you, first of all, because you and I both know that going against any kind of norms is not always easy. Second of all, there's no small amount of work that it takes to be able to get there. And I'd love to talk to you a little bit about what that looked like from the inside out. I think it's so easy on some of these podcast episodes where we'll have stories, and, you know, people are in their new role and they're excited about it and everything. And sometimes we jump over how would this actually happened and it is no small amount of work. So could you take us through what were some of the key events that took place that allowed you to be able to get into this opportunity that you're now in?

Louie 14:53

And I know, Scott, you wanted to ask me a few questions at the end of the podcast, but I will say that, I would call it a struggle because, you know, Happen To Your Career bootcamp was a little overwhelming, I went through all the modules, of course, I jumped ahead.

Louie 14:58

We would expect nothing else from you.

Louie 15:07

You know, there are parts about the interview and the resumes and connecting, which at first glance, you're like, okay, you're searching for a new career that's going to, kind of, refine what you already know, and give you kind of a direction. But then there was that more of a conceptual thing of developing your strengths and finding them and knowing what your weaknesses are, and building off your strengths with your weaknesses, that was hard to get a handle on. And so I did the strength assessment, and it was very, very accurate. And I had to read through it two or three times, and I highlight things, like, oh my gosh, you know, so that was very helpful, but I couldn't quite get a grasp on how that would affect me professionally. So what I did was and it really helped me out and I talked to Mo, my coach, about this as, I went through, and as much detail as I could, and I wrote down, like, line items everything is all the interaction that I've ever had with people in every single job, I put, "Okay, this particular situation, I struggled in. This particular situation, I excelled in. This, you know, this interaction with the person, this is how they were, and this is how I was and I felt, like, I handled the situation well" so you, kind of, go through your mind in every single job. And I mean, it took me a while because different situation you remember, either it was really good, or it was really bad. So all the good situations and how I came out of those situations would kind of reflect on my strengths and, like, one of my strengths was that I include everybody, and I thought, "Okay, well, when I supervised 10 people, I made big decisions, but I tried to get input from my employees before I told them this is the way it was." So I thought okay, yeah, that's an example of made me an occluder. So that helps gear that some one of an abstract concept to, "okay, I need to see what kind of employee I am, I need to work see what kind of boss I am." So that made everything relevant. And I really, they, kind of, turned some lights on and, kind of, sent me in the right direction.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:57

When you say turn some lights on, sent you in the right direction, what's an example of that in the process? How did that change your career change process?

Louie 17:06

One thing that comes to mind right away was, and this time, we didn't know which way I was going. It really gave me some in depth knowledge on what my strengths were and what my weaknesses were professionally. So now and if I ever get another job, or have to interview anything, I can really talk about my strengths and weaknesses, because I think, you know, we all, kind of, sweat a little bit on, you know, what is your weakness? Can you tell me what you struggle with? It's kind of hard. But then, with the strengths and the weaknesses that I've developed and work with, I can really tell them and give them examples of what my strengths are and what my weaknesses are. So that when I interviewed those questions weren't asked to me, but I think I was very well beyond prepared to talk to them about what my strengths were, what my weaknesses were, I think that alone would be a genuine response that any person interviewing you would appreciate.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:52

How are you getting to utilize your strengths? Now that you have a much, much better ability to articulate what are your strengths actually are, how are you getting to utilize those in your new role? What does that look like on a day to day basis for you?

Louie 18:08

There's only three people on my team right now, we plan on growing. But the other two people on my team, they have a different skill set than I do, and we coincide well together. And it's only been about two and a half weeks[l] since I've had the position. But as we talk more and more, I talk about what I've worked in, and they talk about what they work in. And if they don't quite follow what I'm saying that I make sure they understand things and I talk from... when we talk to physicians, I, kind of, talk about 'we' instead of 'me' about what we are going to do instead of what I plan to do. So it's, kind of, you know, I'm including, you know, I don't want to take all the credit, I've been there and have experienced, but I'm wanting to share that experience with everyone. So by that I'm an includer. I want to, you know, be a team member, I want to be a team player. So I'll take credit when credit's due. But otherwise, you know, I can't build this and do it all on my own. So I'm not gonna pretend that I'm going to. So I think that's probably... it's a very new job. And that's the only example that I can give so far, but I'm sure they're gonna come some times where I'm gonna think, "Okay, I need some help. Because I know this is challenging for me to overcome." But yeah, I mean, by going through that research and homework, I can understand them better, and probably develop them as I go on what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:17

As you were going through this process, what else were some of the key events that led you to the role that you're in now? What else took place that, as you look back, you're like, well, I didn't know it at the time but that totally led me down the path of now getting this opportunity.

Louie 19:33

This is really cool. And I'm going to hold on to the story for a long time because it was really neat how it worked out. So when I... Scott, when we had our initial interview and I talked to Mo, in my opinion, Stanford University has one of the premier departments and setups and the type of imaging that I work in and, you know, my ideal... my golden nugget would be working at Stanford University area. So long story short, I don't work at Stanford, but on LinkedIn, I'm connected to the gentleman that is over the area at Stanford. And I reached out to him, you know, I reached out for a connection, discussion and just a 15 minute talk about what things are upcoming. I said, "I've been out of the area for four years[m], I just want to see what you guys are doing." So he responded and said, "Hey, this Friday afternoon, you know, I'm leaving work early, I don't have a lot going on. Let's do at Friday afternoon." So all I asked was for 15 minutes. And we talked for 40 minutes. And he gave me a lot of information, great food for thought. Then he asked me where I was from, and I said, "Well, I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana." He said, "You know what? I'm working with somebody in the Indianapolis area that wants to build this 3D imaging platform." I thought, okay, well, there we go. Here's the connection, you know, like what we call a weak connection. And so I said, "That'd be great. Do you have his contact information?" So while we were having a zoom meeting, he emailed this gentleman, and he replied back to the guy and said, "Hey, here's his email. He's wanting to talk to you." So the gentleman that emailed me is my new boss, it's kind of cool how I reached out to someone in San Francisco, and they connected me with someone that lives 20 minutes away from me. And what's further cool about that is we're going to be collaborating from the gentlemen at Stanford, he's going to help us in some aspects of our development or our imaging area. So not only do I have a new connection with LinkedIn, but I'm working with my connection, and the person that connected me with my new boss. So that kind of worked out and I thought, "man, that couldn't happen at a better time, and a perfectly placed." So that was really cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:29

That is an amazing story. What I always find fascinating about stories like that, too, it's not just those individual pieces. It's not just that, you know, that reached out, that led to the perfect thing and then led to the other perfect thing and boom, job opportunity, that happens to be exactly what you want is usually all of the other work that you had done leading up to it to begin to, one, declare what it was that you actually wanted to say, "Hey, look, I'm gonna go for this. I'm gonna start reaching out to people. What the heck, I'm gonna reach out to the guy at Stanford. I might as well go for the gold, right?" Even in some cases, like, getting through all the head games that we play on ourselves, to be able to have those, take those actions in the first place. So really, really, really nice work, not just with that itself, but all the things that led up to that, as well. We feel like for you, when you think back on this process, what do you feel like was the hardest part or parts?

Louie 22:30

Well, because I was struggling with my health, I decided to leave my last role without anything lined up. So by far, as a father and a dad, it was hard to walk out of a job without anything like that. Because as a dad and a husband, you're inherently, you know, I'm the provider, I have to have a job, and I need... we thought it was best that I'm at work. But we planned for this, we thought maybe we would, you know, someday have to live off of one income for a while. And so we did. And we did okay. We put down the credit card and really tightened our budget, and we did fine. But I think just, what was really frustrating was I did a lot of the work, we had, Mo and I, had some coaching sessions that really got me going. But then I started reaching out to my contacts. And when I got to the point where I've reached out to all my contacts, I've done my homework, now I just have to wait. I have to wait for somebody to reach out and say, "Yeah, I can talk to you. And yeah, I can, you know, I have 10 minutes, we can talk." I didn't have a job. So my job was to work on my career. So I was just, kind of, in limbo, and you can only search the internet for jobs and, you know, go to companies' websites, and, you know, reach out to people. And so it was frustrating, because I worked really hard at it. I'd get up every day and work till probably 10:30 or 11. And then I thought, "okay, now what would I do?" But yeah, it was frustrating. And I think everybody's gonna go through that when you're changing your career or making a big move like this, because it's a process, right? And some people don't check LinkedIn, but maybe once a month or, you know, once every other week. And if you're not directly connected to them, you can't reach out to them directly via Facebook messaging or text message, if you can't get a direct means of communication with them, and LinkedIn is all you have, and that's... you have to take that into consideration that it just... it takes time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:12

I think the waiting game, in some cases, any kind of waiting, whether it's a day or whether it is several months, is quite possibly one of the hardest parts in general, because what's really interesting, we have a tendency to have lots of people that would describe themselves as wanting to be in control in one way or another that listen to this show, listen to this podcast, and then we also work with too. And when that is your nature or tendency, it feels doubly challenging. And that in itself can be, just, a very real challenge that sometimes feels like it shouldn't be a challenge, in one way or another. The other thing I really wanted to ask you, too, about was, you know, it's been five-six months or so[n] since you really said "Hey, look, I'm making this change, here's how it's going to happen and really embarked on all of the time, effort, energy, actions that made it take place. But if you were to go back to that time period, you know, five months ago, six months ago, back to where you're, like, "Hey, I know that I need to make this change, I'm going to make this a priority." What advice would you give that person that's in that place?

Louie 25:25

I think now, what we just talked about with the waiting game and the frustration, just be patient. And, you know, LinkedIn is the best, I think, is the best way to communicate. But you can also go to websites below the contact us, you know, talk to people, you know, I think people genuinely want to talk to you about their craft. So, you know, the people that did respond to me, were happy to talk to me, I think that... and if they see that you're taking initiative, and you genuinely are interested in what they're doing, or what they can provide you, I wouldn't be afraid to reach out to anyone. I think that's the key. And I kind of had that in mind. But looking back, it really is, I mean, everybody that reached back out to me said, "Sure, I can talk to you" you know, and the gentleman from Stanford, we turned a 15 minute chat into a 40 minute conversation. So I think be optimistic about that component. Because when you do your homework, and, like, I did my homework on a lot of companies that I reached out to, just so I had in depth questions that I really wanted to know more about, not just okay, what can I ask them to, you know, have a good little content in your questions. So you can, you know, they know that you've done your homework, and then they're definitely going to be genuinely interested in helping you get to where you're going. So yeah, I think just really focus on, if you don't have LinkedIn, if you're younger, just reach out to your contacts from college, or maybe some if you know somebody's parents that are in a field that you might like to get into. Again, I think anyone's going to be interested in you wanting to be interested in what they're doing. So that's huge.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:53

Very cool. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you taking the time to come and share your story. I said it earlier, you know, before we hit the record button, but congratulations, you've done some really nice work here. And during the year with COVID, and everything else, too, like, everything else that you believe you're stacked against and you did it anyway. So that is...

Louie 27:12

Yeah, I think COVID added a little extra layer of interesting components, too, about everything that's being done now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:18

Yeah, no joke. No kidding. But hey, thank you very, very much. And nicely done, sir.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:27

Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that 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 28:40

Once you decide to make a career change, that's really just the first step. Because after that, you're going to have so many things to consider. It feels overwhelming to try to narrow down the work that you want to be doing and where you want to go. But the fact that you're going to run into many roadblocks, mental barriers, what we call setbacks, and even walls along the way of different types, well, a lot of people get to this point. And then they allow their own fears to stand in the way of making the change that they really wanted. And, you know, that at this point, you need to change and maybe if you know where you want to go, but you don't see how you can actually take the necessary steps to get there. After working with people for years, we've proven that the hard work, the endless days, sometimes sleepless nights, and the energy that it took to make a successful transition in their career is worth it at the end.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 29:40

I used to work in the legal industry and now I work in that nonprofit industry. I work for a large nonprofit company that helps people change their lives. So that is what I do now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:50

And this is going to be a super fun episode because Cesar was struggling in a not very fun place for quite a while. And he knew that he wanted to make a change and he was uber frustrated. So he actually invited us to come along for the ride because he knew that he needed help. But he did a few things that were particularly amazing. And also that you can do too. All that and plenty more next week[o] 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.

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When Your Role No Longer Fits: How To Uncover Your Strengths To Make A Dramatic Change

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Have you ever had a role that had one focus and then morphed into something else over time? The role fits your resume and past experience, but when you realize that it doesn’t really fit you and your strengths any longer, what do you do? 

In less than 2 years, Nick’s customer service role began to change to be more of a sales role – which did not fit him. He explains how he went from uncovering his strengths, to making connections and having conversations to learn what roles could fit him, and finally landing a role that actually plays to his strengths.

What you’ll learn

  • What you can do when your role no longer fits you
  • How to change to completely different career, without starting all over again
  • The importance of informational interviews to find out what the possible ideal roles are for you
  • How identifying your strengths and wants, can give you clarity and control

Success Stories

“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

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I’ve been offered the job! It was great having the opportunity to speak with you prior to my interview. It enabled me to highlight my strengths as part of the conversation and I was able to be clear about my enthusiasm for opportunities to be proactive versus reactive. I also highlighted my desire to provide positive individual experiences. Our discussion not only assisted me in the interview but it also helped to increase my confidence!

Bree Hunter, Project Officer, Australia

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All the stars aligned and I ended up finding the right thing at the right place at the right time, and it was you guys! Everything that you said was speaking to me and the things that you had done in the job that you had transitioned out of and into. Also how finding work that you love is your passion for people! Honestly, it was you Scott, I mean, the way that you talked about it, how passionate you were, I was like, there's no way he's gonna put out a faulty product. So I'm gonna try it, you know… I recommend you to all my friends, you know, even if they don't realize that they're looking for a new job, I'm like this is the first step, let's do this! Even if you maybe don't move out of this career. This is going to help!

Maggie Romanovich, Director of Learning and Development, 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

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Nick Neves 00:01

I've kind of honed in on accounting and really matched up with a lot of my strengths. You know, I like the structure, I like working with numbers, all that stuff, you know, I like routine. So going off of that, I trust in my strengths and saying, "Okay, I think this is a good place to start" and kind of pursue that. That was a main role that I was really looking at. As I went along, I realized I had to do a slight pivot.

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 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

A long time ago, I used to work for Target. And I did Human Resource Management and Leadership for Target. And it was a pretty wonderful opportunity. I loved the company, they took great care of me, much of the leadership training that I got and have to this day, came from Target putting time and money and effort into me. So I'm forever appreciative of that. Also, at the same time, I was working for them. And they decided that they wanted to move their HR that supported stores more and more and more into the stores and more into the standard retail environment. Now, that was exactly the right decision for them. But it really wasn't that great for me, to be honest. And that's something that I have seen over and over and over again, where people go through, they get a job, it's amazing opportunity. And then the company changes or evolves into something else. And it's no longer amazing. It's not even awesome. It's the opposite of that. That happens.

Nick Neves 02:10

I was in a job working in customer success, which for those who don't know, it's kind of like customer support, with like a little bit of sales mixed in. And I was doing this job, it was kind of morphing more into a sales role. There's a lot of pressure to kind of move into, like a sales type role, which is just not for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:28

That's Nick. In less than two years[a], his Customer Success role began to change to, well, being almost all a sales role. And as it began to uncover his strengths and define what he really wanted in life, he knew that he had to make a change. But how do you move from a role that's no longer ideal to one that actually uses your strengths? Alright, well, spoiler alert, Nick does a really nice job of this. And as you heard in the introduction, he actually transitions to accounting. And I want you to listen for how that took place, how that actually happened. But let's start out with Nick explaining here, how he went from uncovering the strengths to making connections and having conversations to learn what roles could fit him and finally, landing in a role that does play to his strengths.

Nick Neves 03:18

I was in a job working in customer success, which for those who don't know, it's kind of like customer support, with like a little bit of sales mixed in. And I was doing this job, it was kind of morphing more into a sales role. There's a lot of pressure to kind of move into, like a sales type role, which is just not for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:35

Why is that? I'm super curious.

Nick Neves 03:37

My own personality, I don't think, you know, I'm more of an introverted kind of behind the scenes, analytical thinker. I like doing more the operational stuff versus, you know, just hammering phones all day, filling your day with talking to people, you know, I didn't want the success of my job to be determined by things that just I didn't want to do, or I wasn't come for with with. That's why I, you know, this isn't sustainable for me. And there was a, you know, a couple other things too, with just the way the company was, the culture, you know, there's a multitude of different reasons, but that was the biggest reason for me, it just did not feel like the right fit. Even it was confirmed with meetings with my manager, kind of yearly reviews and things like that. She's like, "You're a great team player, people love you on the team, but like really need you to be more, you know, like this person" and compared me to like our top salesperson, I'm like, I will never be like that person ever. So I was like, if they want me to be this type of person, then they hire the wrong person. And that I was okay with that. Because at first when I was doing the job, I was... my confidence took it and I definitely, that resonated with, you know, a lot of your previous podcast guests, I heard you talk about that. And I was like, I totally understand, you know, where they're coming from, where you think you're just not doing a good job and all that. And you realize, okay, it's really, you know, this isn't working out and I could totally excel with doing something that's more of a natural fit. So that's where I started, I was in customer success, and then ultimately led me to working in finance so I can kind of get into the transition of that because I know it's kind of complete one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:01

Well, let me ask you first about that stage where you were in this customer success type role, and clearly it was outside of your, not just comfort zone, but also, in many ways, it is requiring you to be a ton of who you are not and also didn't want to be. But I think as you mentioned, so many people will be in that situation, and they will say, "I should be able to do this or I..." they end up beating up on themselves in one way or another.

Nick Neves 05:31

Exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:32

And impacts confidence. So what allowed you to get to the point where you realize that you were okay with it, because I also heard you say, "Hey, I was okay with that at some point." But what took place for you to get to that point where you realize, look, it's just a wrong fit.

Nick Neves 05:45

Yeah, that's a great, you know, great question. And just, you know, put myself back into that scenario, right. And that's exactly how I felt first, I was in the job for maybe two to three years[b], first year, I've definitely beat myself up, you know, thinking I'm not doing a good job here. You know, that feeling continued. But I think the turning point was when I started really sitting down and putting in the time and effort to figure out what why this wasn't a good fit. You know, I took, initially, before I found Happen To Your Career, I took, you know, the Myers Briggs test, which was super helpful. Pairing that with the personality test, the strength test that you guys do as well. And then, you know, I ultimately stumbled upon you guys. And in some of the eight day mini course, and all that stuff that was... that free exercise, kind of, put everything into perspective for me. It made me realize, like, you know, there are strengths and weaknesses to a person. And sometimes it's just a square peg in a round hole, right. And that just slowly, it wasn't like an overnight thing, right? It definitely took some weeks to kind of figure that out. And then, you know, as I continued with the job, like I said, you know, had those meetings with my manager, was telling me, "Why you become this person?" I knew I wasn't going to become that person. So that's when it really clicked for me. And I was just like, "Okay, I should be able to do a different job. And even further along, through the career change bootcamp program, you know, you always have a little bit of doubt here and there as you're going through, right, especially at the beginning, but as I did the interviewing process of other people, in other roles, departments that I was interested in, and I would ask them, like, what does a successful person look like in this role, what personality traits fit a type of person in this role that confirms to me that I am moving in the right direction and looking for the right jobs, and I can be successful and build my confidence back up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:23

Let me ask you about that just for a little bit of background for everyone else, you know, one of the things that we'll often do is help people design many experiments, where you sometimes are having conversations, and I think that's probably the part that you're referring to, where you're looking at a variety of different roles and trying to confirm that those might be potentially a direction for you. So what were some of those roles that you were looking at, that you were talking to people about at the time? Just curious

Nick Neves 07:51

It started off very broadly, but then eventually got a little more itch. I actually connected with someone else who is in the program, actually, and he worked in accounting previously. And turns out, we had a lot of the same strengths. So I was like, he'd probably be a great person to talk to, get a perspective on, you know, using the job, he has the same strengths, would it be a good fit for me, I kind of honed in on accounting, and really matched up with a lot of my strengths. And I like the structure. I like working with numbers, all that stuff, you know, I like routine. So going off of that I trust in my strengths and saying, "Okay, I think this is a good place to start" and kind of pursued that. That was a main rule that I was really looking at, as I went along, I realized I had to do a slight pivot where, you know, accounting, it's tough to get into if you don't have the degree and all that stuff. So I was kind of hitting roadblocks there. But I was able to find a way to kind of get my foot in the door, almost like a stepping stone into accounting, which is the role man now[c], which is called order operations. It's got a lot of different names in different companies that basically you're the middleman between sales and accounting and finance. So it was great, you know, fit my background working in sales and customer support. But I'm kind of moving away to a different side of the house that I want to move into. You know, so our long winded question probably went off topic there twice.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:03

This is great, because a couple things that aren't always obvious when we talk about these types of transitions, because you've done a great job making this type of pivot. And I think so many people would not even realize that it's possible to make that severe of a change, I'm gonna call that severe for just a second, severe in the best possible way. If your sounds sometimes like a negative word, but I mean, in a really, really positive way that different that almost 180 type of a change. And one of the ways that you have found to do that is by heavily leveraging, not just your strengths, but also your past experiences too. And I think that gets so undervalued as a portion of this process, because I think so many people hear these types of podcasts or they recognize the need to do something different. And then think, well, I need to make this 190 type of change. I'm going to be a scuba diver or something like that. Like it's gonna be that drastic change in one way or another and that tendency is to say, "Okay, I'm going to, like, magic it to happen." And that's not how it works in reality. And in reality, it happens much more like you have done where we are heavily leveraging those things that you're bringing to the table. In this case, you had some amazing experiences in both sales, even though that's not what you wanted to do forever, but also customer success. And also a lot of the pieces that come along with that the skill sets that come along with that, too. And so, one really nice job into. What were you gonna say?

Nick Neves 10:34

Thank you. No, I was just gonna say before I forget, that really reminds me of and I didn't really realize it at the time, like you said, you're making that big change, and you're like, I don't even know if I have the transferable skills, or all that. Number one, I help talking to people to figure out what are the transferable skills, you know. The interview is huge, it was so helpful, just to get a sense of everything, you know, to actually talk to people in the jobs, it makes you realize, okay, you know, if you're just looking at job descriptions all day, you know, it gets kind of just monotonous. And you can kind of hit a wall there. So for me, it was... I was really able to figure out, "Okay, I don't have the accounting background, but I definitely have transferable skills, work with Excel a ton, and I've done process improvements, which is big in that field in my job, that's what I enjoyed doing that. So once you started talking to people, you realize, okay, this is a little more doable than I thought and Mo was beyond helpful in helping me kind of reshape my resume, reshape my cover letters, all that. And I actually ended up getting a lot of... Yeah, sorry, my coach Mo, he, you know, I ended up getting a lot of compliments from people, even if I didn't end up getting the job, they were like, you know, your resume looks like an accounting resume, I'm surprised you haven't had an experience in that field. So that was just a good confirmation there that, you know, I was doing it the right way. And, you know, it ultimately worked out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:49

That is awesome. I want to dig into a few of those pieces here for just a minute because it did ultimately work out when we're talking about like nine plus months[d] or so of work, to make it ultimately work out. And, you know, you mentioned some of those conversations that you were having very often, you know, when we think about making a change, depending on what people decide, they need is what is most valuable to them, you know what their goal is, and making this change that can often dictate whether you focus on roles first, or whether you focus on organizations or environments first. For you, it was much more about roles. And so you started having some of those conversations. But I'm curious, can you describe a couple of those conversations and what those actually looked like, what led up to them, how you got to chat with a couple of those people and what even talked about during some of those conversations?

Nick Neves 12:39

Going back, I definitely remember struggling with the roles versus organizations debacle. And I thought, well, maybe I could do both, I can look for roles within industries that are interesting to me, you know, I was looking, I'm a big sports fan, you know, I love golf. So there's a couple, you know, golf manufacturing companies and sports manufacturing companies around Boston, I was looking at those. And I ultimately decided that, for me, I think the role was just more important just because maybe it was the nature of the job itself, like with accounting and finance are, kind of, just you're doing accounting and finance in the back office, and it's kind of just that, right? I think if someone was moving into, like, customer success, or something else like that, where you're, kind of, on the front lines of the industry, you might look for companies and put an emphasis on that. So I think it really depends on the role. So for me through conversations with people, it didn't really seem like it was that different industry to industry, I didn't want to move to, like, a massive company. But in terms of, like, the industry, I was like, I'm kind of industry agnostic at this point. I kind of started there, figured that out. And like I said, talking to other people through the informational interviews, you know, kind of opened that up, and even also doing some meetings with Phillip, one of the other coaches, even though he wasn't my assigned coach, he set up what I think were called accountability groups at the time. I don't know if you guys are calling him from different now. But being able to talk to him and other people who were going through the career change process on the call, we were able to bounce ideas back and forth when I would explain to them hey, I'm kind of struggling with this. Do I go with companies roles? Do I focus on industry? So they were able to kind of help me talk through that, ultimately decided that, you know, roles was kind of the way to go for me. So that was another helpful thing too, is to have, not only my coach Mo, but also just the community itself is very helpful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:26

That's amazing. It makes me really happy for so many different reasons. I think it's probably useful to acknowledge here that this progression, I'm going to call it a progression, is always so much easier when you're looking backwards. You and I were chatting at the very beginning of our conversation, I think before we even hit the record button about how you were trying to get yourself back into the mindset of what life was like, you know, a year ago[e] at this time when you were starting to really think about making this change and starting to really move on that. But it's been a year since that point in time and it was definitely no small amount of work and one of the things that I heard you say earlier was, "Hey, I had a conversation with another person who was working with HTYC. And they had a past background in accounting. And that's what led to me affirming that this could be something that I take a really close look at. And then that led to other conversations that you had where you were taking tidbits away for different types of roles, which led to the next thing, which led to the next thing, which led to the next thing. And ultimately, only then after nine months[f] of breadcrumbs, if you want to call it that, following each of those little bit breadcrumbs led to the actual opportunity. So the question that I wanted to ask you there is, that's a lot of different pieces to be able to make this happen for yourself, and you've done a great job with that. But what were some of the hardest parts of that process for you?

Nick Neves 15:52

I would say what definitely helped me was the whole structure of it, you know, having the modules to go through, you kind of had a look ahead, you knew what to expect, I mean, not totally knew what to expect in terms of the program and what you were going to be working on. So I really liked the structure. So I'd recommend people if you like having that structure, it definitely helps. But the parts where I, you know, it sounds like it was a seamless transition, right. And now I'm here a year later[g] whom I have a new job. But I'd say that, you know, the hardest parts were, you know, like we discussed before, grappling with the... where do I even focus on, do I focus on roles, or focus on industries? Do I focus on companies like, you know, some people might be looking to move and they just don't care about location, that throws a whole nother wrench into everything. So I think the way you guys do it, we're, you know, kind of talked about building that frame, right, and putting the pieces of puzzle together. Another thing too, that was really helpful was building out your kind of life profile, if you will. So you kind of put like parameters around what you're looking for, to make everything kind of less daunting, right. So you kind of have indicators or parameters, you know, of what you want to look for. So you're not casting such a wide net, that you're overwhelmed. So that, at first, it was overwhelming, but it was able to kind of hone in from there. And then, you know, I think a little bit further down the road once, you know, I started interviewing and all of that, that's, you know, you deal with rejection a lot, too. You know, you don't always get, you know, you don't always get... you feel like you found a really good fit. And you made a really good case of why you should, you know, why you're able to make this change and why you fit in the know, you know, you might not have the traditional background and you do everything you can and you might not get the job. So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:31

Were there an example of where that happened for you?

Nick Neves 17:33

Yeah, a couple thoughts, you know, there was kind of some entry level accounting jobs where, you know, I was able to network my way into those jobs. So way more effective, I think, than just going on job boards, right. So I was like, I already have and in here[h]. And that person, whether they're just being polite, or whatever, maybe they think you're a great fit, and they pass along your resume, you know, I worked with my coach Mo, super helpful in helping me build my resume, tailor it to each and every job that I was doing, tailoring my interview prep and my cover letters and all that stuff. That's all super prepared, and very confident that I would at least get a call back, you know, for a lot of the jobs, right? A lot of them I did, which, looking back, it's like, well, you're moving into a totally new field where you don't have accounting degrees and all that stuff. So you know, I get it, but I'm...

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:22

Well, I think that there's another element there too. I would argue that that actually worked out so much better for you. Even the rejection sucks, like that is a... where you ended up, at least from the outside looking in, appears to be a far better match than starting in, you know, beginning accounting, because you bring a lot more to the table, you have so much more experience and skill sets than just starting from the beginning. So...

Nick Neves 18:48

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:49

That actually is allowing the process to work even though it doesn't always feel good in the moment.

Nick Neves 18:54

Yeah, and I think at the time, I don't even know the job and now was a job. So, you know, I was really just searching for kind of those entry level accounting jobs, like, maybe I'll have to take a pay cut, I really don't want to. There's other kind of entry level accounting jobs that a lot of people were frequently recommending, you know, accounts payable, accounts receivable, just stuff like that. And I was like, I would be willing to kind of grind it out and do those jobs. But it's part of my life profile, if you will, was that I wanted to be making the same amount of money or more, which is kind of, you know, if you're going to put in the effort to go through this whole career change process, you want to be able to have that kind of same salary. So especially in Boston, where things are pricey. Sorry, I'm losing my train of thought here. But yeah, I didn't even know that was a job. Through my conversations with people, I found out that, hey, this could be a good fit to kind of make that transition. So again, like talking to people and networking, even though it can be uncomfortable at times, people were way friendlier than I was expecting even just random people on one day and I was stalking so many people on LinkedIn, sending so many messages, and a lot of people did respond were super helpful, you know, I'd never met them before. We want to jump on the phone and, you know, being able to do all that while working remotely was definitely helpful. But yeah, definitely recommend reaching out to people as much as you can, if you're going through the process.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:09

What did you find was very effective for you personally, which might not be effective for everybody. But in your situation, what did you find was really effective as you were reaching out to people and having those conversations, particularly in the conversations themselves, what advice would you give people that worked well for you?

Nick Neves 20:31

Yeah, I would say, at first, it's... especially when you're finding companies, whether there are open jobs that you want to apply to, your like, you're very excited to try and get your foot in the door and apply those right away, right. And I did a bad job of this at first where I was reaching out to people saying, like, "Hey, I saw there's an open job here, I'm interested in it. Would love to kind of learn more about it." That just reeks of like, hey, like, get this job for me, right. But when I was reaching out to people, and this was another testament to Mo, he was really kind of nudged me in the right direction here, where he was saying, you know, treat him more as like, I want to learn about your experience, and really just have a conversation. That people are more willing to open up and talk about that than just help a random person who's trying to use them and wants to just get a job. I think eventually, the conversation ultimately kind of leads that way, which is nice. But it shouldn't start that way, especially in the beginning, when I really was just doing informational interviews, just to learn about different jobs, you, kind of, you're building your network as you go anyway. So you can always go back to those people to see openings, it makes it a little easier to reach out and apply to those jobs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:34

That's so interesting, the point that you made about if you are just pursuing a job, often that is a turn off, where if you are genuinely interested in the other person to learn about it, then that very often leads to opportunities. The hard part about that, though, I think, for so many people is you can't fake that. Like when you get into that conversation, like everyone has a bowl, you know, we've got like bs meters that are going to go off like crazy, it's like, "This dude just wants a job like, I'm done with this."

Nick Neves 22:08

Yeah, I think that you're right, that is a tough thing to kind of fake. For me, I was just enjoying the process, and really just enjoying talking to people and everyone had a different perspective on things. And I always learned something from every conversation that I had. So for me, I was excited to talk these people, and great if I could steer it in the direction I want to go in all the better. But you know, I think at the very least you still learn some things that you can pick up along the way. So it's, kind of, that was able to help me kind of get in that mindset.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:36

Very cool. Okay, so let me ask you this, if you had to go back and make this change again, is there anything that you would do differently in the process for yourself?

Nick Neves 22:49

Oh, that's a good question. I'm not totally sure. Maybe at the time when I was, kind of, looking for different roles, different opportunities, like maybe I left some different jobs or roles that are on the table, that could have been a really good fit, I kind of you know, I wanted to become laser focused on one role. And that's just me personally. So I was like, okay, accounting looks good, it may not be perfect, but I think it matches a lot of the skill sets and strengths that I have, it matches my life profile, like I just checked all the boxes, like, I'm just gonna go with it and look for this job. Like some people, maybe you can look at multiple different roles or job fields at once. So maybe I left something that was a really good fit. And maybe I just didn't see it. But I remember having this conversation with my coach, too, at the time where I was worried about missing something. And eventually, you just got to move forward with something, right? You can't just have paralysis by analysis, which is definitely something that I suffer from at times. So I had to realize that and that's another opportunity where my coach helped me out, you know, maybe that's a regret. But also, I wouldn't get too bogged down by that stuff, because that could really stonewall your efforts to move forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:58

What do you feel like are and now that we're on the other end of this, and you have different perspective, because a year ago[i], at this time, we had talked about you were in probably far less healthy place mentally, because the role and what was expected of you was such a not great fit, such opposite of alignment in some very specific ways. But now that you are in a better fit, what would you describe as the differences for people?

Nick Neves 24:31

The biggest difference is, if this job really matches, you know, what I'm looking for in a working environment. You know, I don't want to be inundated with meetings all day and you know, having to be on all the time socially. Like I said, I'm more of an introverted person. So for me kind of being heads down in your work, doing kind of all the behind the scenes work is really what I preferred. So that's a big change and being able to, you know, the things that I felt like I was good at just wasn't being recognized my own job. Like I said, I was doing some process improvements and things like that just to kind of boost efficiency and all that. And there was like an operational side of the job. And then it was a client facing side of the job. And I really gravitated towards the operational side and felt like I did a good job of improving that part of the job and all that, but that wasn't being recognized as vital to the job or bringing success to it. So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:21

It sounds like the emphasis was on the client facing side that the... and that's really what that organization or that set of people needed in one way or another.

Nick Neves 25:29

Exactly. And now I'm able to kind of focus on those strengths with my new job. I didn't know all this stuff at the time, but definitely taking the strengths tests and all that stuff really helped me... 'cuz you think you really know what you're good at, and maybe what you don't like and all that. But taking the strength test through you guys really helped me put everything into perspective and put it into words. And, you know, one thing that I really enjoyed about the process was you take the strength test, and then you go through and kind of highlight things that stands out to you. So that's really what helped me hone in on accounting in the first place is highlighting some of the words like reliability, routine, all these different things that stood out to me, like, you know, I enjoy that aspect of the job. And I feel like I'd be good at it. That was very helpful. Because again, that's also kind of a daunting thing, too, is like, okay, now I have this strength stats, but it's like not spitting out a job for me, right, I gotta go ahead and kind of match that to what to look for. So that process was super helpful too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:21

You know, what's really interesting, though, is a year later, you can now easily articulate what it is that you need. And I think that's such a cool thing, because you're going to be able to continue to build on that for the rest of your life. Where, you know, I asked you and just off the cuff at the beginning of this, you're like, "Well, you know, here's what I wasn't getting, here's now what I need, I needed this routine, I am more of an introvert and I need ABCD and E" and you can just rattle that off now. And I think that that is a testament, that doesn't just happen through the process. Yes, we have that built into our particular process for career change. However, it takes a lot of work from you, and understanding about yourself to be able to get to the point where now your later, it's just like, "Oh, yeah! Obviously, here's what I need: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." So that's super cool, because I know what goes into that. But I think out there that you made the point of is, you first have to be able to do that and be able to recognize it in a way that you can articulate it to other people or the outside world. Otherwise, the opportunities that come much later on just simply don't happen. If you don't get to step one, you don't get step seven.

Nick Neves 27:29

Yeah, for sure. It wasn't like you said, it wasn't an overnight thing. It definitely took some practice on my part, some kind of discipline to put in the time and work to figure all this stuff out. Determine, you know, be able to articulate it the way where I can now, and again, Mo is super helpful going through almost like roleplay, if you will, where you can kind of talk through what's so bad at it at first, but put into practice with his help. And, you know, with the structured strength tests, and you know, profiles and modules that you guys have, it was just helpful to, kind of, help me frame it for myself, too. So I would say, it was a combination of everything really, that was able to get me to where I'm at.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:09

Well, I am so glad to hear it. And, you know, before we finish up here, is there any other parting words of either wisdom or advice that you'd like to share with someone who is finding themselves back in that situation that you were in a year ago? Or like, okay, clearly, I need to make a change. Clearly, this is not a great fit. But what the heck do I do about it from here? What would you tell that person who's in that place right now?

Nick Neves 28:37

Yeah, I would say, you know, thinking back to about a year ago[j], when I was very unhappy in my job and everything, you know, you have to make a change, but you're not really sure what direction to move in. And maybe you do have a sense of what direction you want to move in. But it's just not really sure how to get there. For me, like I said, I really like the structure of everything. So that was super helpful, but it's not so structured, where it's like, you know, someone likes to kind of do things at their own pace and all that, I think it's very flexible. And I know you guys would get to work with people's different styles and customizing things, the way people work. So that's great. So that was, you know, a big thing for me. And even if I think this would be really helpful for someone who's looking to make even more of a drastic change, like, if you're looking to make some, you know, if you're looking to move into a very niche job, that it's difficult to kind of get into that role, because I know talking with some other people on the program, they were looking for, like very niche specific jobs in certain industries. That's one, you know, a coach would be super helpful. And it was... even still, helpful for me who was just still in the corporate world, kind of, you know, making a pivot, but nothing like super drastic. So I would say no matter what boat you're in, really, I think having the help and guidance is helpful, right? Have the community to fall back on, bounce ideas off of people. All that is just, it was all very helpful in the end. So I would say those are the kind of big takeaways for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:59

Nick, thank you for taking the time and making the time, I really appreciate it. And I told you at the beginning of this, but super fun for me to get to have this conversation with you. I know you did all this work, and you know, and Mo was keeping me posted. But I still didn't get to hear the whole story, necessarily. So I appreciate you coming and sharing it, not just with me, but with everybody else too.

Nick Neves 30:20

More thank you and everyone else, Mo, Phillip, everyone who I worked with. Thanks for giving me opportunity to share my perspective and story. I know, the podcast was huge for me for, you know, getting the... first off, discovered you guys, but also kind of getting motivated. So hopefully, if I could share my story and help other people, that'd be an honor. Thanks again.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:41

Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that 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 31:52

People make career changes all the time. That's a normal thing. Unfortunately, many of those career changes are not great moves. In reality, what we find when we meet up with so many people after they've made a career change is that they're just running from portion of their past job, whether it's a bad boss, a toxic environment, trying to raise their salary, trying to lower the amount of stress and responsibility, when instead, they should be figuring out what they really actually want. And then run towards that. So what happens if you've had that situation? What happens if you have made a career change only to realize that your previous career actually fit you much better? Technology and culture can advance or it can change quickly. How do you pivot back to your previous career path after some time has passed? And make it even better?

Louie Rankin 32:53

After I really put my mind to "Okay, what do I want to do, you know, for the next several years[k], if not till the end of my career and that's, you know, what I really enjoyed?" I just needed to, kind of, get out of my mindset that I was for so many years, and I think actually stepping out of the role in a three union and then coming back, I have kind of a new outlook on things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:11

That's Louie. He went to college for medical imaging, he spent years then afterwards working in the 3D imaging. And, as you might imagine, he felt like he was the one who like needed a career change. But once he made that change, he quickly realized that his health and his family life were being very negatively affected. Listen, as he shares why he changed careers, from medical imaging into IT and the struggles that he faced when he made that change. And most importantly, take a listen further in the episode to how he pivoted back into the pieces he loved most from his previous career, ultimately leading him to much more happiness more often in both career and the other areas of his life. All that and plenty more next week[l] 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.

[a][02:30] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[b][05:54] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[c][08:44] inaudible @kathy@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Kathy Wilkes_

[d][11:58] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[e][14:49] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[f][15:31] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[g][16:16] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[h][17:47] inaudible @kathy@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Kathy Wilkes_

[i][24:05] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[j][28:40] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[k][32:57] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[l][34:03] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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What Career Fits You?

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Stuck in a Career You’re Unhappy With? Fear Of Taking Risks Could Be Keeping You There

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on this episode

Many people are afraid to take risks because it’s easier to stay where they feel safe and comfortable. We like to think of this as “comfortably unhappy.” It’s the kind of unhappy that you can live in because it feels stable and safe.

But the problem is that if you aren’t willing to get uncomfortable, you could be cheating yourself out of career happiness. That’s right – you have to get out of your comfort zone in order to make big things happen!

Stephanie was plagued with an aversion to risk and was comfortably unhappy in her role. Once she finally saw the writing on the wall, she decided to face her fears and embrace the unknown to find her ideal role.

What you’ll learn

  • What caused Stephanie to want to make a change in the first place
  • Why being afraid of taking risks can actually hold you back
  • How working through the “5 Whys” reveals your values
  • Why it’s important to figure out what you want (even when you’re not naturally introspective)
  • The importance of getting out of your comfort zone sooner rather than later

Success Stories

My brain always goes 'Well, what's the worst that could happen?' And that was another one of the exercises from Figure Out What Fits and once you realize what the worst that can happen is, it's not really that bad. In the big scheme of things, it might knock it back for a minute or two, but it's not not a biggie. They have not found it to happen yet. So I've just been pleasantly surprised every step of the way.

Mark Sinclair, Photograher, Australia

Get the Full Backstory

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

I convinced myself for many years, that I was very lucky to have that job, and I would be crazy to leave it. I convinced myself that the team needed me even though I was miserable. And ultimately, it took me getting physically sick to realize I needed to leave! One of the biggest things that I learned out of the signature coaching was on designing my life. And this is another thing that I had really never, it had, I don't know, if it had never occurred to me. I just never believed it was possible until now.

Michael Fagone, Mortgage Loan Officer and Finance Executive, United States/Canada

Get the Full Backstory

All the stars aligned and I ended up finding the right thing at the right place at the right time, and it was you guys! Everything that you said was speaking to me and the things that you had done in the job that you had transitioned out of and into. Also how finding work that you love is your passion for people! Honestly, it was you Scott, I mean, the way that you talked about it, how passionate you were, I was like, there's no way he's gonna put out a faulty product. So I'm gonna try it, you know… I recommend you to all my friends, you know, even if they don't realize that they're looking for a new job, I'm like this is the first step, let's do this! Even if you maybe don't move out of this career. This is going to help!

Maggie Romanovich, Director of Learning and Development, United States/Canada

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Stephanie Bilbrey 00:00

I would say that it started with when I engaged a career coach. And it very quickly became life coaching . And the thing that rose to the top most quickly as my initial mountain to climb was my aversion to risk.

Introduction 00:33

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 00:57

Why does making a career change feel risky to so many people? I mean, I get it, if you're in an organization where the pay is great, or the benefits are awesome, or you have the flexibility that you want to continue to have, or maybe even the people are absolutely wonderful, and you're afraid of losing all of that. But here's the thing, even if you're not really happy with the job, and not really happy with the situation, then what goes through so many of our heads is, is it worth taking the risk on a new career and possibly losing all the good parts? Have you ever considered why it feels risky to you? Now, I would argue two things. One, that after doing this many, many years, not just the podcast, but helping thousands of people through career change, we don't typically see that people are losing all the good parts, that we see that that rarely rarely ever happens. And instead, I would argue that the far larger risk is the risk of doing nothing and staying for more years of your life in a situation that's no longer good for you.

Stephanie Bilbrey 02:08

I don't like interpersonal conflict. I don't know who does but I'm like, risk, it's my kryptonite. But man did it get me out of my comfort zone, did it challenge me, did it keep me on my toes, that got me in a better space to be broader in the way that I was thinking and just more welcoming of discomfort.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:31

That's Stephanie. She worked for years in community college environment, and was plagued by an aversion to risk. I think it's pretty safe to say she was comfortably unhappy in her role. Now once she finally saw the writing on the wall, she decided to face her fears and embrace the unknown to find her ideal role. Now here's the really crazy thing. If we fast forward to what happened at the end of her change, she ended up surpassing her own expectations by a longshot in terms of salary and what was possible, for her and her happiness in her career. Now, I want you to listen for that. But let's start out as Stephanie shares right here right now, what caused her to want to make a change in the first place.

Stephanie Bilbrey 03:19

I will say that I feel like I've been toying with my career for like, a decade. But looking at the work that I've been doing in the last couple of months or past year[a] previously, in that last decade, I wasn't bringing intentionality and reflection and risk. I was taking these kind of like small hopeful fingers crossed kind of pivots. And but then questioning like, is this the right company? Is this the right role? And then later, you know, that like imposter syndrome comes up, is it me? Is that what's wrong? It's actually listening to the podcast that you did with Dan Pink. And he said something to the effect of many people go their lives half asleep. Is that... Am I quoting that right? Something like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:00

It was something similar to that. Yes.

Stephanie Bilbrey 04:02

So that actually really hit home with me because my husband and I, about seven years ago, had[b] been toying with the idea of moving across the country and going out west just up ending our lives. And in my sign off letter to the organization, I was working out at the time, I feel like I've been on autopilot. I've been checking boxes that my elders told me to check. So not really taking risks and listening to my heart. So that was my first kind of like, something's got to change. But I kind of leaned on moving across the country to be the, like, thing that opens everything and changes my career. And so, needless to say, that was not the solution. I'm so glad that I did it. It was amazing. I've actually moved back to the east coast since that initial. But, you know, so I kind of, like, shook up the industry that I was working in. I started working in higher education. I started digging heavier into a different industry. But turns out that wasn't the solution either. So one of my favorite quotes is, "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." So it became evident that I was ready to move back across the country to be closer to family. I said, I have got to do right by my career. So that was probably the end of 2019[c], when I started listening to the podcast, and then listening to the podcast, became hiring a career coach who was actually a life coach. She was amazing. And so that foundational work began. And then I did at the bootcamp, probably about like, six months[d] after coaching.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:36

Wow. So this is... anyways, as you said, been a journey a decade in the making, but especially in the last three years[e] is what I'm hearing. And now you've been in a variety of different areas, you said, higher education, you've been in event planning, you've been in even the marketing side of events, if I remember correctly too, right. And also dipped into, like training and content development, those types of pieces as well. So you've been in a lot of areas, but it sounded like it wasn't as much about the area for you, it wasn't as much about, in some ways, the exact occupation for you, it's more about other pieces. So you know, as you were thinking about making this change back in back in 2019. And you're really starting to take some steps, then, what were some of the pieces that, at that point in time, you were feeling like you were either missing or wanting to change? What was the reason for the change?

Stephanie Bilbrey 06:37

I, you know, some people, they have a calling. And that's not the case for everyone. And I've listened to enough of these podcasts. And it's okay if you don't have a calling, it's okay.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:47

It is okay. It'll be.

Stephanie Bilbrey 06:49

You know, I made peace with that. But it's like I had these fits and starts of, I'm passionate about this. And then like a year or two or three later[f], I'm like, I hate this. You know, I had a very specific moment where I was working, moving away toward event planning over several years. But I had to lean back into it when I moved across the country, because I had to get a bridge job. And I remember this woman coming into the office and she was a client. It was a big conference Convention Center. And she came in devastated. The event is going on. And she said, "We agreed on white napkins. In ballroom A, there are white. In ballroom F, there are ivory." I mean, she looked like the world was ending. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. This is not what I want. So where's that spark? And you know, marketing wasn't doing it for me. And I even started like a local networking organization for marketing, because I was like, this is it. This is cutting edge. And I was like, man, I really like these people. But this isn't doing it for me either. So I think really what it comes down to is just, I wanted to feel engaged with the work I was doing and wanting to be excited about it, even if it's not a calling.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:06

Calling such an interesting word. I have had lots... I've had probably, I don't know, 500 or so conversations where people are like, "Hey, what you do is a calling." And I don't even know if I identify with that word, to be quite honest. I can absolutely see how people get that. However, I really don't necessarily identify with that word. And I think that the reason I'm bringing that up is because it doesn't have to be something that you feel like is a calling. But it does have to hit all the buttons per se for you to feel fulfilled, rewarded, engaged. And maybe it's doesn't even matter that much about what word you identify with, but where you're feeling something towards it emotionally. And that is an ongoing, that is something that is on an ongoing basis. And often, we've seen that that lines up with, not just the work itself, but also the environment and the type and way that you're making an impact. And you can see that impact, because I think the story that you told is really interesting one because I have met some people in the world where they would describe that napkin situation. And they would say, you know what, this event mattered so much to that person that I felt very compelled to make sure that they had the white napkins as opposed to the ivory ones because I can see how I'm helping. But it's also totally okay, that that's not how you want to help and you don't get that type of fulfillment from that. Everybody has to find their own brand of fulfillment in many different ways.

Stephanie Bilbrey 09:34

There's an event planners out there, it is okay if that is very important to you. Absolutely. It just there... it is simply misalignment on my part.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:42

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, though. Like I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. And that is in many ways the challenge in this journey. So as you started going through and as you began trying to identify, hey, what would create a great next step for me? What will create an ideal next step for me? What did that beginning of the really look like for you? Where did you start? How did that work for you?

Stephanie Bilbrey 10:04

I would say that it started with when I engaged a career coach, it very quickly became life coaching. The thing that rose to the top most quickly as my initial mountain to climb was my aversion to risk.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:24

In what way? When you think of version to risk, I think there's lots of people that say that, but what does that mean for you?

Stephanie Bilbrey 10:29

I would say Foundation, like primarily financial risk, never leaping from one job without having another one secured, those kind of conventions. And then I just think you fear of the unknown is a risk. And, you know, a career change brings so many complicated emotions, and I was that I don't like that space very much. So much of that imposter syndrome. And what if I fail? That became very evident to me right away, that is your first area that you got to work on sister, is this work is hard, you know, listen to the podcast and knowing the challenge that lies ahead. Like, you've got to kind of get into a discomfort zone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:13

I think that when you say, get into a discomfort zone, that is...

Stephanie Bilbrey 11:20

Sounds terrible to describe.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:22

It does sound kind of terrible. Doesn't it? Like, probably everybody who's listening to this right now has seen those images, where it's like, hey, you've got two circles that are on there, like, comfort zone in one circle is like everything you want completely outside of that. Everybody's probably seen some element of that. But why do you say that? Why was that such a big thing for you? What role did that play in this process? Can you think of a time where did you start getting outside your comfort zone beyond the risk?

Stephanie Bilbrey 11:52

Yeah, well, a couple things. You know, first of all, it just goes back to, "if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got." And so by taking this kind of like incremental safe approach to career change, like just career nudges, was not yielding me the vision of engaged work. No, I didn't say calling. So you know, for me, I know this sounds strange, because it sounds so nice. But meditation and reflection, going back to what we were previously talking about, getting deeper into my why. So much of the bootcamp work resonated with me, you know, because it was your first response, you need to go deeper, you need to ask yourself, is it three why's, five why's? I can't remember.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:39

There's a problem solving methodology that has an exercise where it is five why's. And generally five why's is deep enough. And it goes something along the lines of, and I think this is what you're alluding to Stephanie is you're saying, "Well, okay, well, why am I at work? Well, because I need to earn money. But why do I need to earn?" Keep going to layer and layer and layer deeper. Or it's, "Hey, why do I feel that I want fulfilment?" And then going to the next level. "Well, because I feel like I'm missing something. Well, why do I feel like I'm missing something?" And just keeping going layer and layer until you get to what's called root cause. But now that our base caught up, why was that so interesting for you?

Stephanie Bilbrey 13:17

Because that's really where the meat was, where my values were, where the answers were, you know, I'll give you an example. And I think this is your eight day mini course, I love to the question, "If you had the opportunity to teach something, what would you teach?" And one of my answers was, I love branding. I love creating a whole world for, you know, a company and a look and a feel and a tone, especially, you know, a lot around communications, because that really is a major kind of pillar in my skills and my interest. But through asking why and digging deeper, I realized that there was more to that for me in that it was organizational culture, it was company branding, that I really was digging into and latching on to, that was a thread for me. So that led me down that path of not only is culture important to me, in wherever my career goes, company culture and good work life balance, and, you know, throw out those buzzwords, but I need to be in it, I need to help direct it in some way. Doesn't mean that like, I am the director of culture for company X. But it was through those kinds of exercises that I was able to pull out that thread. And if I hadn't been meditating, as part of that, creating that kind of, it doesn't sound uncomfortable when I say it, because it's like meditating is really nice. But for me and digging deeper and taking time to myself, also, that's a whole other thing that I'm sure, you know, many career searchers can understand and empathize with is just like the time to do this and to justify nothing. You just sit here and you think can be really hard. So another way that I was adding disruption to my life, adding discomfort is taking on hard conversations at work that I would have normally run away from screaming, for example, I don't like interpersonal conflict. I don't know who does but I'm like, risk, it's my kryptonite. But man did it get me out of my comfort zone, did it challenge me, did it keep me on my toes, does that directly relate to my career, you know, kind of work and the results that I got? No, but it got me in a better space to be broader in the way that I was thinking and just more welcoming of discomfort.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:40

That's really interesting. So one of the pieces and parts that I had picked up as you were going through making this change, just in tidbits of communication, I can't remember whether it's from a conversation or from an email. But it really seemed like this was an inching along process for you, and not in a bad way at all, in a great way. And when I say an inch long process, it seems like each of these little pieces, like taking the time, not just the meditation itself, but taking the time, the practice of taking the time to meditate and do something that normally wouldn't have or get outside your comfort zone with some of these conflict type conversations, each of these paved little tiny inch spaces to be able to get to the next step and the next inch. And that was really, really interesting to me, because I think you did such a great job of going one inch at a time consistently, even though it probably didn't always feel that way.

Stephanie Bilbrey 16:37

It felt like 17,000 inches at the same time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:43

So here's my question with that, then, when you were beginning to recognize some of these themes, or threads that you mentioned earlier, and you started getting into the experimentation phase of the process, what we call the experimentation phase of the process, what did that look like for you?

Stephanie Bilbrey 17:00

It looked like one way was just reaching out to former colleagues, friends, one of the exercises that I loved within bootcamp was just getting feedback on your strengths from a variety of people. That was one way that I approached it. Another way was, honestly, dropping in words that really were resonating with me on LinkedIn, and seeing the web of connections that were there. So for me culture was a word. So I would find individuals on LinkedIn, some of them were second and third, you know, like weak ties, some of them were not. And then I just hit the phone hard trying to make those connections and asking good questions. 15, 20 minutes, that's all you got. So trying to understand what made them successful in their career, what they love about what they're doing, and culture. And I was talking to a lot of different people to just get as many perspectives about how one could interact with and be in support of culture.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:06

What are couple examples of those? Like, different... I know, we have a tendency to say, hey, it's less important about the job title, because that's drastically different from organization. But what were some of these people responsible for or doing or how were they interacted with culture? What's a couple examples of that?

Stephanie Bilbrey 18:20

Yeah, absolutely. Training, organizational development and change management. So that's those are kind of more like corporate buzzwords, they're pro size certified, which, you know, sounds intimidating. But then I also went down that, like, do I need a certification route, and some of them were internal communicators. So really responsible, obviously, this tend to be larger organizations that need that kind of role. And some of them were, I would say, more traditional kind of HR folks that took on more of the well being, you know, well, being champion, did those kinds of things.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:51

Interesting. So that is such a span. And it can be. And I think that that's true for every time that at least we're interacting with people through a career change process, that they start to discover, like this can be a big thing. Now, the other thing that we often see happen, and I don't know how much this did or didn't happen in your case, but when people go through, and they're having those types of conversations, or they're getting feedback in a new and different way, and getting an exposure and a new and different way, they're often getting realizations that help them to pinpoint where they might be interested in. So what did that look like for you? Did that happen for you? And how did that look?

Stephanie Bilbrey 19:30

Yes, it did happen for me. I would say what one area that resonated for me a lot was when I would talk to the internal communicators. And you know, it's funny. I mean, how many times have people said to you, "Scott, the writing was always on the wall, like, why didn't I see it? Like, it was like, duh..." But when you, you know, hindsight is 2020. But, you know, for so long and different organizations, you'd be in a situation where you would be at a table with your co workers, and somebody would ask you, "Why do you like working here? Why do you work here?" And my coworkers would have some mission based answer. "You know, I worked in higher education. I'm here for the students, and then it would get to me." And then I would...

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:09

Here for the white napkins.

Stephanie Bilbrey 20:11

Oh, y'all, I'm here for you. I mean, other people would say that too. "You know, I love my coworkers." But I worked in theater. Yes, the theaters, the art is so important. But I found myself saying, "I'm here for my coworkers. Before I'm here for the art, before I'm here for the students, before I'm here for the mission driven thing." So that was a huge realization for me. So then, kind of combining all of that together and realizing that that particular example, internal communications, that's my customer, is the coworkers.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:45

Okay, so that's such an interesting example, Stephanie, because I think there is so many different ways that that can go, first of all, you made a really great point that often when people go through this type of process, and they are trying to clarify what makes an amazing next step for them, and even beyond that, and what great looks like and you know, that we often, if we're helping with that type of change, then we'll often help in the form of creating what the ideal career looks like, and the profile of that, if you will. However, I think the great point that you made there is that so often it comes out on the other side where the writing has been there, and now you can clear enough away to be able to pay attention to it in a way that simply wasn't possible before. And I think so many people go into this process thinking, you know what, I'm going to discover something brand new, I'm going to be a beekeeper, or I'm going to be a, I don't know, insert your occupation here. That is just absolutely polar whitey from whatever, you know, people have been doing. And that's so often not the case, occasionally does happen. But so often, it's not the case. So great point. And then for you, my question becomes, as you were thinking about that writing on the wall piece, what caused you to begin to pay attention to it in a way that was helpful for you. And I'll preface that only to say that, I think so often people feel like, "Hey, I'm saying I'm here for you. But I really feel like I don't actually have an answer, or I feel bad about my answer, or I feel like I shouldn't have that answer, even if it is true." Instead of saying, "You know what this actually means something. And in your case, it really absolutely did mean something, meant everything in many different ways."

Stephanie Bilbrey 22:27

Yeah. You know, one of the terms that you hear a lot, one of the phrases in bootcamp is what can you not stop doing. And so for me, thinking about my co workers, and not that the customer is not important, the customer is very, very, very important. But when your knee jerk reaction, when you look at it process or communication or anything is internal versus external, that was a lightbulb for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:53

The other thing that I wanted to ask you, because it's easy to sit here and say, okay, you know, if we skip to the end of what the story looked like, for you, you got now one but multiple job offers, you did a fantastic job negotiating with both of those job offers. And you work, speaking of those conflict conversations, you had some more conversations that were way outside of your comfort zone. And you did a fantastic job with those. But aside from that, what would you say was the hardest part of making this type of career change? The type of career change where you're putting yourself in the way that you want to show up in the world first.

Stephanie Bilbrey 23:31

I would say that the hardest part for me was just taking risks in general, it's such an uncomfortable thing for me. But to that end, I moved across the country yet again, without a job, it really was the right decision for me. But the work was really hard and sometimes a confidence killer. And so to be so drained, you know, when it's and you're already trying to fight your fear. You know, like, I don't know if I can call this person, I don't know, if I can, you know, leave this job, in addition to just being kind of run ragged from the phone calls and trying to figure it out that I wasn't anticipating that drain and that challenge that uphill battle, I thought it was going to be ripping resumes apart. You know, it's like, oh, that's I'm embarrassed. Okay. It goes so much deeper than that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:27

If you were to go back for just a second to Stephanie, I think it was at the end of 2019, you said you're really starting to begin to act on this. What advice would you give to that person who's in that same place where they realize and recognize that what the situation they're in is not where they want to be, and they know that there is something much better out there but they're in that place where it's those fears are popping up. And in that beginning stages, it's such a hard place to be, to even come get into making this type of change and, you know, call it a career change. But really, it's a life change.

Stephanie Bilbrey 25:05

Yeah, I definitely would have told myself to start even sooner.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:10

Why... Hold on. Why is that? I'm curious.

Stephanie Bilbrey 25:12

I don't regret my career trajectory at all, but to have looked back and known that so many years were not spent as engaged as I could have been, as happy as I could have been just kind of miring through, that would be a motivator right there to tell, you know, 2019 Stephanie, because I mean, to tell 2011 Stephanie[g], "Hey, this kind of incremental safety net approach won't yield what your heart really wants" you know, that's like a big overarching. So 2019[h] kind of fast forward a little bit. And I had already learned a little bit of lessons, I would say, the advice that I would have given myself is to research more to be as curious as possible, I tend to be a doer, not that I'm not a thinker. However, if given the opportunity, I rely more heavily on go implementation, press the start button, knowing what I know now, creating more opportunities for research, more opportunities for curiosity, I think would have been really helpful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:22

That's interesting. Any other pieces of advice that you would give to those people who are just now thinking about this, or maybe in the midst of a career change? Because you've done a great job going all the way through, and I know that some of the things that you've learned through this process will probably help you for many, many years to come, not just now, in the immediate future. What did you say? You're 60 days in to your new role, I use it in a different place, then two or three years ago. So anything else that you would encourage that person to think about as it relates to this process?

Stephanie Bilbrey 26:55

Well, first of all, it truly takes a village to change careers, in my opinion. I think there's this expectation that we put on ourselves that we can figure this out, that it's not rocket science, and it's my own personal journey. So it's just on me, and that is so not the case. Not only does it take a village of your immediate, you know, friends or family rely on some of those folks, as well, but it takes a village of like strangers, actually, you know, depending on the kind of research that you need to do and the connections that you want to make, you're like reaching out into the great unknown to say, "Hi, your LinkedIn profile story is fascinating to me. Do you have 15 minutes?" And that is.... that can be very uncomfortable. But some of those uncomfortable reach outs yielded such critical connections for me, and specifically, what I really latched on to and loved was make it easy for people to say "yes", so I worked on that a lot. And the other, oh, there was a podcast that you did, Jay Papasan. Yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:57

Yeah. Jay is great.

Stephanie Bilbrey 27:59

That piece of advice that he gives about relationships are like bank accounts, you have to put in deposits before he can make withdrawals is actually this specific piece of advice that got the ball rolling to get me to the job, where I am right now, I took that. And I realized there was a... specifically, one day I said, "I need to make some deposits." And there was a former coworker. And I reached out to her with no agenda whatsoever. And we had kind of like, kept in touch on social media, but I knew how connected she was on LinkedIn. And I said, "How was your holiday? How are your kids?" And the rest, I don't want to say like the rest is history, first of all, it's really trite. And the next, like, two or three months were[i], like, really painful on a roller coaster. But it was literally that idea. And therefore that moment of, you know, sending that email that set the rest in motion.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:54

That's interesting. So you're saying that taking that idea of building relationships or giving to others without expectation as part of how I'm interpreting that and making those deposits, if you will, then that is part of what led to this actual opportunity for you?

Stephanie Bilbrey 29:14

Yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:14

Very cool. Love it. We see that so often. But I think that's also a really hard thing for so many of us, because the thoughts that jump into our heads are like, but I need a job, or... but I need, like, where do I do the thing that then gets me to the job offer? Like how does... and it is in many ways going against those short term benefits or short term type of tactics that then allows to focus on long term. That's the big takeaway that I have more recently realized about this type of process and how we guide people through it. It requires long term approaches to get to long term solutions versus short term approaches get to short term solutions that you don't want to be in for very long jobs or otherwise.

Stephanie Bilbrey 30:00

Yes, and then, you know, just like totally on a granular level, the applicant tracking system traditional way, applying, resume, cover letter is terrible. And also way less likely in, from what I've seen, than the relationship pathway to not only a career change, but the actual job, it kind of does double duty, you know, in that way, like, I spent so much time on cover letters and resumes that went nowhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:33

Oh, my goodness, yes. I feel like you do seven hours of podcast on why not to do that. However, we'll make that into a series later on.

Stephanie Bilbrey 30:42

Right. I mean, you do live some success. But overall, it is not what got me where I am right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:50

I think that it really depends on what your goal is. We've really toyed around with how to explain this in a way that makes sense. But it's hard to explain it in a soundbite. But if you think it, think about it, in terms of, if your goal is to get a job, maybe even a well paying job as quickly as possible, then that means that, you know, going on job boards and looking at what is open right this second, and what people need and trying to match yourself into that, that is the best way to go. If that's your goal. However, if you have goals, much more likely you've described, Stephanie, where you were looking for that fulfillment, you were looking for that calling, you're looking for that thing that was missing in one way or another or multiple things that were missing. And that's really what you want. And that's a priority for you. It requires a completely different solution. It requires completely different tactics, it requires completely different. So I think it really does depend on your goal. And you've done a really nice job taking steps that lead you towards what your goal actually was. One more thing I really wanted to ask you about. Partially because we were just talking through it before we even really hit the record button here at the beginning of our conversation, but you did such a nice job working through multiple offers. And that was very uncomfortable for you. So first of all, what's not always obvious is the work that it takes to get to more than one offer. You know, when we talk about two or three or four offers on this podcast, I think it gets glossed over and people don't realize how much work but what was your biggest takeaway in working through that type of situation before we end here.

Stephanie Bilbrey 32:28

I would say transparency and honesty were really, really helpful to call someone that, and I have to say that this particular human being was so so lovely, and saw value in me that other interview situations had not... I couldn't feel that, the way that I could feel this with this particular company, and individual. So hello makes it so much harder. But so then saying those kinds of things and saying, "I didn't envision that it would work out this way. And I was so genuinely excited for this opportunity. I hope we can stay in touch." We're helpful, I think, to kind of say there was a substantial amount of respect and excitement, but then a level of understanding as well, to help ease the flow.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:22

Stephanie, great job again, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. I have said that earlier. But I absolutely mean it, I really, really appreciate it. And I know I've told you before too, but anything you need, don't hesitate to ask.

Stephanie Bilbrey 33:38

Thank you very much.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:40

Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Well actually shoot, it felt like 15 minutes of conversation. And we are at time. I'm looking at the time again. And oh, my goodness. If there is anything you need, do not hesitate to ask. Otherwise, I know that you all are finishing up on the community side. So I really appreciate your work there too. And I know that Phillip has been especially excited about some of the feedback that you brought to the table. So thank you for that too.

Stephanie Bilbrey 34:07

Absolutely. It's been a pleasure throughout this entire process. I want to thank you for inviting me on to the podcast, but just the community that is the bootcamp has been such a delight as well. And the support of your team couldn't have done most of this, going to say most, if not all of this, without you guys. So I am very grateful for this team.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:30

You are very, very welcome. And I so appreciate that. I am way more happy than I'm going to be able to describe in the next 10 seconds here. That is wonderful to hear on so many different levels.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:44

Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that 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 35:49

A long time ago, I used to work forTarget. And I did Human Resource Management and Leadership for Target. And it was a pretty wonderful opportunity. I loved the company, they took great care of me, much of the leadership training that I got, and have to this day, came from Target putting time and money and effort into me. So I'm forever appreciative of that. Also, at the same time, I was working for them. And they decided that they wanted to move their HR that supported stores more and more and more into the stores and more into the standard retail environment. Now, that was exactly the right decision for them. But it really wasn't that great for me, to be honest. And that's something that I have seen over and over and over again, where people go through, they get a job, it's amazing opportunity. And then the company changes or evolves into something else. And it's no longer amazing. It's not even awesome. It's the opposite of that. That happens.

Nick Neves 37:12

I was in a job working in customer success, which for those who don't know, it's kind of like customer support, with like a little bit of sales mixed in. And I was doing this job, it was kind of morphing more into a sales role. There's a lot of pressure to kind of move into, like a sales type role, which is just not for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:30

That's Nick. In less than two years, his Customer Success role began to change to, well, being almost all a sales role. And as it began to uncover his strengths and define what he really wanted in life, he knew that he had to make a change. But how do you move from a role that's no longer ideal to one that actually uses your strengths? Alright, well, spoiler alert, Nick does a really nice job of this. And as you heard in the introduction, he actually transitions to accounting. All that and plenty more next week[j] 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.

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Take Control: How To Thrive In Your Role And Become Your Best Self

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Many companies focus on the idea of “Employee Engagement”, but much of that concept is employer dependent. What most people don’t realize is that you can actually take ownership of your role yourself and make it work for you.

Rachel Cooke joins us today to share how you can take control to deliver your best work, and thrive in your role.

What you’ll learn

  • What it means to deliver your best work and become your best self
  • How you can develop new skills, capabilities, and talents
  • The importance of connecting with your team and community with a sense of purpose
  • What you can do on your own so that you can thrive in your work

Success Stories

Exactly 5 weeks from when I arrived in Canada I got a full time job, negotiated a higher salary and within the next 3 days I got another offer that pays 33% more. I am happy and very thankful to you, for you gave me support when I was looking and offered great tips.

Ingrid , United States/Canada

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, Strategy and Core Operations, United States/Canada

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

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Rachel Cooke 00:01
Are there things that are keeping you from delivering the work that you believe you are hired to do? And that might mean things like, are you being micromanaged? Are there lots of administrative obstacles in your way? Are you struggling to have clarity on expectations or priorities? There are a million things that can hold us back from delivering our best work.

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 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
I worked in HR leadership for many years long before HTYC was even never thought of. And I grew to hate the term employee engagement. Why? Well, partially because it's a buzzword and became a buzzword over the last 20 plus years. However, there's another really large reason, so many organizations talk about it, but not really doing anything of serious impact to help their employees actually be happier and more fulfilled at their work. And the crazy thing is that you don't actually have to wait. As it turns out, most people don't even realize that there are things that you can do. So you're not waiting in your organization to drive employee engagement, and actually allow you to be more fulfilled. So what is it that you can do to take ownership of your role in a way that actually matters, and allows you to be more happy more often in your career.

Rachel Cooke 01:51
And I think that there's absolutely a role that companies need to play in helping their teams craft that. But I also think we are all very much empowered to shape shift our own employee experiences, I think companies works really well is when you have both the enterprise and the individual employees all steering in the same direction.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:12
That's Rachel Cooke. She's the founder of Lead Above Noise and also the host of Macmillan's Quick and Dirty Tips, modern mentor podcast. Today, Rachel's going to share how you can take control to deliver your best work and thrive without waiting on your company.

Rachel Cooke 02:29
I went to college to study psychology thinking that I wanted to be a therapist, and I love therapy, I believe in therapy. But I think I came out realizing I was a little intimidated by the idea of the human as a patient. But what if I could make the organization my patient? That just felt safer for me. So I went back to school for a master's degree in organizational psychology. And I have spent the bulk of my career working in the realm of people and HR. I spent several years doing HR full time and have been consulting on my own for six years now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:02
What prompted you to go from working HR full time? Which you and I have that in common. I spent a lot of years in HR as well, a whole bunch of other professions too, but very familiar with the HR side. What prompted you to go from HR to work in consulting?

Rachel Cooke 03:17
Yeah, you know, for me, I felt like I would never have so much hubris as to say that I learned everything that there was for me to learn, there's always more to learn. But at the same time, I felt like a lot of my energy was getting expended on what felt like being a cog in a wheel, I was executing on somebody else's vision, I feel like I was fighting in a rat race I didn't even think I wanted to be in and I didn't really see a path for growth, because for me, it felt like growth meant promotion and getting more senior and sort of being more polished and speaking more corporate speak. And that just wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to not continue executing on somebody else's vision. But I wanted to step out and create change and deliver impact in a way that felt more meaningful to me and that I felt like I kind of needed to be an outsider looking in in order to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:07
So that's super interesting, partially because one of the things that you and I are gonna get to talk about today is ways for... if you're in the situation where your company isn't necessarily providing an amazing experience for you to be able to do that for yourself. And growth is something that it sounds like you weren't getting in the way that you wanted to, to put it mildly. Is that an understatement?

Rachel Cooke 04:33
No, it's totally right. And I think the key there is that growth isn't just one thing. It's what you define it to be. I was getting a ton of growth as the company decided what growth looked like, it just wasn't what I wanted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:46
So what's an example of that? What is something that you were not getting that you really were missing or looking for?

Rachel Cooke 04:53
For me, it was really opportunities to have bolder conversations. So in my last role, I was in HR business partner, and my role was really to sit down with my senior business leader and kind of listen and listen to his plans and his vision and help him execute on it. And I didn't feel incredibly empowered to challenge him to push back, to probe, to coach him in a way that might infringe upon his ego. And that sounds kind of terrible. But I think that leaders within a company are willing to take a certain degree of coaching and pushback from an external consultant in ways that they won't from their internal business partner. And so for me, it wasn't about, you know, how is the company grooming me? How are they positioning me for the next level? I really wanted to impact change in ways that I just didn't feel like I had permission to.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:40
I've experienced that as well, what you said about how sometimes you have consultants as an example, where they're able to come in and deliver a different type of feedback or a different type of advice. And it's paid attention to differently than, and not in all organizations, but certainly in many organizations, I've experienced that as well. So what's an example of tha, where now, if we're bringing this full circle to where you're at currently, you get to have that type of growth and those bolder conversations that you wanted to?

Rachel Cooke 06:15
Yeah, so one example that is very real time for me right now I'm working with the CEO of a business. And he and I keep having this conversation where he talks about conversations in the realm of, he always think about it as a dichotomy. So a conversation is either it's very action oriented, right? We're talking about results, we're talking about something quantifiable, measurable, we're action planning, or we're having a Kumbaya moment, and in his words, and in his mind, either we are executing, or we're like holding hands and singing a song. And where I have had the opportunity to really push his thinking, and I don't think I would have had the opportunity to do this if I were internal is I pushed back and I said, "Listen, I get that we may not right now, with your team, be having a conversation that feels totally like it belongs in a spreadsheet." I said, "But there's a lot of space between spreadsheets and Kumbaya. You know, we're having a conversation with your team right now around, how do they move forward? How do they collaborate more effectively? How do they better support each other and show up as a leadership team versus a team of leaders? And I think that there are genuine obstacles to that that need to be addressed and made visible. And so by putting those things out there by somebody on the team, being willing to say, "Hey, you know, I pitched this idea a few weeks ago, and you guys shut me down. You didn't even, you know, give me an opportunity to explain or you didn't ask me any questions." I said, By raising those things with your team, you actually have the power to move them forward. And I strenuously reject your assertion that that means it's a Kumbaya moment, right? So being able to really push him and challenge him and say, I do not accept your assertion. I don't think you can do that when the person on the other end of the conversation is your boss.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:55
Under what circumstances have you seen it work where you're able to have that same type of pushing or similar, even if it's not exactly the same? So I'm super curious about.

Rachel Cooke 08:05
Well, what I think is that when you are a cog in the wheel of a company, and this is totally just my experience, I think there's an unspoken expectation that you're there to be part of the team and to support executing, but the whole group is executing. When somebody brings me in, they're going out of their way, they are making a conscious investment in wanting to hear a contradiction, in wanting to be pushed, in wanting to be challenged. It's not just that I have permission to do that. There's an expectation that I'm doing that, otherwise, what are they paying me for? So there's a bit of a self selecting thing that's happening there. I'm not saying every leader in the world is going to want my pushback. But what I am saying is the ones who have sought me out are the ones that do. So I don't have a choice, but to be a little bit bold and brave and candid with them. Otherwise, what are they paying me for?

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:54
Well, I think what's particularly useful as I'm listening to you tell that set of stories and what has worked for you is that you have to either find those environments in which you're getting the right rate areas of growth. In this case, you know, we started talking about growth, or you have to go and to some degree, create your own or find another one, right. So that brings us very much brings us full circle, because one of the biggest things that I wanted to ask you about is, what if it isn't working? What if you're in that position, let's go back, how many years ago was it that you were working in HR and having these slots? Okay, so six years ago, let's go back six years ago for a minute and say that, you know, for someone who's in a similar position where they're not quite getting the growth that they want, or they're not getting their buttons pushed in the right way for them, you know, how can they impact that? How can they enhance their own employee experiences?

Rachel Cooke 09:50
So what I will say is that for me, there were a number of life circumstances that were converging. So everything I said, is the honest truth. And also, I had kids and this was obviously well before the pandemic. And so there was an expectation that I was commuting. And I felt like I wasn't present for my kids. And so there were a whole bunch of circumstances that were converging that told me that my path was to step out and hang my own shingle and start my own business. I do not believe that that is necessarily the path for everybody. And I do not believe that for anyone who's maybe feeling like they need a little bit more love at work, the only answer is just to step out, I absolutely think that would be a terrifying thing to say, I think if you're in a position where you're not getting exactly what you want, but you want to make it work, you know, you love your company, you love being an employee. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be part of somebody else's vision and playing a role and executing it. And I don't mean to imply that that is a bad thing. It just wasn't what I wanted personally. But if you love being part of a company, believe in your company's mission, you want to stick around, but you're just not feeling the love. You know, I do a lot of work with organizations on crafting meaningful employee experiences. And I think that there's absolutely a role that companies need to play in helping their teams craft that. But I also think we are all very much empowered to shape shift our own employee experiences, I think companies works really well is when you have both the enterprise and the individual employees all steering in the same direction. And so the framework that I use with companies, and that I use with CEOs and leaders, I think works just as well for the individual. So I love to talk about the employee experience through the lens of four pillars. So I think that there are some companies that think the employee experiences about, like, you know, pre COVID, it was, you know, we had food and foosball tables in the lobbies, and free massages. And you know, maybe now during the pandemic, it's more, you know, zoom happy hours, and virtual yoga, and those are cool, like, those are fun. And if you want to keep doing those as a company, I say go for it. But don't confuse those kind of sizzle and physical benefits as your employee experience. As far as I'm concerned, what creates a really powerful employee experience is when we can do four things: we can deliver our best work and our best selves, we can develop new skills, capabilities and talents, we can connect with our teams with a community with a sense of purpose, we feel belonging, and we can thrive, we feel well, we feel supported, we feel recognized, we feel like we have boundaries. When I work with organizations, those are the four pillars that we focus on. But I believe that an employee has certainly the power to take some steps in those four realms on their own, depending on what feels most absent for them. So let me pause there and see how that lands and I can keep going for hours. But that's probably not feasible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:43
I feel like we could probably have an eight or nine long hour conversation, maybe with bathroom breaks, I don't know about these particular topics. So here's what I'm particularly interested in, you know, when people are thinking about it not working, in this case, the employee experience, let's keep using that lingo, the employee experience is not working, they usually means that something is missing, or misfiring or something is not connecting, an expectation is not being met in one way or another, the expectation of the employee. So my question for you, is about, you know, when you think about these four pillars that you mentioned, what are some examples of each of those pillars? And specifically, how people can impact of this employee experience, maybe even what might be missing in each of these pillars?

Rachel Cooke 13:42
Absolutely. So if you think about the first one, which is deliver, you know, there's some great research out of Gallup, they publish every year, their state of the American workforce report. And what they say year over year, is that the number one driver that employees are looking for when they're evaluating new jobs is to what extent do they believe they're going to have the opportunity to deliver what they were hired to do. People care deeply, they want to show up and do their best work. So when I talk about deliver, what I push people to think about is, are there things that are keeping you from delivering the work that you believe you are hired to do? And that might mean things like, are you being micromanaged? Are there lots of administrative obstacles in your way? Are you struggling to have clarity on expectations or priorities? There are a million things that can hold us back from delivering our best work. So I really encourage people to think about if that feels like the space where you're sort of falling down, you're not getting to do the work that you care about. Ask yourself what would feel different? You know, are there... are you sitting in back to back meetings all day and you feel like you're not able to get anything done? And what can you do about that? Can you talk to your boss and say, "Hey, I'm in meetings all day. I've identified two that I really just don't think I need to be in and I feel like I could have so much more impact if I spent those two hours doing something else." You know, it's finding the things that hold you back and then proposing small solutions that might make things incrementally better. Right? Sometimes we're not able to get our best work done, because we need to collaborate with another team that isn't showing up as we need them to. So can you pull somebody? Can you sit down with someone on the other team and just say, "Hey, is there a better way for me to request the data that I need from you?" Or is there a better way, you know, but it's about having the conversations being a participant in finding the solutions, but those are the types of things that I would look for under the deliver pillar.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:35
That's really, first of all, thank you for your exact language and an example. That's super helpful. And second of all, I think that when you're talking about those areas that are not working, I think it's really easy to point out what those areas are that are not working, it's much more difficult to be able to identify potential solutions, and then go and do something to impact that. So I so appreciate you saying that and just wanted to notate that and any other examples that you have for these pillars where we can demonstrate, you know, here's how you would go to your boss, or here's how you'd go to another team member that's super helpful to make that impact.

Rachel Cooke 16:13
Yeah, so let's do one in develop, right. It's all about developing new skills. And I think for a lot of people that translates to, like, I need to go to a four day training program, or I need an executive coach. And the truth is, there are a million ways that we can find development, and maybe your company isn't investing in really rigorous programs right now. But hey, is there a project that you want to get a chance to have your hands on? Is there a committee you can ask to sit on? Is there something that you watch your boss do that you would like to suggest that you take off of his or her plate, right? Hey, you know, I watched you deliver this weekly report to your boss every week, can I help you put that together? Can I lead a team meeting? Right? It's about finding small ways to challenge yourself within the confines of your everyday work and asking for what you want. But not "Hey, can you give me $10,000, so I can go to this conference?" I mean, if the money's there, go for it. But don't let yourself off the hook and say, "Well, if I can't go to this $10,000 conference, I'm just not getting development." It's about being creative, and finding ways to challenge yourself and grow your skills that are easy, they're easy for your boss to say 'yes' to. How could your boss say, "No, I prefer to do this heavy lift myself, you go back to your desk." right? It's sort of a can't lose situation. So that's the type of example I would look for there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:32
Well, I think what's really interesting about that, too, is after you build a behavior pattern of doing that, what people don't think about is their training their boss or training their co workers to be able to be responsive to that. And after you do a couple of those smaller requests, you're starting to build a track record, you're starting to build a pattern of behavior, and they're expecting more of that. And then it's easier to go to the "Hey, can we use this $20,000 for development or whatever it might be?" It's so much easier to take that bridge from there.

Rachel Cooke 17:59
Totally, that is exactly right. That is exactly right. It is about creating small wins and building momentum along the way so that over time you gain permission to maybe ask for bigger ones.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:11
Yeah. Okay, this is so good. Let's do another pillar.

Rachel Cooke 18:13
Oh, okay. So Connect. I think connection has always been important. But it is at the top of my list right now. There's so many people who are feeling so disconnected. And I think that we need to be intentional, I think what's most important is that we don't default to assume that connection only happens in one way, that there are zoom happy hours. And if I don't join the zoom, no, people are exhausted. Everybody needs something different. Right. And there are some people right now who are working and homeschooling their kids, and they've got toddlers and then there are other people who are maybe in a different phase of life, and they live by themselves and their kids are grown and they're lonely. So you know, finding ways to connect with people and ask them you know, what do you need, you know, if you yourself are feeling disconnected, what can you ask for? How can you role model reaching out, checking in with somebody asking for help? I think that's a really important thing to do, but also staying connected not just to individuals and not just to community but also feeling connected to purpose. So if you take a look around at how you've just spent your day, can you see how whatever tasks you've done, actually drive whatever impact your company is delivering? Or do you feel like you've just spent your day doing a whole bunch of busy work that just feels really disconnected? And if you can't find that connection, go talk to your boss, go talk to a colleague, but ask them "Hey, help me understand like, listen, we're in financial services and as a company I think it's amazing that we help consumers you know, get access to loans so they can buy a home or you know, they finance that they can retire" but like "I spend six hours a day in this spreadsheet that feels pretty mundane and administrative, like am I adding value here?" You know, find ways to really check and by the way, if you are spending six hours a day on something that isn't adding value, can you find a way to simplify that a little bit so that you can get a little bit more time back and do something that makes you feel a little bit more connected to customers, you know, do some customer research or do some, you know, whatever would make you feel more connected to purpose, but being mindful of how connected do you currently feel, and what can you do to take one small step in the right direction.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:23
I think that's so powerful. And the research around all of that is unequivocal, all the studies, every single one that I've seen supports that if you cannot directly see and connect how what you're doing is making an impact, then it's not going to feel fulfilling for very long, there's going to be an expiration or a honeymoon period that wears off, and then it's going to not be particularly rewarding in any way whatsoever. So I appreciate you pointing that out. Okay, we have one pillar left here.

Rachel Cooke 20:52
We have one left. Oh, and it is thrive and thriving is really just about like if everything else is getting you to baseline, thriving is where you're kind of soaring. So this to me is about boundaries. It's about feeling recognized, right? It's about feeling like people would feel your absence if you weren't there. If you feel like you're burning the candle at both ends, and you're burning out, can you talk to your boss? Can you ask for help? Can you ask for the boundaries that you need him or her to respect? Or if you feel like you're giving it your all and you're just kind of being taken for granted, can you ask for recognition? And you don't have to call it recognition, you know, you don't have to say "Listen, I've been working hard. So I would like some extra cash or a reward here." Now that can feel really uncomfortable. But what you can do is sit down with your boss and say, "Hey, I've really been putting my all into this project. And I just don't feel like I've heard much. I wonder if you have any feedback from me, you know, how's it going?" And a lot of times what will happen is your boss will say something like, "Oh my gosh, you know, I'm so sorry, I've been so focused on the people who've been underperforming, I just haven't had a chance to come back and tell you like, hey, you're doing an amazing job." Or if there's a chance that you're putting your all into a piece of work, and it's actually not being well received, then it gives your boss a chance to give you that feedback. But either way, if you're not feeling recognized, asking for it, or asking for feedback to help you understand what could get you recognized, and also letting your boss know or your peers know how you like to be recognized. You know, some people like a public celebrations, some people just want to quiet email, some people see recognition as you know, when I'm doing great work, I feel recognized when other people seek out my expertise, you know, recognition comes in many forms. And so reflecting on how you like to experience it, and then asking for it and also role modeling it, those are some great ways to turn up the dial on that one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:46
And I think that's a really common theme for every area that you've mentioned so far. Whether it's recognition, or whether it's how you connect back what work you're doing to having an impact or any other area, it looks different for every single person. And recognition is such a great example of that. Because I have met many people over the years where they have a negative association with recognition based on some of you know, how they were raised. And like, I don't need no recognition. I don't know why that voice comes out. That should what it came from. However, yeah, that's real. And understanding that it looks drastically different per person, it can be so useful, because then you can go and have that conversation that you're talking about and say, "Hey, look, here's what I need." And you know, here's a good example. And I'm super curious to ask what works for you too. But for me, part of recognition is having conversations with people where they will confide in me, and would never tell what they're telling me to anybody else. Like I've had that happen with so many co-workers over the years. And that's something that I love. I love being in that... I love that having the relationship that leads to that. And that's when I feel recognized where they're sharing things they wouldn't share with anyone else. And that was a great space in HR, like that worked really well as an HR partner in some cases. But so what is it for you?

Rachel Cooke 24:03
Yeah, so for me, it's not about glory, it's not about thank you, the greatest way you can recognize me is when we're having a conversation and you say something like, "Oh, I hadn't thought about it that way" or, "Oh, I hadn't realized that." But you give me a verbal indication that through our conversations, something has unlocked for you. That is the greatest gift you can give me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:26
I love that and I appreciate you sharing.

Rachel Cooke 24:27
Of course.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:28
That is really helpful. And thank you for going into all of the examples. Something else that I wanted to ask you, just in our last little bit here is, you know, if you're... well let's go back to that maybe even pre six years ago, you're in that position, where you are not getting what you need, whether it is growth, whether it is any of these four pillars, any piece of any of these four pillars, you know, what advice would you give that person who's there and recognize that they're not getting what they want?

Rachel Cooke 24:59
The biggest piece of advice I can give to anybody is, if you're not getting what you need, do not sit back and say, "Well, I guess my company is failing me, I guess the organization is failing me, I guess my boss is failing me." I would challenge you to... now sometimes that is true, right? You might be in a toxic environment, you might not have a career path. But before you make that decision, I would really challenge you to sit back and say, "Well, if they're not going to do it, what can I do for myself?" And really think that through and sort of implement as many tests and experiments as you can before you decide to call it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:38
Rachel, thank you for not just the advice, but thank you for unlocking a few pieces for me. And this has been incredible. I also want to find out where can people go if they want to get more Rachel? If they have to have more Rachel, how can people do that?

Rachel Cooke 25:54
Wow, two places. I am the host of the Modern Mentor podcast, you can find that wherever you get your podcasts or you can go to my website, which is leadabovenoise.com. And I will just say really quickly, for anybody who is either a people leader or an aspiring people leader, go ahead to leadabovenoise.com/simple. We are running a free six week challenge designed to help you simplify what you do in order to amplify what you deliver.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:22
Why does making a career change feel risky to so many people? I mean, I get it, if you're in an organization where the pay is great, or the benefits are awesome, or you have the flexibility that you want to continue to have. Or maybe even the people are absolutely wonderful, and you're afraid of losing all of that. Here's the thing, even if you're not really happy with the job, and not really happy with the situation, then what goes through so many of our heads is, is it worth taking the risk on a new career and possibly losing all the good parts? Have you ever considered why it feels risky to you? Now, I would argue two things. One, that after doing this many, many years, not just the podcast, but helping thousands of people through career change, we don't typically see that people are losing all the good parts, that we see that that rarely, rarely ever happens. And instead, I would argue that the far larger risk is the risk of doing nothing and staying for more years of your life in a situation that's no longer good for you.

Stephanie 27:38
I don't like interpersonal conflict. I don't know who does but I'm like, risk, it's my kryptonite. But man, did it get me out of my comfort zone, did it challenge me, did it keep me on my toes, that got me in a better space to be broader in the way that I was thinking and just more welcoming of discomfort?

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:01
That's Stephanie. She worked for years in a community college environment, and was plagued by an aversion to risk. I think it's pretty safe to say she was comfortably unhappy in her role. Now once she finally saw the writing on the wall, she decided to face her fears and embrace the unknown to find her ideal role. Now here's the really crazy thing. If we fast forward to what happened at the end of her change, she ended up surpassing her own expectations by a longshot in terms of salary and what was possible, for her and her happiness in her career. 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.

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Alexandra Carter: How To Make Conversations And Negotiations Work For You

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on this episode

Many college graduates never actually work in the field of study. Alternatively, for those that are able to land a job in their field, the honeymoon phase wears off and then they start to feel like they were meant to do something else entirely.

Alexandra Carter shares how to cultivate relationships, identify what really brings you joy, and then learn to apply negotiation skills to build a bridge to the role that fits you.

What you’ll learn

  • What to do when the “honeymoon phase” is over (and you realize your career is not your passion)
  • How you can go from a career that you’re  not happy with, in your chosen field – to doing what you truly feel you’re meant to do
  • Why it’s important to be transparent when we are negotiating
  • How building relationships helps when negotiating for a new role

Success Stories

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

Thank you for guiding me through the negotiation process of asking for a raise. Even in this economy you convinced me to follow through. I also appreciate your thoughts on what I should include in my portfolio; it made the difference in the value added that I was able to present to my supervisor.

Ken Russell, Career Placement Coordinator, United States/Canada

Exactly 5 weeks from when I arrived in Canada I got a full time job, negotiated a higher salary and within the next 3 days I got another offer that pays 33% more. I am happy and very thankful to you, for you gave me support when I was looking and offered great tips.

Ingrid , United States/Canada

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

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Alexandra Carter 00:01

And then the first time I went into a New York City courtroom, and I sat down with two people and helped them work something out, it was like I heard a voice like, Morgan Freeman's voice coming down from the heavens saying, "This is it. Alex, you have found the thing that you should do for the rest of your life."

Introduction 00:25

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 00:49

There's so many college graduates that never actually work in their field of study. On the flip side, there are those that are able to capitalize on the years of hard work in college to land a job in their field. But sometimes when they do that the honeymoon phase wears off. And then they start to feel like they were meant to do something else entirely.

Alexandra Carter 01:09

So I went out. I worked as a lawyer for a period of time that I never forgot. And I worked steadily in my off hours to find ways to build my expertise. Until the moment that Columbia hired me back to teach the course that I took as a student. I am one of those unicorns, who wakes up every day and thinks I truly am doing what I was meant to do on this earth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:35

That's Alexandra Carter. Alex is a clinical professor of law and is a world renowned negotiation trainer who's helped thousands of people listen to she shares, how to cultivate relationships and identify what really brings you joy. And then learn to apply negotiation skills that help you build a bridge to a role that really actually fits you. Hey, by the way, you might have noticed that we have been doing quite a few negotiation episodes back to back, because it's something we really haven't done on the podcast before extensively. And it's such a big part of creating a career and a life that you actually want. So take a listen to Alex, this is such a great episode. I think you'll love it.

Alexandra Carter 02:15

So I would say I was always a communicator, you know, it's interesting, as a kid, I was really socially shy. But I found that when I had something to say, I really wanted to say it. So if I was active in political work, or there was a cause I was working for that would help me overcome that shyness and get to know people. So gradually, I think I got more comfortable, you know, speaking in public, really flourishing as a communicator during college, you know, then I went to law school, I still Scott had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And I'd done fine. I was at Columbia Law School, I had gotten in, I was doing relatively well in my classes. But it wasn't until my last year[a] there, that a friend of mine, this is how these major career moments happen. A friend of mine pulls me aside and says, "Hey, Alex. I just took this class, it's called mediation, it involves a lot of talking, I think you'd be great at it." And so I signed up based on that for this course. And this is where I learned that mediation is a process where a third person basically helps people negotiate better, helps them get out of conflict, or helps them make a deal. And when I tell you, Scott, I got trained. And then the first time I went into a New York City courtroom, and I sat down with two people and helped them work something out, it was like I heard a voice like, Morgan Freeman's voice coming down from the heavens saying, "This is it. Alex, you have found the thing that you should do for the rest of your life." I know! It really was that moment, except you can't graduate from law school and become a mediation professor, you have to get experience. So I went out, I worked as a lawyer for a period of time, but I never forgot. And I worked steadily in my off hours to find ways to build my expertise. Until the moment that Columbia hired me back to teach the course that I took as a student, I am one of those unicorns, who wakes up every day and thinks I truly am doing what I was meant to do on this earth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:27

That is amazing. And as you might imagine, I love that for many different reasons. What took place, I'm super curious, what took place in there to get to the point where Columbia hired you back to teach that course there must be something in there I'm guessing it wasn't just a took the course and then you know, X number of years later, they pick up the phone and they're like, "Alex! Hey, come on over. This is... yeah"

Alexandra Carter 05:00

"This is Columbia, we have all these people who have a lot more experience than you. But come on over anyway." Yeah. So great, great question. After that moment, you know, I tried everything I could, while I was a student to get as much mediation experience as possible. And at graduation, my professor pulled me aside, and she said, "I want you to know, I've had many students over the years, you are one of the very most talented I have ever taught." She kind of spoke that into being for me, she saw excellence, and she recognized it in me. And it caused me to pursue this as a potential career path in the future. And so, Scott, I went on to work at a law firm, where I was putting in 80 hour weeks, I mean, I didn't have a lot of spare time. But in one moment, after I delivered on a project early, I went into my boss, and I said, "Hi, I finished this early. And here's the forum, I'd like you to sign saying that you're going to give me one morning every month to mediate in the local court." And so I had just delivered on time, I put the paper on her desk, she looked at me for a second, and she signed the paper. So I used a moment of leverage to say, "I really want to do this, I'm pro bono work, this charity work, where I'm going to mediate cases for people who can't afford lawyers, I'm going to do this every month. And I started to build my experience back, I kept in touch with my professor. And I tried to make relationships, Scott, every stage of my life, what has helped me get from one thing to the next has been relationships. And so keeping in touch with people at Columbia, and asking people for advice on how to transition to a professor role, is really part of what helped me get there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:49

I so appreciate you sharing that. Because the I have found that the unicorn type positions are absolutely available. And they don't ever happen purely by accident.

Alexandra Carter 07:00

They don't. I think it's a two part formula, if I could share that. One is relationships. So the first is relationships. And the second is I give this advice to students all the time, they say, "how do I find the thing that's going to make me feel like you do everyday at work?" And I tell them to look at the moments over the past month or for the next month,[b] where they feel the most joy, the most flow or that their gifts and talents are being put to the highest purpose, and then write down what they're doing at the time. You know, I think sometimes Scott, people get caught up in the labels. They're like, "Should I be a litigator or an intellectual property lawyer? Should I be a consultant? Or should I be a business executive?" And instead, I encourage people to focus on the verbs, focus on what it is you are doing when you are getting the most joy. And for me, the times that I felt the most joy was when I was mediating, when I was helping people using my communication skills to work things out for themselves. And also, when I was teaching, I had the chance to teach a couple of sections of a class while I was a student at Columbia Law School. And it was just the most incredible feeling of joy I had outside of the classroom. And so when you take teaching, and mediating and you put them together, I'm a mediation professor. And it all makes sense.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:29

It does all make sense. I think there's one other element there too, to stack on top of your two part formula that we're creating here, you in your book and asked for more, you introduce this concept of steering. And I think that not only does this concept of steering apply to this situation, where you're perpetually steering your way back into the type of role or type of opportunity that works for you, but also, as it relates to many different things. So first of all, can you share the metaphor and analogy that I know that you teach about as it relates to Syria and Kayaks?

Alexandra Carter 09:06

Yeah, absolutely. So it's interesting, because I just said, I think my two part formula for finding your career happiness is relationships and sort of thinking of the verbs, right thinking of what you love to do. And in fact, the way I teach negotiation is that it's steering relationships. So I used to think Scott, back when I was a young professional, I was told the same thing, everybody else was told that negotiation is like a back and forth with two people or more over money. And it's something you do right before you get to an agreement. That's negotiation. So if you need to buy a car, God forbid, or you know you are signing up a client or you're trying to get more money at work, that's what you do. And then I went to Hawaii on my honeymoon. And I got an a Kayak on the Wailua river and this guide of the head turned around and said, "Please negotiate your Kayaks to the left, so we can wind up on that beach over there." And that was the moment Scott that my brain clicked. And I remembered, there's more than one way to think about negotiation. When I am negotiating a Kayak toward a gorgeous beach. And don't we all wish we were doing that at this moment, what am I doing? I'm steering. And I realized then that every conversation I had with somebody, it's not just the money conversations, it's not just the once a year, you know, transactional conversations, every conversation I have, is an opportunity to steer that relationship. And when I thought about negotiation that way, not only did it make me really dread it less, because it seemed so much less about just money and so much more about people. But it also piloted me forward. I realized, for example, that if I'm steering relationships, what's the most important relationship of my life, it's the one I have with myself, whether it's walking into a potential deal, or whether it's thinking about your career and where you're going, that's a negotiation. And it starts at home with you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:18

Love it for so many different reasons. And not just the visual image of kayaking in Hawaii. However, I find that it's, first of all, I had never thought about it that way until I read that line. And then, you know, mark that in your book, I like to mark stuff up. And for those who can't see, I have her book labeled with sticky notes left and right. And...

Alexandra Carter 11:41

They are also color coded.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:42

They are also color coded. Yes. To your point. That said, though, you know, I think that that's a much more useful way to think about it, because some of the existing definitions and I want to say that this was also mentioned someplace in the book too, some of the use... existing definitions that are out there in how we think of negotiating just are not that useful to most people. They look nice on, you know, Webster.com or Merriam.com but they're just not that functional or useful. So, tell me a little bit about why you believe that this is a much more useful definition or way to think about it. How does this help in reality?

Alexandra Carter 12:22

Let me give you a good example. So let's take somebody who's looking for a job, for example, right, something that might be highly relevant to your listenership. If you're thinking about the old definition of negotiation, which is you're going back and forth over money, then you're not negotiating until the moment you get the job offer, that's really too late to be steering your relationship with that person, I would want to be teaching that person how to value me, how to think about me and my expertise from the moment of my first conversation. I want to be intentionally steering that relationship, painting a picture with my words of who I am, what my values are, and what I have to contribute. And I want that for your listeners, I don't want you to feel like you have to wait until the money comes up to teach somebody how to value you. When you start earlier, you'll approach that conversation with more intentionality. And you will set yourself up for better results when you do get to the money.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:27

So I think that's a perfect example, let's take someone we're working with right now, I won't share her name. However, let's just call her Jenny for the moment. So Jenny's right in the situation where I think she's done a pretty great job of understanding what she wants. And she's just starting to meet with people like real people in organizations, where she's getting to have interactions in pretty likely eventually, those will lead to the actual formal offer, and what most people think about when negotiation begins. But to your point, it doesn't actually begin that or whether you want to do or not. It begins far, far for that, especially if you're looking at it with the steering metaphor. So let's use Jenny for just a moment here. And let's say okay, what are some of the real world pieces for how we can steer that conversation?

Alexandra Carter 14:19

First of all, if you've been working with Jenny already, then I feel confident that she's tackled the first part of the negotiation, the big part, which is steering yourself. So if I'm in Jenny shoes, you know, I'm thinking about asking myself some really good questions, because Scott, you know, one piece that we haven't filled in for your listeners yet, is people often wonder, well, what's the best way to steer these conversations, Alex? Are you talking about me making the most arguments? And I'm not... the people who negotiate the best, the people who steer most effectively are the people who ask the right questions. And it starts by asking yourself the right questions. So that you arrive to those interviews, you picked out the right interviews from a place of clarity and confidence. So if I were Jenny, I would be sitting down to ask myself, "Okay, first of all, what's the problem I want to solve? You know, what is it that I am looking to accomplish with this job search?" And I'd be thinking about this holistically, not just in terms of a salary, not just in terms of a next move, but in terms of a larger path. Where does this fit in? So and then I would be thinking about my needs, what I call the tangibles and the intangibles, you know, the tangible Scott right are the obvious, you know, I need this amount in salary. I'd like this title. Tangibles are the things that we can, you know, see, touch or count that type of thing. Intangibles are often ignored, but they are the values that give our lives meaning. So I be asking Jenny, if I were working with her, so in addition to the salary, like, "What are the things that you need? What are the values?" you know, and if Jenny said to me, "I need a sense of mission in my work. I need to be at a place where I can always be a learner." I would be writing all of those things down. And then I would ask her, "Oay, Jenny, so what does being connected to the mission look like for you?" And we try as much as we could to make those concrete so that by the time then that Jenny is arriving at the moment, where she's serving the market and figuring out who to meet with, she's doing that from a rock solid place of knowing herself, and what she's out to accomplish at this point in life. I'll pause there to take any questions or comments. Because otherwise, I'm just gonna roll right into what I think she would do in those meetings.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:49

In doing this type of process with few thousands folks, I think that if we just roll right into the next piece, then it's easy to underrate what you have just talked about, and I heard you say it's the most important, but it really is the most important on so many different levels, just because how are you going to be able to steer if you don't know where you're going in... at a really simplistic level. So I appreciate your pointing that out. So what happens next, as a relates to Jenny?

Alexandra Carter 17:20

Yeah, so what happens next is that Jenny's going out, and she's meeting with people. And what I would advise her to do is to focus on the questions that she is asking of those other people. You know, a lot of times we assume that success in a job interview, which by the way, is fully a negotiation. Okay, it's a negotiation long before you get to the money. We assume that that's about you know, all about making your points. But really, a lot of it is about listening. And so I would be asking really open questions. My favorite, of course, the two magic words that change everything is, tell me... I'd be saying, Scott, "Tell me what brought you to this organization. Tell me what you need most at this point in time from this position. Tell me the last star you hired and what made her so effective?" I love 'Tell me' questions because it's the broadest possible question you can ask on any subject. When people come to me in mediation, I don't open by saying to them, "How much money do you want?" I say, "Tell me what's brought you here?" Because that's the way that I get the most information. I start generating some trust, and they can tell me what I need to know, in order to figure out where the target is that I need to hit. You know, I got an email Scott from a woman about 10 days ago[c]. I don't know her. She wrote me an email from my website to tell me that, tell me landed her a job in the middle of Coronavirus, she said "It was magic. I just went into the interview. I kept asking them to tell me about various aspects of the job." She said, "I spent more time listening than I did talking. And at the end, they said they were absolutely bowled over and they made me an immediate offer." So it's really magic for opening up those conversations.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:18

I think I also am a huge fan of 'tell me' questions, even though they're not really questions as you point out too. It's even more magic built in. I think that something jumps into my mind that I heard probably 20 years ago[d], way back when I was learning to coach and I had this person who is facilitating the training and she pointed out I didn't remember what exactly what the training was about or what else was going on. But she pointed out that giving people your undivided attention is one of the biggest gifts that you can give others at this day and age and this was 20 years ago. It's even more so now. And one of the I love the 'tell me' questions. And love what you've already brought up about how they work so effectively is because you're doing that at the same time, you're offering almost a gateway to provide that gift. And it's really for you too, because then you understand so much more and have that information and can put together a more successful discourse. But for that reason, and many more, so I appreciate you pointing out the 'tell me' questions. And it's so much more efficient too.

Alexandra Carter 20:29

It really is, you know, you think about it in the book, I talk about it like fishing with a giant commercial net versus fishing with a line. If you ask a bunch of you know, closed questions, you know, at most you're getting one fish at a time, right? With one 'tell me' question, you're doing the list of like 10 others, it's really efficient. And also it does when you give somebody that attention, guess what? They want to do deals with you, they want to spend more time with you. And that can only be a great thing going forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:00

So tell me about the other side of the title here, because the book name has "Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything", but we haven't even talked about the questions yet. Well, we've alluded to them a little bit. But help me understand that the question is, especially as it relates to the idea of the mirror in the window.

Alexandra Carter 21:19

Yeah, sure. So few minutes ago, when we talked about Jenny and her job search, and I was saying that, you know, it starts at home with her, that is the portion of negotiation that I call the mirror, you know, Scott, and this is the number one mistake, I would say that I find people make, even if they're pretty senior in their career, you know, their UN diplomats, their managers, 10, 15 years[e] into their practice, they don't quite know the right questions to ask themselves to steer that internal conversation. And so a couple of the questions I mentioned for Jenny, thinking about what's the problem I want to solve, you know, start by diagnosing the problem or figuring out which beach you want to end up on, before you start paddling and putting in all that effort, or thinking about what it is that you need both the tangible and the intangible. Those are examples of questions that I call the mirror, you know, and Scott, sometimes I think people wonder, I can tell they're looking at me, not you, but others. They're looking at me and we're thinking, "Alex, you know, the sounds great. Do I really have time for this?" Like, you know...

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:29

Nobody has time for this, Alex.

Alexandra Carter 22:31

Alex, it's a pandemic, you know. And what I want to tell people is, "You don't have time not to." It's actually less time than you think. I go through these questions myself. And these days, I can ask myself, the five mirror questions that are in "Ask for More" in 15 minutes, the number one comment I've gotten, I've done these questions with executives all over the world is, "I can't believe how little time it took to save me enormous amounts of time on the back end." So that is the mirror it's asking yourself question. And then once you sit down with somebody else, whether it's in person or over zoom these days, the whole other subject, right, negotiating virtually, you know, you are trying to open up a window between you and somebody else. And so tell me, is the first example of a question that I would use in any situation. And you know, Scott, because you read the book that I give personal examples with my daughter, as well as examples from work as to how effective that question is. So those are the two sections in the book. Five are the mirror and five questions are the window.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:38

What do you believe that... as you think, let's go back to Jenny situation for just a bit here. And, yes, negotiation absolutely starts early on, right. We've made that point. I think that people pretty well, I understand that. But what if people are coming late to the game in how they're thinking about this? What if Jenny situation was slightly different? And Jenny has been further along in the process, maybe she has somewhat of an idea of what she wants, but she's getting ready to receive a job offer. How does this situation change for and what advice would you give if people are finding themselves in that stage? And maybe they're open to thinking about it holistically, but now they're coming a little bit late to the game?

Alexandra Carter 24:25

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, it's never too late to teach someone how to value you. I've had people hear a talk of mine or hear me on a podcast after getting a job offer and saying, "I think this looks great." And then they hear and they read and they think I need to go back in and start to talk to them about the future and more than I'm going to need, never too late. So here's what I would do. I would return if you get the job offer. Okay, so Jenny gets this offer. I would ask a lot of questions about it. Right? So instead of feeling pressure in the moment to respond right there, I would take it piece by piece and say, "Alright, so this is the salary. Tell me more about what this represents. Here are the other components. Okay. Talk to me about this and how this normally works at the company." Alright, then I would go back, I would examine it, Jenny can at that point, look at, "Alright, what do I need? I'm going to write down what it is that I'm looking for. So I can be really grounded when I go in. And then I'm going to go in, and I'm going to ask for what I need." And I wonder if Jenny might be like, some of your other listeners, and is worried she's going to get a 'No' I think a lot of women in particular fear the No. Right? Like is if somebody says no, that means it's a referendum on our worthiness as a person. And it means that we need to crawl out of the office and never speak of it again. Absolutely not. If Jenny gets a 'No,' I want her simply to ask this question. "What are your concerns?" I actually worked with an executive. So she's probably now, let's say 20 years[f] into her career, okay? She is at a company, she gets a promotion. And she's asking for money. And they say, no. They go back and forth. She asks them, what are your concerns, and they tell her eventually, "We're at the very top of the band for this position, we really want to make it work, we're hoping there might be something else." So she went and said to them, "What other ideas do you have to get me to the place where we can make this appropriate for my position?" And they said, "Well, some other buckets we have might be travel money." So this executive went back to the drawing board. And she looked, and she realized that this new job was going to take her away from her husband for two weeks out of every month[g] across the country. So she went back and said, "I'd like for my husband to join me on one trip a month, for the week. All expenses paid, you know, put up with me." And they said, "Absolutely. You got it." Asking what people's concerns are sometimes can help you turn a no into a yes. But even if it doesn't, it tells you another way to get something else you need.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:24

I love it. Thank you so much for providing the language as well, I think that is so helpful to be able to take this from a theoretical standpoint, and turn it into action too. What do you believe are some of the biggest missed opportunities, especially when we're at this type of situation that we've just mentioned with Jenny as an example, or the other situation with the executive that you were talking about? What do you think are some of the those biggest missed opportunities for people?

Alexandra Carter 27:55

Yeah, sometimes I think people feel timing pressure, that they don't need to feel, you know, I would tell your listeners, Scott, to really use timing to your advantage. If somebody has made you an offer, they want you. And unless there are extraordinary circumstances, they're only going to watch you more if you take a little bit of time to really consider your offer. And so I would urge people not to make the mistake of thinking that you need to immediately respond. You know, Scott, this actually, I went through this when I negotiated my first salary and believe it or not, because of the jobs I've held, I negotiated my first salary in my 30s. And I went in, I had my power suit on, I was super nervous. And they came in slightly above what I was expecting. And I could tell that they thought I might answer on the spot. But I managed to keep my face neutral. And I said, "Let me run my numbers. Thank you so much." Great start to the conversation. You're making the gesture that's, you know, that's like, you know, keep the game face on. And so I did that. And I'm so glad I did. Because I received advice that changed my whole life. I left the office that day, I didn't know what to do. So I call the senior woman in the field. This gets to the second mistake that people sometimes make. And I said to her, "So I got this great offer. Should I just take it? It's more than what I thought." And she said, "I'm going to tell you what to do, Alex. You're going to go in there, and you're going to ask for more." And I said, "I'm gonna ask for more?" And she said, "Yes. Because when you teach someone how to value you, you teach him how to value all of us. And so if you're not going to go in there and do it for yourself, I want you to do it for the woman who is coming after you, do it for the sisterhood." And that gets to the second thing, Scott, the second mistake people make which is that thinking, asking for more is a selfish act, when it is not. When you ask for more and stand in your value, you make it easier for the next woman who's coming after you. So take your time. And remember that knowing your value is a community service, it really helps other people.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:23

I so appreciate that on many different levels, one, addressing the mindset that has a tendency to pop up around asking for more, and that is selfish, it is not. And I find that it's difficult to help other people in any way, any group of people at any time from a place of scarcity. That is, it's a really difficult thing to do. But when you are able to not just ask for more, but obtain more for yourself in one way or another, that gives you a different ability to be able to share that in a variety of different ways. So I really, really appreciate you pointing that out, saying that sharing that story, too. I know we are... I feel like this conversation could go like five or six hours here. And we wouldn't run out of things to talk about. However, I know that we're getting close on time here. And I wanted to just ask what parting advice would you have for our listeners, as it relates to thinking about negotiation holistically. And not just... we've pretty well covered a lot of things centered around job offer and leading up to job offer. But from a more holistic standpoint, which I know you're a huge fan of, what what advice would you give to HTYCers out there?

Alexandra Carter 31:46

Absolutely. I think that negotiations, whether they are at work or at home, they operate best when we're transparent. And that means, first of all, being really transparent with yourself, I think, Scott, in this age of Instagram filters, it's so easy to want to put a filter on ourselves. And I've worked with so many people who when I ask what they need, they write down what other people think they should need. So the first step really is to get transparent with yourself and write down things as they are, as you are really get to know and to value yourself. That knowledge is your seat of power in negotiation. And then when you're approaching other people, if you do it from a place of transparency, it's amazing what kind of results you get. I've coached people in, you know, who were asking for a job promotion. And they didn't realize that they could just go in and say, "I know it's a pandemic. But I want you to know how much I love working for this company. And someday I see myself in a leadership role. And I'm here today to ask you how we can work together to get there." That kind of transparency makes people trust you. And when they trust you, they want to be in community with you, you know, and the same transparency that I, you know, tried to execute on and the office, I carry it over into my most treasured personal relationships with my husband, my daughter and my family. And I find that when I speak plainly, and I speak from the heart, those are the conversations that produce the most fruit. And so I guess that's what I like to leave your listeners with that most human beings at our hearts want the same thing, which is people we can trust. And if you are somebody who gains people's trust, you are a great negotiator.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:51

That is amazing, and also a great place to leave it. I also want to point out that if you're not transparent with yourself, and you're putting down other people's, what they think you should be asking for, then that means you're going to get the unicorn job for someone else.

Alexandra Carter 34:08

That's so right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:10

That doesn't help anybody as it turns out. So hey, I really appreciate you taking the time and making the time and this has been a ton of fun. You're delightful by the way. I'm so glad we got to have this time. And thank you for writing a great book. There's a lot of books, I've read a lot of books, but I genuinely enjoyed it. And I would recommend going and get it if you're listening to this out there "Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything" was wonderful and well worth the read regardless of whether or not you are in a job offer negotiation or anything else right this very moment. Thank you.

Alexandra Carter 34:43

Well, thank you, Scott. This has been just like a conversation between friends and I've really enjoyed it and I look forward to staying in touch.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:50

Absolutely. Where else can people go if they're interested in either the book or you?

Alexandra Carter 34:56

Absolutely. So, you know, by the way, I tell people that any time we train together, they're now my colleagues for life. And so I insist that people stay in touch with me, tell me everything you're doing, you can find me on my website, alexcarterasks.com, and you can also find me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and very reluctantly on Twitter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:22

Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and take 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 happen, really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that's 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 and 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.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:44

Okay, so here's something you may have experienced before. You know, you bring value to your organization. You also know, you'd really like to be paid much more than what you're currently making. The real question is, how do you go about asking for it? How do you begin? How do you do it in a way that is actually going to allow you to get what you want?

Justin 37:07

Overall, I think it'll ultimately turn into about a 20% raise over the next few years. So salary wise, it was about a 12% raise. And then, you know, my other forms of compensation will roll in over the next few years. And that'll be another, you know, 8 or 9%. So it's really well worth the effort.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:29

That's Justin, he's a technical engineer, who came to us for help when he really wanted to negotiate a raise with his company. He'd been approached by recruiters with other companies, but really just wanted to stay with the same organization he was at. He didn't want to make a transition. It's just that he knew that if he went someplace else, he could make so much more. So this was, as you might imagine, quite a predicament. So you're gonna hear Justin, he's gonna tell us a little bit about his career trajectory. But I want you to listen for what he did to be able to stay with the company that he really wanted to be at and make the amount of money that he wanted to have, which, and he did by negotiating his salary, renegotiating his salary, right? He got a raise. Actually, it also happened to be more than the amount that he thought he even wanted. All that and plenty more next week[h] 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!

[a][03:06] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[b][07:20] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[c][18:49] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[d][19:34] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[e][21:44] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[f][26:12] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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Negotiation Techniques That Really Work to Maximize Your Job Offer

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Negotiation can be tricky. When it comes to negotiating a job offer to get more money, it can be even trickier. You’re probably not close to the person from your new company who you’re negotiating against. And you might be scared of blowing the offer by asking for too much. What should you do? This week’s podcast is a bit of a special episode. I’m sharing a recording of a coaching session I had with a client named Jessica, who negotiated her job offer from $130,000… to $380,000. That’s right, she negotiated more than double what they originally offered her. Want to know how she did it? 

Jessica called me, very excited. She had received not one, but two, job offers, both life-altering opportunities. She was psyched, and I was proud of her. The first offer was from a small company that she really wanted to work for, but was asking her to take a pay cut from her prior job. The second offer was from a large company that was offering her a very prestigious role and a raise from her prior job.

No-brainer, right? Take the job with the big company! The problem was that she didn’t really want to work for the big company. She wanted to work for the small company. But she wouldn’t be able to do it unless she could convince the small company to offer her a better compensation package. It was time to negotiate!

What you’ll learn

  • How Jessica felt going into negotiations, and the tactics she used to get her dream offer.
  • The technique she used to work with her new company and successfully negotiate nearly triple her original salary.
  • Why negotiating your job offer makes your new employer want to hire you even more.

Success Stories

Thank you for guiding me through the negotiation process of asking for a raise. Even in this economy you convinced me to follow through. I also appreciate your thoughts on what I should include in my portfolio; it made the difference in the value added that I was able to present to my supervisor.

Ken Russell, Career Placement Coordinator, United States/Canada

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

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

Exactly 5 weeks from when I arrived in Canada I got a full time job, negotiated a higher salary and within the next 3 days I got another offer that pays 33% more. I am happy and very thankful to you, for you gave me support when I was looking and offered great tips.

Ingrid , United States/Canada

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Scott Anthony Barlow 00:01

After you get some acknowledgment from them, that's where you can jump in and say, "Well, here's one of the major things I'm concerned about right now. If I walk away from my role, this second, I'm essentially leaving $68,000 on the table."

Introduction 00:20

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

Here's a story we hear all the time, you did the work, identified what you wanted, to found a role with an organization that you want to join, you got through all the interviews, you've met everybody, organization was a fit, you nailed it, you got an offer. Woohoo! Except that the offers not quite everything that you were hoping for. Maybe the salaries not quite meeting your expectations. Or maybe it's half the amount of vacation time that you've grown accustomed to. Maybe it doesn't have all the leadership or mentorship capacities that you're interested in, maybe the role itself needs to be modified.

Jessica 01:18

I mean, I know that's a crazy signing bonus. But I'm also like, this is a C suite role[a] and the salary at 130 is just not, see it, like if we do any type of comp analysis, 130 is not what a person of my experience for 15 years[b] to master's degrees, the extent of what the role it's just under. But I also know we're talking about a startup. So I just don't know how flexible I should be. And again, I don't want to leave any money on the table...

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:44

Look, when you get to this situation, I understand the stakes are high. You want to negotiate your offer, you also don't want to blow it. So how do you tell this organization? The same organization that you just spent so much time and effort going through the interview process, meeting all the people, determining that it actually is a fit, they finally made this offer, it's your ideal role but, guess what? You need more. And how do you not offend them, by the way? How do you avoid sounding greedy or like you're going to be difficult to work with? These all sound like problems, it's not a great way to start off. However, there absolutely is not one way but multiple ways. So today on the podcast, we don't normally do this but I'm actually sharing with you a recording of a coaching session with one of our clients where we help her negotiate an offer but get this, she not only ended up accepting the offer, but raised her total comp package from 165k, to not 175k, not 185k.. 359k. Right. Okay. Hang tight to hear exactly how we did that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:56

Prioritize those for me if they're not already in priority order. Well, what we've been looking for... that are already in priority. Yes. That makes me so happy on so many levels. That being the case, then we need to focus primarily on salary, however, think it may be very useful, you call it out that, you know, 1099 could be a potential option in order to make up some salary.

Jessica 03:23

Yeah, like I don't need any benefits. And that I mean, my husband's like a federal government worker plans on it. So I haven't taken benefits in 10 years[c] from any company. I mean, I have long term disability now just because it's smart to have it. But at the end of the day, I have, you know, just I don't need it, I'd rather right now just like bring home as much cash as I can. And that's where I'm at.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:42

Chances are high they're paying someplace between $500 in the very lowest end, which I think is really unlikely, up to about $20500 per month for the end of this. Back in my purchasing benefits days and working with brokers and everything like that, chances are high, that's someplace between those two numbers. That gives us essentially a little bit to work with, if they're open to the idea of that. The plan has to be going in and saying, look, this is really the role that I'm looking for in so many different ways. And I really am looking forward to working with you in here. And also at the same time, the only thing stopping me from saying yes right now is we have some pretty big differences in terms of what I was looking for, for compensation, for salary and signing bonus and annual bonus and equity and a few other areas. And I want to figure out how to work through those so that we can get to a situation where it's good for both of us. So I recognize that that might take some creativity, and I'm totally willing to figure out how that might work. I have some ideas but I also... we're probably going to need to figure it out together to be able to get you over here ASAP. I want that to happen. That's got to be. And I'm just being really directed just because we have a small amount of time, that's going to be the type of conversation where you're setting the expectations coming into it saying, "Hey, we've got quite a bit where we're off" is probably gonna have to be a verbal conversation the first time around. So instead of sending over this as an email, your next step is going to need to be setting up a time where you can converse with the decision maker who holds the purse strings.

Jessica 05:35

Mark, the gentleman that called me today, and he's the co founder and CEO, and then the other gentleman is another co-founder, Phil.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:42

What's his name the other gentleman?

Jessica 05:43

Phil.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:44

Phil. Okay. Mark, though?

Jessica 05:45

He was a CEO of a company.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:47

What's his role now, here?

Jessica 05:49

Co-founder, visionary. It's very up in the air. But because they have global, which is the other company. And that's what's funding. They are in the more executive leadership development space, and they do strategy and consulting work with teams, talent and strategy around organizations trying to grow their leaders.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:12

Okay, awesome.

Jessica 06:13

And then these courses are online, a professional development platform for emerging leaders. So it's 25 to 40 year old like, and that's what I was trying to say in the email. Like, I think they're so excited, because I would be the face of this company. Yeah, and I was like, "Well, okay, guys, so I'm gonna have to, like do the ISD work, and also be the face" which I don't mind being the face, because I'll just be wildly excited about it. The online platform is a combination between mentoring, coaching and learning. So it's like, it's in my core, you know, I'm like, Yeah, do this, you know, but I really want... I didn't want to go down in salary. I wanted to go up, you know, and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:52

So it got to be verbal conversation first. Sounds like it needs to happen with Mark, then. And is there anybody else that has a vested interest here?

Jessica 07:01

No. And I would say Mark is the sole decision maker. I've had conversations with Phil, and another gentleman, Joe, but he's been working solely with the recruiter to get... he's the CHRO, the previous CHRO, so he's like, applying the HR.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:13

What is your bottom end here? If I read your email correctly, it sounds like you were, you've referenced the 45k increases that your bottom end, like, what is your walkaway point? Like, this is no longer get create a good deal for you.

Jessica 07:30

Let me talk this out loud really quick. Because I think on normal circumstances, because of the environment that I'm in right now, I would be perfectly fine with doing a lateral move, like with base salary. So if my base is 14565, and I'm like getting out of stressful work environment, and I'm able to keep my salary, nothing changes, more opportunity, title of my dreams, you know, work of my dreams, 100% remote role, right? Like, I'm winning, I'm winning there. But because there's the possibility of me having to pay back 33k and tuition reimbursement, I'm like, I need a signing bonus, just so I don't have to come out of pocket from that. And I'm also losing out on my you know, bonus for the 2020 year by taking the roll on October[d]. So I that's what I feel like should I walk away and wait for something better, but I could be without a settlement package, I could be unemployed, like you know, it's all shoulda, coulda, woulda is and I'm just not sure around that. But I think that's why I also want a higher salary because I'm trying to compensate for the potential of having to pay back the tuition reimbursement, as well as not getting a bonus, not just from the year that I worked, but like the whole year that I would have to perform in this new role. And then a bonus wouldn't happen until the following year. And that's never guaranteed. But I feel confident in achieving those set goals, but it's just... it's not part of your base salary. So, that's what's spiraling in my head at this point.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:59

So really, that is that 60 something 1000 number that we're talking about...

Jessica 09:04

Correct.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:04

Or role.

Jessica 09:05

I mean, I know that's a crazy signing bonus. But I'm also like, this is a C suite role and the salary at 130 is just not, see it, like if we do any type of comp analysis, 130 is not what a person of my experience for 15 years[e] to master's degrees, the extent of what the role it's just under. But I also know we're talking about a startup. So I just don't know how flexible I should be. And again, I don't want to leave any money on the table...

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:31

Well, there's multiple different ways to be able to make that happen too, like even if the signing bonus format. If we are able to create that type of same amount in a different way, then I think that's okay, too.

Jessica 09:44

And I'm fine with it being in a different way. Like that's why I kind of built on the equity piece because it's...

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:49

Also smaller. They're scrappier, and I think that's going to be an easier thing for them to do. And we're another... and it also allows you to use the approach of "Hey, here's what I'm looking for. Here's what I'm working with." So I think that part of your conversation after you share them the "Hey, look, I totally feel like this is right for me, I'm really excited about it. Thank you so much." All of those pieces must be there really critical that those pieces are there. And then you go on to say that, "I also want to acknowledge that even though the roles really right, we've got quite a huge gap in between with what I'm looking for overall compensation, including, you know, salary, annual bonus, and equity and those types of things, too. So I'm more than happy to share the details with you about that. And but I want you to know, before we even start talking about that, I want to work this out, because this is really a role that I can, even myself, and I'm really excited about. And I'm really, really want to start working for you sooner. So you're setting the stage, and then from there be able to say so I also think this might require some level of creativity on both our parts, but I'm willing to explore really creative methods. After you get some acknowledgement from them, that's where you can jump in and say, "Well, here's one of the major things I'm concerned about right now, if I walk away from my role, this second, I'm essentially leaving $68,000 on the table." And that comes in two forms, you didn't have to share all the other specifics. This is like a throwaway number in some ways, where we'll just call this the game of negotiation, for lack of a better phrase. I want you to do it authentically and everything like that. However, I also want them to be able to have a way to participate in the game with you in a way that's going to be advantageous for both people. So you need to give them a throwaway number here to start this out. Because this is going to be a really useful number for you because it's very true, it also is something that they can easily understand. Like it's not... I want to make, you know, $300,000 a year, because it sound much concrete that is already in existence that they can't argue with, or you'll feel differently about. So it's a case of "Look, I want you to know that, you know, if I leave my role right now, then I am literally leaving $68,000 on the table. Additionally, you know, as I was looking into this next opportunity, couple of the things I wanted to share with you, you know, as I was talking about, as I was talking to Facebook and had an offer on the table from them, they're offering a 200, and whatever it is $40,000.

Jessica 12:36

Yeah, 260.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:37

Now I'd much much much prefer to work here, over Facebook, however, and this is a pretty big difference and a pretty big gap, overall. The things that I'm really interested in that might help with, help bridge some of that gap, I'm really interested in equity in the company, especially if I'm acting as the face of the organization. I'm also a learner really interested in professional development. Currently, I have access to those funds, right this very second in my role. And that's something I've liked to be able to work in here where I'm continuing to develop myself. And then another thing that might be really useful for you is I don't necessarily need to have benefits, I don't necessarily need to come off as a standard employee. So if it is advantageous to operate on the 1099, where you don't have to pay benefits for me and some of the other taxes that go along with having an employee, I'm really open to that type of solution in order to make higher levels of compensation and these other areas. Those are a few of my initial thoughts, and I wanted to be really transparent with you, so that you understand where I'm coming from. So here's why, just... you may already know some of this and stop me if it's redundant, or things that you already know. But the reason why I've chosen these few things to focus on versus everything or the laundry list, as it's hard to argue with any of these pieces like...

Jessica 14:04

Agreed.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:04

Offer from Facebook, they know they've heard of Facebook, like they use Facebook, they understand, you know what that is. And then being able to counter that with like, I don't, I would much prefer to work here than Facebook. This is the role, but also like this is a real thing. And then the 68 like we already talked about, it's really difficult to do that, they're going to be able to understand that.

Jessica 14:28

I will. I know that the offer will get better. That's what's exciting to me, right. And so I don't know how much better so that's the fun part.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:35

It is fun, right? But there's a lot of upside here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:39

Hey, after listening to that coaching session with Jessica, first of all, I just want to mention again that we don't do this all the time, and we had permission from Jessica to be able to share this with everyone. I also want you to hear exactly what happened after this session. Jessica went and did an amazing job having not just one conversationm but series of conversations. And then later on, she sent me this email, I'm gonna read it to you, she said, "Hey, Scott, I wanted to give you an update. They went from a total comp package of 165k to 359k. Wow! wow! wow!" lots of exclamation points, "I'm over the moon right now, and really in shock. They reiterated how I was worth every penny and said, "you can find anyone with technical expertise. But someone with your disposition in DNA is hard to come by. We can't wait for you to join the team and are so glad that we could make this work for us." I can't thank you enough for all your coaching, encouraging support during these last few months[f]. I've landed the role of my dreams along with the comp I wanted and knew that I deserved." Hey, this is something that you can do too, it's duplicatable. I wanted to share this coaching session with you to see how this could be possible. The one thing that is not often not recognized is we didn't necessarily talk about every single element of psychology that was at play here. And we also didn't talk about some of the incentives that were at play. And it's just important to recognize that those things are often in play. And we've already done some of that work beforehand prior to this coaching session. But honestly, you know, that's why I personally always take a partner anytime doing any kind of negotiation, because it helps me pull out of the emotional side and recognize what else is at play, that way I can get to not just something that's good for me. But something that's great for all the parties involved, because that's really what creates the best type of ending situation in a negotiation. It's not one sided. So I really hope that you took that away. And if there's anything that we can do to help, whether it's with your negotiation, or helping you get to the point where you even get an offer that you really actually want in the first place, then don't hesitate to ask, just email me, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. And either myself or my team will get back with you. And we'll figure out how to connect up with you via zoom. And we'll ask you some questions to understand your situation and figure out the very best way that we can support you whether that's one of our programs, whether it's personal coaching, whether it's, you know, something like we did with Jessica, email me, scott@happentoyourcareer.com and put 'Conversation' in the subject line.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:38

There's so many college graduates that never actually work in their field of study. On the flip side, there are those that are able to capitalize on the years of hard work in college to land a job in their field. But sometimes when they do that the honeymoon phase wears off. And then they start to feel like they were meant to do something else entirely.

Alexandra Carter 17:58

So I went out. I worked as a lawyer for a period of time that I never forgot. And I worked steadily in my off hours to find ways to build my expertise. Until the moment that Columbia hired me back to teach the course that I took as a student. I am one of those unicorns, who wakes up every day and thinks I truly am doing what I was meant to do on this earth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:24

That's Alexandra Carter. Alex is a clinical professor of law and is a world renowned negotiation trainer who's helped thousands of people listen to she shares, how to cultivate relationships and identify what really brings you joy. And then learn to apply negotiation skills that help you build a bridge to a role that really actually fits you. Take a listen to Alex, this is such a great episode. I think you'll love it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:49

All that and plenty more next week[g] 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!

[a][01:21] inaudible @kathy@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Kathy Wilkes_

[b][01:32] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[c][03:30] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[d][08:15] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[e][09:19] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[f][15:39] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

_Assigned to Joshua Rivers_

[g][18:51] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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Negotiation: A Tool For Your Successful Career Change

by

on this episode

The difference between an average career change and a successful career change often lies in the negotiation.

David Sally is an author and award-winning teacher of negotiations with years of business experience. He shares what really makes someone a great negotiator – and it’s not what you think it is.

What you’ll learn

  • David’s journey from being a political science major to teaching negotiations at Cornell University
  • The biggest contributions to becoming a great negotiator
  • The struggles woman have with negotiating (and how to work with/overcome them)

Success Stories

Thank you for guiding me through the negotiation process of asking for a raise. Even in this economy you convinced me to follow through. I also appreciate your thoughts on what I should include in my portfolio; it made the difference in the value added that I was able to present to my supervisor.

Ken Russell, Career Placement Coordinator, United States/Canada

It turned out to be the best fit possible they had all the tools and all the resources. It helped me to approach the job search in a completely different way. It allowed me to put myself out there in a vulnerable way (even in the interviews) and it allowed me to get exactly what I wanted.

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

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David Sally 00:00

But I'm going to keep it in my interior and not necessarily in my exterior. And the very best negotiators are able to do that. Be people who can preserve relationships, their counterparts will come to them again and again to deal with even though they know, the interaction will be great. But ultimately, there's going to be a strong demands coming at them. They know that the tough fair negotiator will tell them 'no', might tell them no in a really nice way., but it will be clear what the limits are.

Introduction 00:34

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 00:58

Negotiation is one of my very favorite things. I know that makes me weird. I'm totally okay with that. However, what I found is the difference between an average career change and a very, very successful career change often lies in the negotiation.

David Sally 01:15

Part of that is just the way our minds are wired for important decisions and negotiation. You know, negotiating a job offers is somehow no different than retirement savings and that level but it's also people don't know what to do to prepare.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31

That's David Sally. He's an award winning teacher of negotiations with many years of business experience, but he's also an author of a really wonderful book on negotiation called "One Step Ahead". He shares what makes someone a really great negotiator. And guess what? It's probably not what you think.

David Sally 01:51

It probably begins with my first job out of college, I was a political science major, undergraduate, and like a lot of young people coming out, especially back in the day, so we're talking fully admit my age, we're talking the early 1980s[a]. I was headed to law school without any clue of what it meant to be a lawyer. It's just a lot of political science majors that I would go to, you know, I'd like to college, I'd like studying, I'd like the classroom, I'll just go off to law school. And I realized, I came to this somehow, not so blinding insight that when you're headed off on a whole path without really having experienced much of the world. I grew up in Chicago as the oldest of three sons of two academics. So we were... I was, you know, I grew up in a family where the... we had a blackboard in the dining room, that's how nerdy of a family I grew up. And I realized, you know, I don't know anything about the world, why am I headed off to law school? So I went and decided, well, no, I'm going to, I will still follow through, but I'll defer any kind of acceptance. And I'm going to go out and work in the world. And I was lucky enough to get a job at Bain & Company, the corporate strategy business, and their headquarters in Boston. They were still a small to medium sized firm at the time. And I had a blast for three years there[b]. And I realized, I really loved doing strategy, and that kind of work and working with a variety of interesting businesses and very intense level of work. But I knew that, my wife and I, and we were a serious couple at the time that we were going to have kids, I knew we wanted to have kids, we wanted to, and I knew I didn't want to travel two and three days every week while having kids. So I thought I could keep doing this for a while because we were still a year away from getting married. And we were certainly going to be a few years away from having our first kid. And I said, you know, "If I know I'm going to leave, at some point in the next three to five years[c], why not get started now?" Because I had made the decision that I was going to re-enter the "family business", which was academia. So I left Bain & Company to go get my PhD at University of Chicago, in economics, not in political science. I thought that economics was a good field for me to combine my basic what now was three years[d] of business experience with some of the issues that I thought were important to me from my undergraduate studies. And while the University of Chicago I got interested in what was then we're talking now, the mid 1980s[e], the new subfield of behavioral economics started by Danny Kahneman, who's become famous for his thinking fast and thinking slow and also famous because he won the Nobel Prize for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:43

There's that.

David Sally 04:44

Yeah, there's that. Yeah. And I realized I was never really fully an economist. I'm really more of a broader social scientist, and I'm interested in ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries. And so that's what I wanted to do work somewhere in the space that connected economic ideas of people maximizing their utility and trying to pursue their self interest with the social psychology ideas that people don't always think clearly about what their options are. And this is a topic obviously, that you spend a lot of time on. When people think about their career choices and things like that, it turns out, well, economists assumed automatically that the more important that decision, the more rational people will be. Right? It was orthodox economists would say, okay, we agree that people don't buy a gallon of milk purely rationally every time. But when it comes to big dollar things, or things that impact their life, you know, their well being, well, they will think it through, they'll make option charts, they will draw tree diagrams, figure out everything, and they will really hone in on maximizing and turns out now, that's actually, they're probably... consumers are probably better at picking out the best value for a gallon of milk than they are about thinking about big issues like career choices, or where to put, where to invest their retirement savings and things like that. So those were the kinds of issues that got me interested.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:15

Yeah. To support that, I saw a funny statistic that was pulled from a broader study, but it paired up the amount of time on average Americans spend shopping for a TV or a computer, versus the amount of time spent on deciding a career change, or also had some investing into retirement, any number of other things, I had all of these things that were absurd. The TV one over every time or the computer went over every time to a ridiculous level. So I absolutely love the crossing of interdisciplinary ideas, concepts, experiences. So I think that's one of the reasons I appreciated the book so much, and how you put together one step ahead. However, before we go down that road, I really wanted to ask you, you mentioned when you were considering going to law school, you somehow had the foresight to say, "Hey, I need to get some real world experience." And then later on too, as you were deciding, hey, do I stay for another couple of years anticipating that years in the future, potentially years in the future, you were going to have children be married those types of things, and it would no longer line up. And then you said, "Hey, why not do this now versus later?" So I'm super curious about that. Because that's not the normal path. And I love it. Not just because it's not the normal path. But I'm super curious, what led you to those? What was behind that? Because it wasn't a normal set of decisions.

David Sally 07:50

Yeah, that's a good question. And there, and like you said, there are two different decisions. We need to unpack them both. And then I have to, after we do that, I need to go to a third confession, which I think is also very relevant for you and this podcasts about the way that life works. I think the law school thing was easy, because it was so, as much as I say, I'm not an economist, I just think I'm a really enlightened economist. I mean, this is part of why I like it. I understand economists, the whole point of behavioral economics was economists don't seem to understand humans very well. You know, they got good models of markets and certain markets, but not all markets. But, wow, they really don't seem to understand how human beings really tick. And I think one of the qualities, one of the things that I aand we could source this back to having read ridiculous amounts of novels when I was a kid or just having an, I think I've always been a very empathetic person. I understand how other people are thinking, I think it was part of the reason I was really good consultantt. I could go down to I was the most baby faced 22 year old working at Bain & Company looked like I was 14 and one of our clients was down in the oil field in Louisiana. And I was solely responsible for, he was the general manager of oilfield services company, is a grizzled, caging guy who must have been like, he looked like 60 years older than me, but he wasn't 40 years older than me, and he had been in the business for a year. And here I am looking like I'm 12. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm supposed to advise him and help him, well, you know, if you kind of understand how people tick If you value their words, if you can get inside their heads a little bit and are very adaptable. And that's, of course, a big theme of one step ahead. It's how do you develop those capabilities? So I think I've always had that ability to identify with other people. And that sort of has been a quality. So I guess, in some sense, I do that with my own brain when I think through, okay, what are really the options that I had at the time when I said okay, I can defer law school or I did really well, I did well on my grades I did well on the LSATs, that option sitting there anytime I want to pull that, but what's not going to be sitting there is the chance to do an internship or be, you know, come out of college, in the regular college recruiting cycle and being able to, at that time especially go through that. So I thought, oh, well, that's a pretty easy decision, because I'm kind of doing I'm recognizing my own decision making. And again, this is a big theme that I want all the listeners to think about that not only in negotiations, but in career decision making you want them, the most advanced people, the smartest people are able to both be making the decision and monitoring what they're actually using to make the decision at the same time. So let's bring it to the world of negotiations. I'm actually bargaining, I'm making an offer, but I'm seeing and I'm monitoring myself my own speech, but I'm also monitoring how my counterpart is thinking about things. So I think I'm good at that. And I realized, you know, you're kind of doing this as a default. Why are you doing this? You can defer. So that's the law school decision, the Bain decision to leave early was honestly, there were some, I was really good at it. There were some frustrations for me at the firm, the firm I was at, and I think this is very again, might be relevant to some of the folks that are listening to the podcast, Bain had changed from a small firm to a medium large firm, and the character of the corporate culture had changed was you could see that it had changed, and it was going to continue to change. So when I first joined, we were in the Fanueil Hall Warehouse in Boston, that was the main headquarters. And I could walk, you could walk down one hallway. And you could walk by all four founders offices, I could see everybody in the firm and a five minute walk down a long warehouse hallway and everybody's office, it's all open plan. And so really small firm and the nature of the firm, it became so successful, it grew 35% every year[f] that I was there that by the final year, when I was making this decision to leave, the people that were attracted to Bain had moved from being very risk taking entrepreneurial types, because it was a startup kind of firm to blue chip kind of candidates who were different people and different people to work with than originally. So I kind of saw that I was less happy there than I was at the beginning and I could kind of forecast where it was going. And you know, it just worked out in the timing of my personal life that my wife and I were getting married, she was going off to medical school thought, well, if I'm going to pull the parachute, I'll pull it now and go to graduate school. Yeah, go get my degree in economics. Now, here's the console. That's the two decisions that I think I impact. Here's the confession, I thought what I wanted to do was to be, and some of the listeners may know this name, Michael Porter, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, as a Harvard Business School professor of strategy, and he was the number one writer in corporate strategy at the time, and his books are still, you know, invaluable books. And he had a sweet ass life. He wrote best selling books, he consulted for Fortune 500 companies at probably ridiculously hourly rates, thought a little bit. I thought, you know, what I want to do is be a poor man's Michael Porter, you know, I want to do some strategy research, I'll write some journal articles, I get my PhD and I will have a little consulting business on the side. And let's be realistic, I won't be Michael Porter, but there's room in the market for you know, some other people below his umbrella or doing something, you know, a smaller niche play. And then for reasons, mainly because I had grown up in Chicago, I thought, well, I applied to a number of different programs. But I thought I got into University of Chicago, the Business School PhD program, I thought, well, go back to Chicago. I love Chicago, but it is maybe the single worst place to go, if you want to become Michael Porter, like a Harvard Business School Professor like, with consulting business. University of Chicago is way too serious about economics and the kind of pure academic pursuit. It's the worst possible, I should have gone to Harvard Business School, but I went to Chicago. And then as we talked about earlier, not only did I go to Chicago, which wasn't the right place to go, but then I ended up getting hooked on behavioral economics, which is not gonna lead to doing Michael Porter life. It's gonna be...

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:40

That's two strikes Michael Porter life.

David Sally 14:44

I know. I don't, either, yeah, but it just... I got hooked on behavioral economics. I said no, these are the, you know, as you described, you know, this is the intersection that I want to kind of play around within for a few years[g]. So the best laid plans I guess, which is some story, I'm sure you've heard many, many times, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:02

Best laid plans. Yes about that. I feel like we could have an eight hour discussion just on that alone. However, I am really curious about, what took place between then and now? Somehow, somewhere, those best laid plans went awry. And then you began to have an interest as a relates to the, well, I'm going to call it the art and science of negotiation. How did that come about?

David Sally 15:31

That came about because one thing that behavioral economists can teach really well, so I got my PhD, and I got my first teaching job, research job at Cornell University at the business school. And one thing that business schools teach and teach very well is negotiations. And so I was offered the chance my first year[h] to begin teaching negotiations. And I thought, as well as I taught a core class in general management. And I think that the thinking in negotiations was, I have a bunch of real world business experience. And I have behavioral economics, which is a nice disciplinary to the art and science of it is the science part of negotiation. So I started teaching negotiations, and it's honestly, it may be the best, let's keep this confidential between us, it may be the single best teaching gig in a business school, because there's not a single student who walks into the class thinking that they don't want to be there, they know they're kind of negotiate for the rest of their career, they know that it's a class that they are really eager to take. It's also a super fun class, because every week, the way that I teach it, and the way that most people teach it, you are in a simulated negotiation. And you might be an owner of a house, you might be an HR manager interviewing different candidates, negotiating a job offer, all kinds of situations that we put the students in, ranging from very straightforward, simple, one off purchase of an item to very complex diplomatic kind of situations. So the class always combines this experiential element of actually having done in negotiation, we do that in the first part. And then we come back and show everybody that results, some people did really well, some people do poorly. And we spend the next amount of class time trying to unpack why that is. So I had to make myself smart about the negotiation literature in terms of the academic side of things in order to teach the class. And as I did that, and so we're talking about 1995 or so when I started teaching it, I began to get my own ideas about some things that I thought were done correctly in the literature and some enhancements that could be there. And just got really fluent in the research, much of which is done in psychology labs, or business school laboratories, I'm just kind of judgment and decision making. But there's a whole stream of negotiation researchers and I got to know that literature really well and saw some things that some ideas that I thought could add to it. And I began to bring those into the classroom. And in fact, this book, "One Step Ahead", I had started. So I talked for about a decade at Cornell, and then the last number of years at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. I began about 10 years, actually 12 years ago[i]], in the wrap up class to begin to do what is in the book, some of the data and finding some of the ideas about how to be tough and fair, how to be sophisticated, those began to filter into my kind of wrap up class for the quarter. And it became a book.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:50

One of the things that you just mentioned, you mentioned the ideas about how to be tough, or how to be fair. And I think that the toughness part is something that is different, or stood out to me compared to much of what the literature and also research is out there. And you dug deeper into that than what I've seen in other places. And it initially stood out to me because one of the things that I heard you say and I think you've also written is something to the effect of good people need to be able to negotiate with toughness, otherwise bad people always win. And that, to be honest, that statement actually hit me badly. First, because I'm like, hold on, what does he mean by toughness? And what about bad people versus good people? Like those are the things that into my brain, but as I kept going in your book, you start to really define what you mean when you say toughness. And I'm wondering if you could shed a little bit of light on that now for all of our listeners, first of all, because I found this very useful is to begin to unpack what does toughness actually mean and what role does it play as it relates to, not just negotiations but interactions as well leading up to negotiate. So what do you mean when you say toughness, first of all?

David Sally 20:02

Yeah. Well, I think you put your finger on a really important point, which is, I think, depending on the culture we come from, and for those of us coming from the US, we hear the word toughness, and we think a red face angry muscle man, that's toughness, right? That's we have this very male centric exterior version of what we think that characteristic is. And it may go back to western movies, and John Wayne, and you know, the PhD dissertations in English literature, I'm sure have been written on this. But for me, the single finding that comes out, so part of what I share with readers is that version of toughness makes it seem like, okay, I understand how that could be helpful. I've seen people operate like that in the business world or in other parts of my life. And sometimes that seems to go pretty well form, I profile in the book, Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate investor in Chicago, who fancies himself the grave dancer, he nicknamed himself and he is this version of toughness is very exterior and very apparent. And I think when people feel the see that version of toughness, you said, "Well, that's going to crowd out every positive quality that I want, as a person, as a business person, as just a human being, it's going to be... I can't do that." So in my classroom, I take... I actually, let me step back for just a sec, I'm going to come to the toughness, the data. So I actually part of how I make this very real for the students is their grades dependent on how good of a contract they sign. So they get evaluated every week on what kind of deal they made. And we soften an oval a little bit by dropping, you know, if they have a really disastrous one, the two lowest outcomes are dropped. And I won't go through all the details, but I basically get a performance score over the entire quarter. Or if I'm teaching corporate executives over a week long executive program. So I have a performance measure that says, "Okay, this person did 10, or 12, different deals, and pretty consistently, they came above average." And so when you total that up, that becomes a really high performing negotiator. And I see on the other end, obviously, some low performing people. After every negotiation, and this is a tool that's used by other business school professors, counterparts rate each other on personal qualities. Were you a good communicator? Were you fair? Were you a rational? Were you emotional? Were you tough? And so at the end of the quarter, and in the book, "One Step Ahead", I can say, okay, what's your mental model of what it means to be a really great negotiator? How important is it to be prepared, to be tough, to be creative? And people have different mental models, it tends to be in the main way that people are correct with their mental models is they think preparation is important, creativity is important and good communication is important. All true. They also have some doubts about toughness, some people think it's really great. Other people think, "Oh, no, that's going to really hurt you." Most business school executives, and many, many executives also think it's really important to be fair, to be seen as fair, it's good for relationships, it's good like that. And the data reveals that the single most important quality is to be tough, is to be seen and be perceived as tough. And you say, "Okay, wow, this is a dismal view of life." Again, if we're thinking about toughness as this kind of macho, horrible person to deal with. But the kicker comes, especially for the students who have been together for an entire quarter, 10 weeks[j] when I say, "Oh, well, let me show you five of your peers in the classroom who manage not only to be seen as the most tough people in the class, but also the most fair, and indeed, every year, there are a handful of people who are seen as very fair and very tough. Well, how can that be? Well, it can only be if we're wrong about the surface understanding of what toughness really is, it's not creating interpersonal conflict, there are ways to signal toughness to the other side where it's much more of an interior quality where you can be fluid and accommodating and easy to deal with on the outside. But toughness is really an interior quality and this is now we're getting back to sort of the way I think about toughness, I think about it as and these are great qualities when you're thinking about changing career or pursuing a career. It's about perseverance. It's about having goals. It's about being dedicated. It's being willing to say no when you have to say no, that you will draw and an image in the book is to think of the relationship of toughness and fairness are the sophisticated negotiator, as an ancient Chinese coin, which we've all seen at one time, or another, which is a round coin, only punched out of the middle was a square. And that was because the Chinese used to carry it around on a string their coins. So this idea is toughness is the square and the insight, it's sharp, it's no, it's the willingness to say, no, it's perseverance, its integrity. But the outside is round, it's fluid, you're accommodating, you say, "Yes, I can, I will talk with you with my counterpart about anything you want to talk about. But ultimately, in my interior, I have goals, I have objectives, and I have aggression in there. But I'm going to keep it in my interior and not necessarily in my exterior." And that's what I think these, the very best negotiators are able to do that be people who can preserve relationships, their counterparts will come to them again and again to deal with even though they know the interaction will be great. But ultimately, there's going to be a strong demands coming at them. They know that the tough fair negotiator will tell them no, might tell them no in a really nice way. But it will be clear what the limits are. That is the version of toughness as being much more about interior qualities than external performance kind of getting red in the face, or anger or macho stuff.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:26

That is, I believe, and I found it to be a much more useful, helpful, functionally, well useful and helpful functionally as a way to not just negotiate, but also I would say influence as well. And what I'm curious about is how we can take those ideas, the idea of toughness, the idea of fairness, the idea of that's not a dichotomy, necessarily, that is actually something that can coexist when you have different definitions or boxes drawn around what those actually are. So how can we take those ideas? And how can we use them? We take like a real situation that we have somebody going through right now where they are in the, I would say beginning stages, what I would call the beginning stages of a job offer negotiation and for the sake of protecting the innocent and not so innocent, let's go ahead and just call this person "Ruth". Ruth sounds like a great name. But anyhow, Ruth right now is at the place where she is anticipating a job offer, that's probably likely to happen in the next two weeks[k] here. And right then and there is a great point because that's where we can begin to use some of these concepts functionally. So take me through this idea as Ruth goes through her different stages of bargaining and negotiating as a relates to a job offer, how might she bring in some of these ideas for toughness, fairness, and everything else we've talked about up till now?

David Sally 28:03

It's a great question. And it's one that I'm... when I'm teaching both MBAs and executive. One of the main reasons people take a negotiation classes is to be able to ask the professor this question, you know, I'm going through a job offer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:16

Not here for the class, but I do anticipate... sometime in this quarter.

David Sally 28:21

I want to bump up my salary. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:23

Can I schedule my office time now?

David Sally 28:25

Yeah, exactly. Definitely. No, the first class, never by the office hours, at the end of first class, we're at an up "Hey, do you mind if I come by to your office and talk to you about it?" And it's totally, totally fair. So I'm going to give let's deal with Ruth situation, I'm going to give some of my generic advice and see if we can work it into the kind of round on the outside and square on the inside.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:45

Perfect.

David Sally 28:46

So round on the outside for me, one of the main things, I heard a couple points. One is the job offer negotiation is you are already a pseudo employee or pseudo independent contractor with the organization you're talking about with, you're already being evaluated. And if you think you're not, you're sadly mistaken. So therefore, the accommodating the roundness part is to be hyper aware of that fact. And then they use vocabulary and ideas that have currency within the organization that you're talking with. So let me give you two examples that I can think of in my own past where I've counseled students. So I might have students who are eager to do what I did back in the day with a strategy consulting firm, that kind of firm is analytical data driven. So therefore, if I'm going to negotiate with them, I want to negotiate on facts, evidence, numbers, tables, spreadsheets, I want to show them that I can gather the relevant data that I can parse it through that I can say, "Hey, here's what my peers have, you know, here's the average starting salary for people who are like me, here's my data, I'll share it with you completely. Here's how I've crunched it and made it, I'm not kind of throw a US spreadsheet with, I'm going to show you that I'm already a consultant that I'm going to, I might put it in a chart, I'm going to think about the language and the ways whatever clues I have in terms of how they would communicate it." A marketing, let's say, it's more of a marketing or sales job, similar kind of thing. I want to be negotiating with the language and the style and the culture that's relevant for them and making my... so then I'm probably more in whatever it means to pitch in that particular company, in that particular work, then I'm pitching myself, okay, what does it mean to pitch yourself, especially pitch yourself to a particular organization, there are clues that you can gather from your the interactions that you've had from some research. So that's the way I would think about the roundness of kind of adapting the fluidity to work with the counterpart that you're dealing with in a way that, as you said, totally correctly, this is negotiation is influence, I'm not trying to change the way they're or hopefully confirmed the way they're thinking about me how awesome I am, right? This squareness comes to, there are basic economic realities. If poor Ruth is negotiating a job right now, with unemployment at the level set it is, it just on a macro economic level, leverage is going to be limited. So you've got to be... that is the square part, that is kind of seeing life clearly north south. But so the Chinese when they had this image, the Emperor set in a square in the middle and could see clearly north, south, east, west. That's part of what you do in the square, I have my dreams and my ideals. But I'm looking clearly north, south, east, west. And if I'm negotiating a job right now, with unemployment at 15%, plus, and if I don't have another offer in hand, then I want to be extra careful, I want to see clearly how much leverage I really have in a situation. In other situations I want to not be afraid of when they do have leverage. And I see north south east west that I am the number one candidate or they've already committed to me, then I want to make sure that I leverage that. And that's toughness. That's like seeing things clearly. And being willing to have there's a courage to the interior part of toughness, that I think people who were exterior tough are ultimately cowards, and I can think of one in Washington, DC. And I can think of a number of other people whose external toughness is ultimately cowardice because they don't have the interior courage to be willing to risk. So I think there's a bit of courage even when you don't have leverage, there are ways to ask for more, a higher salary, in a way and this is where the toughness combines with the roundness to do it in a way that communicates what is fair or whatever levers, you have to say, No, you need to pay me more money than you are currently offering. But do it in a way that allows as tough as possible while still working with the counterpart.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:11

I think that's so wonderful. And I appreciate you pointing out how you must be sensitive and aware of what are the situations that you're in, and you use the example of, hey, in a consulting business versus I'm in a sales type role versus any other situation, everyone is going to be slightly different. And there's going to be different, I'm just going to call them levers and buttons for lack of a better phrase that they are more likely to respond to based on, you know, what they're used to. That said, how can we do some of that? You know, I heard you say just a moment ago, there's ways to do this. What would be some examples when we can either keep going within those couple environments?

David Sally 33:53

Yeah, no, that's great. That's great, because especially you did a great job because we're helping Ruth. So I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that to her counterpart, Ruth is seen as a woman. Okay. We know some specific problems that women encounter in negotiations for being tough. And there's a whole chapter in the book in which I describe some of the research on gender and negotiations and the advantages and the disadvantages of being a woman while negotiating. And a slight aside, the central character is one of my favorite in the book, a woman, a white Mississippi housewife in 1949, who Lillian MacMurray, who started trumpet Records, which became for a few years one of the main record labels for gospel music, r&b and country music. She was a real pioneer and it's super fascinating person. So what can Ruth do, Ruth faces a problem that many women do which is no surprise for the listeners, it is that much harder to be tough to be seen as tough as a woman. It's got all kinds of stereotype issues and feedback issues. You're not just tough, you're witch, right. Two specific tactics in the book that seemed to work and let me admit it the outset, it stinks that life is like this right now. But let's deal with the reality of this, the fact that there is gender bias, and there is a stereotype. So how do you get around it? There's a law professor at Marquette University who has labeled the first tactic, the mother bear Grizzly exception. So women, and this is all based on real world research, women are allowed to be tough if it's not for themselves, but for another, hence the mother bear exception. So part of what you can do is, if I am a need to be tougher in a negotiation, I find a way to say I'm doing this because I've got a family to feed because I have people depending on me, I'm using words and images to signal that I'm doing this because I am a mother bear and not for myself, because both men and women counterparts and it's not just male counterparts, it's also women counterparts will be more judgmental, and will activate stronger stereotypes against a woman who is negotiating for solely for herself than without this kind of mother bear exception. So in the book, and and I share this advice with, again, with Andrew Snyder, who's the professor at Marquette, invent a client. If you don't have a client, and this can be a way to generate internal toughness for the negotiator as well that I am doing this on behalf of my future self, on behalf of my partner, on behalf of my kids, on behalf of my department, when I am a leader in an organization or on behalf of my organization, that there is a way for many women negotiators to generate that toughness. So that's the first thing, the mother bear exception. The second tactic is called relational account. So it goes back to the same thing that in our society, women aren't allowed to be seen as tough. So that relational account says a woman can be an effective, tough negotiator if they give an account that their boss or mentor has told them that this is the right tactic, this is what they should be doing. So that is the relational account, they're going to weave a story about how somebody else told them that this was the right thing to do. So I can tell all the listeners out there by one step ahead and say that "David Sally totally that this is how it's supposed to negotiate." This is and honestly joking aside, I tell my students this too, that you're in my class, you've learned this, my professor told me, I have to ask for more. Because if I don't, I'm engaging in malpractice, on my own behalf. So use relations. So women can use relational accounts, whether it's advice that they say they got from a mentor from a trusted source to say this, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to come back and ask for a bump and pay of 25%. But my mentor slash professors slash trusted advisor, whatever it is said that I have to do it. This is what I have to, he advise me that I have to do this. So that's kind of the nitty gritty of how the extra challenges that Ruth is going to have in this world just because of the female stereotype.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:39

On a totally, well related note, but slightly different direction. So I think, you know what you said earlier, just acknowledging the fact that that's screwed up in, I think were the words that you were used earlier, that that is what it is right now. And well, I want to be cognizant of both sides in that, that is what it is right now. I'm also curious what your opinion, just, you know, I have a 12 year old daughter, I would love to see some of those stereotypes change over time. I'm just curious. what your opinion is of, what do you think it'll take to change that? I don't really related to as much as the to the topic exactly. But I'm just curious.

David Sally 39:19

I have my youngest, is a 25 year old young woman who, yeah, look, and I think that I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer what's gonna... I mean I think the answer is representation. The answer is more women in running organizations. The answer is having a woman be president, having a woman more women as CEOs, more... it's just representation, I mean, I think is a fairly enlightened, I've always fancied myself as an enlightened male, and I'm Father daughter, but I realized that I think it's slowly seeping into our male brains that we talk over women in meetings and I'm guilty of that and I'm being and what I'm calling in the classroom and allowing a student to blather on or not, I want to make sure that it's not gender based, you know, I don't want to let the male students blather on because they're guys and making sure that all the kind of pathologies of women not getting credit for the ideas that they generate in meetings. So I'm trying to do my own little part, but honestly, in a macro sense, it's just got to be representation. And I hope, you know, my other small contribution is I honestly believe that the secret of one step ahead as a book is it's actually written for women. And the beautiful thing is this, I think women have a harder time being average negotiators think they have an easier time being great negotiators. I think these qualities that we talked about, about toughness being more interior, and about an adaptive bill, about being more naturally cognizant of the social intricacies and complexities, which is this outer fluidity and the ability to operate in the world, those tend to be more female traits in our society, honestly, than male traits, I think men to be great negotiators have more to overcome than most women do. I think that women are starting with a big advantage in terms of the fact that they have most of their character, the way that they would think of themselves as tough tend to be interior qualities to begin with, whether it's through self image, or just the messages that they're getting from the larger society. So you know, one of the most interesting experiments in negotiations on gender is this, the participants were divided into two groups, one group was told that there's been research and this was made up, there was been research done that said, male quality, that they weren't labeled male qualities, but they were being assertive. Being firm, maybe even being a little angry, is good for negotiating, the other group was told. And in that setting, women underperformed as negotiators, the second setting was the both men and women participants were told, the best quality, research has shown that the best qualities of a negotiator our ability to listen, and ability to adapt to what the counterparts interests are, all things ever generally label female kinds of qualities in that setting, women outperformed men. And the hidden message of one step ahead is that research, even though it was kind of a little made up is actually right. Female qualities are in fact that they these female qualities of interior toughness, perseverance, willingness to say no, integrity, etc, etc. That is what it takes to be a sophisticated advanced negotiator.

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:50

I appreciate you sharing. And I have one parting question just for all of our listeners, as they are going into, not just job offer negotiations, but as they are wanting to become better at negotiation bargaining influencing, what advice would you give them?

David Sally 43:11

First I have to fix gender and society.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:14

And I know you've got. There's no small task here.

David Sally 43:17

Yeah, I think that probably there's two big flaws that I think people under prepare for the negotiations, you should spend more time that we talked about early on about the amount of time that people spend shopping for a TV versus something. Same thing with negotiations, people don't spend enough time, spend more time and in the book, part of the reason I think part of that is is just the way our minds are wired for important decisions and negotiation, you know, negotiating a job offers is somehow no different than retirement savings and that level, but it's also people don't know what to do to prepare. And there's a whole chapter in the book that lays gives people a checklist form. And it's the form that I train my students to use and think about this element. You know, what are your interests? What are your goals? What are you do this, do that? And the fascinating thing is, it has two blank columns. So it's got issues like what are the issues in the negotiation? What are your interests? What are your goals, and then it has to blank columns. And early on, students will say, "Well, why are there two blank columns? Because I can fill it out for myself. But what should I put in that other column?" I said, "Well, how many people are in this negotiation? You know, are there... is it just you? Are you negotiating engine? No." There's a counterpart and many people, not all people, many people don't realize that they avoid thinking through stepping into the other side shoes and thinking through what are they trying to achieve, where are they coming from? So I'd say that's the other big advice is take to spend more time prepping yourself, but part of that preparation is force yourself, if you don't naturally think this way, and some economists do, and some negotiators do automatically and these are, you know, great salesmen do all the time. Right? Great salespeople are thinking through the customers mindset all the time. But not all of us are like that. In fact, I think in the book, who would something like 60% of us are not naturally that way. So force yourself to wait, okay, what do I know about the person I'm negotiating with? What are their interests? Where are they coming from? What offers are they likely to? What kind of language are they likely to use and force yourself to go through that, and you'll be amazed both that you can pull clues and figure some things out. And you'll feel that the whole point of preparation is just like an actor, you're ready to improvise, you know what you're doing, you've thought it through. And when you hear a line from the other side, you are able to react in real time to it. And that's part of being super effective.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:00

I love it. And I appreciate you taking the time and making the time there's been a super fun conversation. So I appreciate that as well. Where can people who want to learn more about you or get the book, where can they go to be able to do those things?

David Sally 46:14

You can get "One Step Ahead" on amazon.com, at your local bookshop, now that they're reopening and about me, I'm on Twitter a little bit, it's gonna have a little harder time finding out about me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:29

Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that 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 47:38

Okay, here's a story we hear all the time, you did the work, identified what you wanted, found a role with an organization that you want to join, you got through all the interviews, you met everybody, organization was a fit, you nailed it, you got an offer. Except that the offers not quite everything that you're hoping for. Maybe the salaries not quite meeting your expectations. Or maybe it's half the amount of vacation time that you've grown accustomed to. Maybe it doesn't have all the leadership or mentorship capacities that you're interested in, maybe the role itself needs to be modified.

48:12

I mean, I know that's a crazy signing bonus. But I'm also like, this is a C suite role and the salary at 130 is just not, see it, like if we do any type of comp analysis, 130 is not what a person of my experience for 15 years[l] to master's degrees, the extent of what the role it's just under. But I also know we're talking about a startup. So I just don't know how flexible I should be. And again, I don't want to leave any money on the table..

Scott Anthony Barlow 48:38

Look, when you get to this situation, I understand the stakes are high. You want to negotiate your offer, you also don't want to blow it. So how do you tell this organization? The same organization that you just spent so much time and effort going through the interview process, meeting all the people, determining that it actually is a fit, they finally made this offer, it's your ideal role but, guess what? You need more. And how do you not offend them, by the way? How do you avoid sounding greedy or like you're going to be difficult to work with? These all sound like problems, it's not a great way to start off. However, there absolutely is not one way but multiple ways. So today on the podcast, we don't normally do this but I'm actually sharing with you a recording of a coaching session with one of our clients where we help her negotiate an offer but get this, she not only ended up accepting the offer, but raised her total comp package from 165k, to not 175k not 185k.. 359k. Right. Okay. Hang tight to hear exactly how we did that. All that and plenty more next week[m] 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!

[a][02:08] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[g][14:56] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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