K. Adam Bloom 00:01

The truth was that the process of litigation was just not interesting to me. It was tedious and boring, and you know, mostly what I found was that the clients who could pay were mostly not worthwhile, and the clients who were worthwhile couldn't pay. And so if you want to have those two sides of feeling like your work is satisfying and having a comfortable standard of living within the legal profession, it's very, very hard.

Introduction 00:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:55

Becoming a lawyer can seem like a dream job– one of the high status ones that we look to when we're younger, like a doctor, engineer, astronaut, architect, hot dog eating competitor, just me? No. Okay. But lawyers definitely make that list. These careers are sold to us as a destination to success. Once you achieve it, you've made it. So why is it that we work with so many lawyers here at Happen To Your Career who want out of being an attorney? It turns out careers are never one size fits all. Something that is great for one person won't be great for the next. Many lawyers get to a point in their career where they feel like they need to make a change, whether it's burnout, stress, boredom, a values misalignment, a shift in priorities, they get to the point where they're interested in doing something else, something that fits them and their life so much better. Here's the funny thing, though, we found that there are a variety of fields that can be really challenging to leave. Teaching is one of those. And as it turns out, being a lawyer, being an attorney, is also on that list, not because there's nothing else out there for lawyers, but because the decision to leave alone can be a huge obstacle. Turns out, many different types of psychological, we'll call them psychological impositions, in the form of fears can hold them back. This shows up in so many different ways. For example, sunk cost fallacy. This is the fear that if I make a change I'll feel like I've wasted all the years of education, training and experience, and as it turns out, like there's a lot going to law school. My sister is an attorney. A lot of my friends are attorneys or have been attorneys. You've got undergrad, you've got the LSATs, you got law school at the bar, all the things, all of the education and intensity required to become a lawyer, generally takes seven years, sometimes longer. What about the comfort zone? Well, fear of uncertainty shows up as a risk. It's hard to justify leaving the comfort zone of a secure and well paying job, let alone a secure and well paying career, or what people perceive as a secure and well paying career. Here's another one, though. What about wasting all of those skills and experience? This shows up as that fear that my skills are not going to transfer to a new field. Here's some good news, though, because what we found is that all of these fears are totally bogus. They feel real, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are actually real. For example, the skills developed in a legal career– analytical thinking, being able to research right, negotiation, attention to detail, all of those things are incredibly transferable. What about the knowledge of the law itself? Oh, my goodness, that is something that almost acts like an umbrella over nearly any other profession that makes it more valuable. The years you've put into your law career are not wasted, and you can find another secure job, maybe even one that pays more. It is possible, but don't just take our word for it. On this episode, we're going to share stories of four attorneys, all from various different situations, who we got to work with when each of them were looking for help in their career changes, specifically, Jenna, Adam, Rebecca and Rob. Each of them shared their thoughts with us about figuring out that law, or at least the track they were on in law, was not the right fit for them. You're gonna hear how they finally reached the tipping point of making a change, their tips and their tools for enacting change and advice for making it happen. But to make this interesting, we're going to share each of their stories, but phrase it up with one of the big reasons why people are looking to leave the profession of law.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:52

Reason number one, burnout. I want you to meet Jenna. She had been a criminal prosecutor since graduating from Law School, and she actually loved it until she didn't. In the beginning of her career, she pictured herself prosecuting criminals until she retired. However, I want you to fast forward a few years. Jenna started a family, and not long after, began feeling burned out trying to juggle her demanding career with being a mom at the same time. Her priorities had shifted and the things she had once valued in her job just didn't seem as important. I'm gonna let her share a little bit more about that, though. I asked her the question, what led up to her saying, "I need to make a change"?

Jenna Murphy 05:33

Becoming a mom, getting married, yes, having two babies. I have a four year old. He just turned four in June, and I have a little over two and a half years old. He'll be three in January. And that, always, I guess, somewhere new inside of me that would change me. I just didn't realize how much it was going to change me. And it was those times that just really bothered me that I had spent, you know, I tried to be good to them and put them to bed and do all the things. But then many have not sat on my couch prepping for a trial that my husband sat beside me and didn't get any attention because I was working only to stand in front of a jury and a jury be like, "Yeah, whatever." And then my kids had a Thanksgiving program at school, at daycare. And I can remember being in court almost running to my car to get back to daycare or to get to daycare to be there to watch them. My mom and my dad had come from where they live. My husband was there. And so, of course, I rushed in and I watched this program. Thankfully, I didn't miss any of it, and but then I watched the clock the entire time I was there and then rushed back to go back to court, and I think that was probably the straw that really broke the camel's back, for lack of better explanation, was that I just knew at that point that I couldn't juggle both things. I realized in that moment that the setup of being a prosecutor wasn't going to give me... it wasn't about being able to work from home or asking for those leniencies, it was the fact that Judge set the schedule and that then we had to consult that before we could do anything. And I understand, that's part of it, but there becomes a point in life where you have to decide, "Can I continue in this path? Or do I have to decide that it's time for me to be some and do something different?

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:27

On top of her job, not being flexible enough for her young family, the pressures of her job started harming her mental health.

Jenna Murphy 07:34

By that point, the burnout was so bad that my therapist looked at me at one point and she's like, "I know you don't want to take meds anymore, but I need you to go back on some type of medication because you are worrying me", not that I don't take that and I was going to hurt myself, but she could just see the physical change in me that I was depressed. I didn't want to get out of bed. I was doing what was minimally required of me to be a mom and I wasn't in a good place.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:02

Jenna was able to make a change to a remote role as an Associate General Counsel, doing the type of work that she really enjoyed. But it didn't stop there. Not only did she get to spend much more time with her family, but additionally, she was able to make other changes, and now is Vice President of Strategy and Development, working for a legal firm, still able to use her experience, still able to utilize many of the skills she developed, and in a completely different fashion. Very cool, right? So here's her advice for others wanting to make a change.

Jenna Murphy 08:39

I would give them permission– it's okay. Because I wallowed with that. I felt guilty for the longest time. There are probably people who still don't know the process that I went through, the links that I went through to make this career change happen. I was scared in that process that it would be detrimental to the job that I really needed because I have a husband and two children and really needed to stay in that place. You know, I didn't need to be unemployed before I was employed somewhere else, thankful for the opportunity that I had, but I would give them permission to go after that. But the other thing is make sure that you define what it is that you want, don't settle because there were times where I probably would have.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:25

Let's talk about reason number two, mental health struggles. I mentioned this for Jenna. However, it tends to be a common reason people are interested in changing from not just an attorney, but especially an attorney and law profession. The stress and emotional drain of work can have a detrimental impact on mental health. In fact, the Journal of Addiction Medicine published a detailed study finding that lawyers suffer from higher rates of depression, anxiety and substance abuse disorders compared to almost every other profession. If you didn't know that, this is not good news, but it's for some of the reasons that we talked about earlier. So let's talk about how to deal with that. I want you to meet Rebecca. Rebecca was a lawyer. She was working in the political arena in Washington, DC, but decided she needed a career change when the pressures of her job began causing health issues. Here's Rebecca explaining.

Rebecca 10:19

When you're in this zone, or when you're doing this, especially if you've had a lot of time and energy vested into it, and there are a lot of things, not usually black and white, it's not like a voice from God comes down, unless you just... There's lucky people, right, that keeping burning bush. You're like, "Oh yeah, there's the burning bush. Cool. I got my instructions. Let's grow." For me, I don't remember who told me this or where I read this, but it's like the little things, you start feeling a little itch. And you say, "Maybe, am I crazy?" And so you think, "Yeah, you know, everything else is going on. Let's just keep going with this. Or maybe it's just me, maybe, like I did that for a while, or I thought, okay, I'm not handling this correctly. I need to go running. I need to make sure I'm getting my energy out. I need to make sure I'm following up on where I've made mistakes and try not to do those again. I need to be like accountable. I need to, you know, you try to fix all the other things." But there was a moment for me, I think, I don't know, I would say for other listeners, if there's a moment where you know something's really off, whether it's like that moment where you snap at someone you didn't realize you didn't mean to and they went way beyond what you normally are, you think this is not where I'm supposed to be. Something's wrong. I would say, listen to that. I think my moment was, this was a long time before I made my move out of DC, but at the moment, I went into the dentist's office, they did an x ray of my molars, and the nerves just looked like scrambled eggs. I'm not out of my 20s, and they said, "Look, you are clenching your teeth so hard at night from stress that you have messed up your nerve endings. And if you keep going like this, you're going to need root canals for all four teeth by the time you're 30." And it kind of made me sit down and say, "something's wrong, something's really wrong." And I kind of try to, like, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, right? Keep going, keep going. You can do it. Just keep focused. Everyone goes and runs into issues like this. And then eventually something starts to get and say, "You know, maybe something is off."

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:25

Rebecca thought that she needed to get out of law to be happy, but realized the environment that she was in was actually what was making her situation so miserable. So she moved across the country, found a job that she actually enjoys in California. Here's her advice for other lawyers who are thinking about making a change,

Rebecca 12:44

Talk to somebody who... Reach out to someone, talk to friends, say "Hey, do you want me to do this sort of thing? I think it's interesting." And maybe meet up for coffee because a five minute conversation, because people are busy, right, like, if it lasts for an hour, great, if it lasts for five minutes, great, saying, "Hi. I think what you do is amazing. I'm really curious what do you in your job?" I would say, it's worth it. It's no pressure. And if it works out, that's how most people find their jobs anyways. And if you're in that moment and thinking, "Okay, there's nothing, geez, I'm so entrenched to where I am", like, moving to a different opportunity is kind of a joke. I would say you're probably wrong, unless you're in an extremely niche field, because skills are transferable, and it's worth saying, trying the boot camp stuff, maybe doing a StrengthFinders analysis, doing something just to get a different perspective. And ultimately, like, if people are telling you, "you've got the dream", but something doesn't feel right, that's fine. That's fine. Trust that. And if people are angry, they'll come around, especially if you're like, you know this wrong, you're going to make yourself happy, it's going to make everyone else happy, right? Like, do the right thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:03

Let's talk about a totally different reason why many are not interested in continuing on in law. They get bored and can perceive being a lawyer as mindless and boring. And here's the thing, like, you probably got into law to help people, and if you feel like you're not doing that, or you don't feel like your work has enough of an impact, like you're bogged down by billing and meetings and contracts, or you just feel like a problem fixer and can't see that impact, or you can't be creative, well then, as it turns out, that's not going to be a good thing for you forever. I want you to meet Adam. Adam Bloom did not want to be a lawyer from almost day one. It didn't feel meaningful to him. He didn't feel like he was making the impact that he thought he would, and most of all, he was bored. Since he was a lawyer for many years, he went in thinking like he was going to be doing all of this meaningful work, helping people in a really wonderful way that only the legal profession can but he ended up doing the same thing over and over again, and that created this boredom for him, and the boredom made it feel like there wasn't much of an impact there. Here's him sharing this realization.

K. Adam Bloom 15:16

I remember when I did orientation my first year of law school was at University of Arizona, and then I transferred to UCLA, where I graduated. But there was a speaker at orientation in Arizona who gave this very impassioned speech about how being a lawyer was like being a samurai. And he said that one of his favorite feelings was to walk into a courtroom and know that everyone in the courtroom was against him. And he said, and you take out your sword, and you just wade in and you're just going to go and fight and come out with having persuaded everybody to be on your side. And I'd worked in politics, and I kind of, I liked the idea of law as almost a fighting style where it's like, I don't want to get in a fight with fists or knives or guns. I want to get in a fight with words and ideas. That's the kind of battle that I want to have, and that's what I want to do with my career. And I want to find so I kind of felt like Ronan. I was the wandering samurai. I was looking for the fight that was worth having. I can talk, I can write, I can think, I can strategize. Who can I do this for that would feel satisfying? Would it be worth my time? And I swear to you, in 12 years, I don't think I ever found it. And the truth was that the process of litigation was just not interesting to me. It was tedious and boring. And you know, mostly what I found was that the clients who could pay were mostly not worthwhile, and the clients who were worthwhile couldn't pay. And so if you want to have those two sides of feeling like your work is satisfying and having a comfortable standard of living within the legal profession, it's very, very hard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:46

Adam realized he was in the wrong profession and referred to his time in law as career jail. But here's more of what he had to say about that.

K. Adam Bloom 16:55

I just never found a home in the legal profession that felt like that combination of the things that you talk about that you and I have spoken about at length, people who share your values, people who treat you in a way that you want to be treated, that you enjoy working with, you enjoy personally, at least to some degree, so that you can spend a lot of time around them and work that feels meaningful and feels like a fit and also allows you to support yourself in a lifestyle that meets your needs and your wants, frankly, and I just never found that combination of factors in legal profession. And it increasingly felt ridiculous where, as a lawyer, you're working insanely hard on very complicated issues and making just a lot less money than people who are working much less hard on less complicated things that look like a lot more fun. And at some point, I think for me, I woke up and I said, "I don't want to be the lawyer. I want to be the client. I'm tired of helping other people with their stupid ideas. I want to work on my stupid ideas."

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:52

When we got to work with Adam, we got to work with him as a client. But then, as he was beginning to run some of his own experiments about where he thought he could find fulfilling work, we actually became a part of one of those experiments. Because at the time, we happened to be looking for some content creation to be done, and it just made sense, based on Adam's skill set, and he was going through some of the same things at the same time. So that's not every client that we work with, but it made it really fun to get to know Adam in a new and different way and just be part of that experimentation. And this allowed him to move to a content strategist role at Coinbase, and eventually he made another transition to a role that was even better fit for him as Chief Marketing Officer for a communications agency. Here's what he had to say about moving out of law.

K. Adam Bloom 18:45

I started the career change process, and they said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to be a TV writer." That's where this started. And so, you know, I was not like, "I want to be a cryptocurrency content strategist." Not one of those words was anywhere in my mind as a career option when I started this process, it really requires a sort of, I would say, radical open mindedness. You just have to accept the fact that you don't necessarily know where this is going to go or how it's going to get there, and like the Animaniacs theme song, you have to expect the unexpected. Just lean into it. Just let it wash over you because it's an adventure. And, you know, it has ups and it has downs and it has setbacks. But if you just keep going, just stick with it and keep going, you will get there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:28

Okay, let's talk about this last reason. Reasons why people want to make a move from law. This one's particularly interesting. If you're feeling stuck, almost every time you feel stuck, that is, well, it's something that is going to cause your situation to feel even more painful. Now this shows up in so many different ways. If you've never found a role that truly fit you before, or you haven't ever done work that was enjoyable, then it might feel like it's impossible. So when you're a lawyer and moving through law school, one of the things my attorney friends and our clients have said over and over again is that you become really great at moving through large amounts of work and developing incredible persistence. So that shows up in continuing to be a lawyer too. Even if you haven't found a role that fits, you continue to persist believing that being an attorney is supposed to be the answer. And if you've put all this time in anyways, like we talked about earlier, and it's your only experience, then it might feel like you don't have a hope of doing anything different, which then leads us back to stuck. This is where I want you to meet Rob. Rob felt like he needed to find this one career that would be the perfect fit, I'm doing air quotes you can't see it, but thought that being a lawyer would be the answer. His realization was that it's okay to shift and not compare himself to others. Here's what he had to say about that.

Rob 21:05

I think for me, I will say, I had an impulse that it was very difficult to iron out what I was missing versus where I should be at this point in my career. Because if I took a look at peers and even folks closer to me, even personally, all I saw, perhaps due to my dysmorphic kind of view on it was achievement and satisfaction. I mean, I couldn't see anything specific to those instances that said struggle. I just saw, "Wow, everyone loves what they're doing and they're achieving and they're getting all of these external rewards from it, so they must be on the right path." I don't feel that way. What's wrong with me, you know? So I think it really led to an internal kind of first, a recognition. I think that the external stuff is important and cool, but for me, it ended up looking like, even if I get that stuff, I really need to be sure about the internal stuff, because it doesn't work the other way, at least for me, because in arguably, in some ways, I had kind of progressed in some ways, perhaps not relative to other folks, maybe not as meteoric, for sure, but there was some incremental and measurable achievement, but it wasn't satisfying on a personal level. Like it wasn't, or, I should say, wasn't as satisfying as I may have hoped previously. And so I think that really laid the groundwork for me to really figure out which is probably coinciding with what I happened upon Happen To Your Career is really kind of figuring that out. I mean, right down to the highly personal approach to, you know, what are the things that stick out from a strengths perspective? I mean, we talked a few moments ago about, you know, you may be good at something, but does that mean that you should really form an entire career around something that you might be good at, but will it really click internally for you as you kind of figure out and formulate that sense of in a way that's very amorphous, you know, who you are, certainly as a person, but also as a professional. So I think the work that Jennifer and I did on the strengths at least initially, was helpful and sort of put some things into context, but it also allowed for growth in ways that maybe didn't show up on a strengths analysis, right? It didn't really pigeonhole you into why you should absolutely do this stuff, because that's what the test said. You know, it's sort of putting some things into perspective and having a sense of, "Okay, yeah, that registers on a certain level. But what does that mean practically?" You know, is there some magic career track that will just change everything I'm going through? The answer is no. You know, it's kind of allowing yourself to not feel bad about wanting to change course and grow in ways you didn't think you would, and being good with everything that you've learned up until this point, even though it might not be the trajectory. I'm on the rest of my life, at least, you know there are some really practical, valuable skills that you learn, doing what you do, no matter what it is, and really kind of taking a moment to let that resonate and not beat yourself up about, not having it all figured out at age 21.

Rob 24:32

Now, Rob works for a Healthcare Corporation. And knows that as a lawyer, he's not pigeonholed, not in the way he thought he was at all. Here's what he had to say to others who might feel stuck in the career that they've chosen.

Rob 24:46

First of all, I would say that it's not a transition that will be the one and done. We are all in this and now have the realization that it's a transition that we make, maybe it's not every other month, hopefully, but it will have to be made again on some level, I think, certainly without giving the diligence it deserves doing the work. I often feel like I've done some work in this way. I know that's kind of a term that's bandied about quite a bit. I do truly feel that the work that you all put out on Happen To Your Career around the self assessments, the exercises, I think that's really important if you're being sort of, if you bring that honesty to it and just sort of let it all bear out, whether it's in the context of those exercises or not, you do yourself a disservice if you're just not being honest with yourself. And I will admit that before this process, I engaged in with you all. I don't want to say there was dishonesty, but it was just sort of a level of authenticity, I think that I found myself using in this context that I would recommend for folks. I mean, there's not going to be a silver bullet. It's going to look different for everyone, but as long as you bring your true self to whatever it is you're trying to figure out, career wise, there's a way. It may not look like what you have your vision of it exactly. I mean, I certainly wouldn't say that I envisioned myself in the work situation that I am now. But I'm satisfied with it. I mean, so I think along with discovery comes the sense of you have some agency over what happens to you. I mean, you can drive it to some extent, and as long as you're okay with leveraging resources that you probably have, you just may not have, may not be obvious to you. I mean, I think that's a nice recipe for figuring something out. So that's what I would say. And then I would say, you know, who knows? I think in my situation, I think I will find myself at a spot where I, depending on where I go here, there's now this opening of just constantly, kind of, doing a service to myself, to sort of say I value feeling good about my work. And should I not feel good about my work, what am I going to do about it? And I think it's a realization that I have that I guess constantly, have to challenge myself to make sure that things are good, and if they're not, then to take some concrete steps toward making them good.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08

Here's the thing I'm hoping you're taken away from all of these other stories and audio from people who have made transitions that are really great for them. Each time refining their moves and making it better and better, and ultimately crafting the life that they want to build, inclusive of work, that takeaway, well, making a career change doesn't mean you've lost everything. You're not erasing everything. You're not starting from scratch. Whether you're feeling burned out, bored, stressed, stuck, whatever, you've heard how other lawyers who were once feeling the same way, how they transitioned to fulfilling careers without feeling like they wasted the years of legal experience. Instead, they moved on to work that fits them, where they can use their innate strengths and earn skills in new, impactful ways. So yes, it is very common to feel trapped by this investment of time and effort you've put into becoming a lawyer, and I think that's true for many other professions too, but especially as an attorney, I don't want you to let that fear hold you back. You don't need to settle. It's okay to pursue something and find something that fits you better. And how many more people will you be able to help if you are in a new career, new situation, you feel productive, you feel good about how you're helping others, acknowledging that you deserve a job that aligns with your values and needs is a huge first step. So give yourself a lot of credit for recognizing that. But I also want you to go a step further and realize that you can add a tremendously different impact to society. If you step out of the place where you are currently in and step into something that is a better fit, you'll contribute differently, you'll be able to show up in the world differently. And most importantly, your years in law can be the foundation for a rewarding new career. Now it's up to you. I want you to take action.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:08

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:01

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

Speaker 6 30:07

Work was work. Work was something to earn the money so you can have fun. So I never even... It never even crossed my mind that I could be happy or have fun with my work, which I am doing now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:21

It's happened to most of us. You're cruising along in your career, doing what you think you should be doing, because it's what everyone always told you was right. You follow the directions, and you're on autopilot. You're keeping your head down, you're doing the work, and suddenly it hits you. A moment of clarity, almost like a pothole in the road, jars you awake, making you question everything, "How did I end up here? Where am I going? Who am I?" You realize you're not happy, not fulfilled, and you wonder if you can escape this hole you've dug into a career that you don't enjoy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:57

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

Kristy Wenz 00:00

I think it's scary because the stakes are higher. Like, I was more invested. I finally found something that was fueling my passion, got me excited every day, and so to leave it was scary.

Introduction 00:12

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:42

Making a career change is not a happy ever after. Even though sometimes it can look that way– going from an unenjoyable draining career to finding your ideal role can feel like the happy ending of your favorite RomCom. What they usually don't show in the movies, and what we don't often get to cover in the podcast, is the work that comes after. Learning to thrive in your ideal career often includes continually pivoting and experimenting so that you make sure that you're optimizing it in a way that aligns with your vision.

Kristy Wenz 01:13

You know, you just grow up with that type A and that stereotype in your head that you're just supposed to go out and find that career path, and you're supposed to make it in that career, and that's the job you go to every day, right? And there's nothing wrong with that being different opportunities that make up a full time career instead of one full time thing. It's several part time and freelance opportunities, so I'm making it work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:35

Okay. So this is what we like to call a "Where are they now?" episode. Kristy had been working in marketing and PR for almost two decades, and in an industry she wasn't particularly thrilled with. So she decided she wanted to make a career change to something that would really excite her. So she defined the four significant desires of her dream career as travel, wine, history, and culture. Then she began experimenting and test driving different ways that she could fit all of these into a career. When she realized wine, travel, and communication would check all of those boxes, she approached the CEO of a wine tourism company and asked for a role running their communications, and they said "yes". They worked together to create a position that utilized her unique skills, Kristy's the perfect example of how people who are willing to do unconventional things end up getting unconventional opportunities. Okay, so fast forward to now, though, Kristy had a lot of exciting things happening for her because she continued to optimize her career by only saying yes to opportunities that fit the vision she's painted for her ideal. Here's Kristy filling us in on where she was the last time we heard from her on the HTYC podcast.

Kristy Wenz 02:54

So at that time, I had stepped into a communications role, and it was an executive level role for a startup company. And at the same time, I was still kind of hanging on to my past life. I had my corporate real estate PR stuff going on in the background, mostly because I hate financial reasons at that point, and needed to kind of wind it down and build myself up to the point where I could completely let that go. And so it was kind of put in both worlds and moving into the direction that I wanted to go into because it became clear that wine communication and wine travel was kind of the route I wanted to go. And so I was definitely heading in the right direction. I was with that startup for, I think, two years, and it was a fantastic learning experience. I got a lot of travel opportunities out of it. I wrote a ton of articles, met an incredible amount of people and network, and really started to grow. I think what precipitated the change, I kept going back to the wants and what I must haves for my career, and it wasn't quite meeting all my expectations. I wanted a seat at the table, I wanted the flexibility. I wanted to be able to kind of help something grow in a way that I was comfortable with and fit my values. And it's starting to become clear that wasn't quite lining up the way I was hoping for its line up, and which is okay. I mean, not everything, not every job, is going to kind of align with what you want. And so it was time to kind of make another change again. And it was terrifying, probably the scariest change I've made, because I finally, I felt like I finally found what I wanted to do, like, I knew I was going in the right direction. So it was even scarier to leave that because it was in the right direction. It just wasn't it. And I was so scared. I was scared that if I left that, well, there it goes. That was the end of that opportunity, or I would lose my network, or it was just kind of all those doubts and fears that start to come back up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:51

Let me ask you about that. I'm so curious about that because I've heard that many times from people in the past where they have made a, we'll call it a "major change", and then discover, for one reason or another, whether it's a, I don't know, anything from a company merger all the way to the organization has changed, to what they want has changed. But for any of those reasons, many times over, I've heard people say the same thing that, "Hey, it was even scarier." So what do you feel, like, made it so for you? What do you feel, like, caused it to be an even scarier change than what was arguably, maybe even a more difficult change for you the first time around?

Kristy Wenz 05:34

Yeah, I think because the stakes are higher. Because I care more. I was excited about what I was doing. So I wasn't leaving something or making a change because I was unhappy. I was leaving and making a change because I knew I wanted better and kind of in that same realm. So it wasn't a massive career change– I'm jumping the ship and going in a completely different direction. It was, I'm going to go in the same direction, but it's time to make a change in that direction. And I think it's scary because the stakes are higher. Like I was more invested. I finally found something that was fueling my passion, got me excited every day. And so to leave it was scary because I didn't know will I find it again, is there going to be another opportunity out there that fuels that same kind of excitement and passion, and will I have the same opportunities. And it was still kind of two years in, it was still relatively new. I mean, I'd spent 20 years in corporate real estate PR. And so two years in this new industry, I still kind of felt like an outsider. So I didn't know if people would, you know, if I'd have the credibility, or if people would take me seriously. I was just kind of fishing around for things, and not really committing. And so it was scary, but ultimately, again, I did it. It's such, like, we talked about before, like it's a journey. It's not the end destination. It's you're learning things along the way every time and kind of just keep going after those wants and those wants change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:02

I heard you mention that you kept going back to the must have, which is a little bit of background context for anyone listening, we use a tool, super simple tool, called an ideal career profile. And one of the pieces of that ideal career profile is what we call must haves– the things that you absolutely need in order to make your work feel fulfilling. And I heard you reference, we're going back to the must haves, and a couple pieces weren't lining up, particularly the values, it sounds like. Tell me a little bit about that. What do you feel like wasn't lining up that you started to recognize?

Kristy Wenz 07:41

Oh, that's a good question. Kind of, in just the growth path, there were a lot of promises made that weren't being fulfilled. A lot of carrots being dangled. And I gave it a good amount of time, and in startups are that way, it's the nature of a startup. They're not all going to take off overnight. Some of them are going to take a very long time, and some don't make it. It's a gamble. And it was at the point where I knew that things weren't going to change. It was just going to kind of stay on this little, you know, carrot dangling course for a while, and I wasn't making any forward moves and so that was why it was scary, too. It was like, well, if I leave and this takes off, did I miss something? But it didn't seem, in terms of growth strategy, it wasn't aligning up with kind of my vision or just, you know, I think they just needed a stronger strategy in place. And I didn't see it. And so, yeah, it was kind of like, "All right. I've got to decide either to stick it out and be okay with not having what I want, or it's just time to go." And it was time to go.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:51

Where did you start when you decided, "Okay, I'm ready to do this. I know I can do it." Yes, it's scary, but as you started progressing forward, where and how did you start?

Kristy Wenz 09:02

I started a lot of experimentation again. In boot camp, like test something out, see if it works, and I did a lot of that again. I had started writing for some other people, so I was picking up some other freelance writing projects. I had taken a bunch of classes to kind of further my education in the wine field, and all of those things started to kind of lead to other opportunities. And then I just got to a point where I was really honing in on what I wanted. And it was difficult to decide because I felt like having my whole career in one place, like, it felt like, "okay, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to go out and get that job, one job, and that's what you do." And instead, I've got lots of little pieces. So I have freelance work that I do for writing. I have teaching I do now. I have started to work at a vineyard. So I started to do all these little pieces, which felt kind of strange at first because it's not one career path. It's like a couple of different things, but all centering around what I love doing, which is talking about wine and making wine and traveling and educating people about it. And so it all fit, but it was kind of scary too because that wasn't just that one opportunity, it was a bunch of opportunities. But then the more I thought about it, it made sense, and it fit those must haves too. Where I like diversity in my day, I don't like to do the same thing over and over again. In my PR side, the thing I liked about that job was I had multiple clients, so each day was different projects, working for different people. So when I started to think about it that way, it was like, okay, it's kind of the same thing. I'm working for different people on different days, and each day is different and exciting. So it's kind of like little mini clients in a way. And thinking about it that way really helped, kind of made me feel a little bit better. Think that, you know, you just grow up with that type A and that stereotype in your head that you're just supposed to go out and find that career path and you're supposed to make it in that career, and that's the job you go to every day, right? And there's nothing wrong with that being different opportunities that make up a full time career instead of one full time thing. It's several part time and freelance opportunities, so I'm making it work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:10

I think that's super cool, and I think that there's great evidence at this point that that is, one, becoming more of a possibility in different ways than it ever was before, even if we were to go back, say, just 30 years ago. Also, it's becoming much more common at this point, and it's representing a much, much larger part of how many people do work, if you will. Let me ask you about the experiments, though, and I think that one of the things that stood out to me for your first change is you did a phenomenal job with experiments. And anyone who's listened to our show knows that we talk about different types of career experiments as a way to understand what you actually are getting into in one way or another as you're making a career change, but also remove a lot of the risk in some cases of like doing all this work and getting into something and then realizing two weeks later that you got into the wrong... That's no good, right? So, you mentioned, you know, started writing for a number of other projects and then also classes. Tell me a little bit about how those two helped you understand or validated which direction you needed to go.

Kristy Wenz 12:28

Yeah, for me, the writing... Doing more writing for some other projects, I started to write in different styles and some different tones of voice and about different topics. So it wasn't just kind of long essays about wine travel, it became more little snippets and kind of fun conversational pieces. And so that really, kind of, took me back to my roots of when I was back in college. I had a professor that insisted we only do half page papers to get our point across, and it had to be double spaced, 12 point font. I'm not sure if he did want to read everybody's stuff. This was like, I don't know, but it was a great exercise in learning how to be concise and get your point across right away. And I loved it. I took a ton of classes with him, and just because it taught me how to think in a way where I could get my point across fast. And so it kind of took me back to that writing these little, shorter snippets. It was like, "Okay, this is what I like more than those long kind of essay pieces." And so that kind of led me to the publication I work for now. And then the classes, that was just further education in the wine field. Because I always tell people it's a rabbit hole, and I am never coming out, because there's always something to learn here. And it's fascinating because there's so many different paths– you can take it from science to art history too, you can really go any direction in wine and find something that will kind of fuel or spark whatever path that you're interested in. And with that, I ended up, I was offered a virtual teaching class, and it was kind of a one off opportunity. And somebody approached me and said, "Have you ever thought about teaching?" And I was like, "Oh no, gosh no." Yeah, no, no. Like, I have a whole line of teachers in the family, and I've always been amazed by them, because I just never imagined myself being able to do that. And so they got me a coach to kind of walk me through it, and I taught a couple classes for them, and I loved it. It was just... And I was shocked I loved it because it was not something I had ever considered or thought about. And then from there, I ended up becoming a teacher for a wine school in Chicago, and teaching wine classes for the last couple years now. And it's probably the... I would say that the thing that fuels me the most at this point, I just love it. It checks all the boxes for me, I get to talk about wine, I get to engage with people. There is a bit of writing component to it because in order to teach, I have to learn and keep learning. So for me, when I write, that's how I kind of keep my learning going, too. So it really involves everything. So that was one of the most successful experiments I've done, was the teaching. Because I really never thought that would be something I would want to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:09

That's so wonderful for, not just because it creates an amazing story, but I think, honestly, that's one of my favorite parts about experimentation in that way. A lot of times when we're having a conversation with someone and talking about career experiments, a lot of times, people will perceive it as "Okay, I need to prove whether or not this is the thing that I go on to." However, the thing that usually happens is you learn like as you're going into one type of experiment for that intention, you start to learn other pieces that you didn't expect, and then that pivots to something else that or allows an opportunity to look at yourself in a new and different way. And I think that what's super fun in this case is that it turned into something that you clearly never thought that you'd ever be involved with.

Kristy Wenz 15:58

No. Absolutely not. And I tell people now, it's really one of my favorite things, yeah. And it was all out of somebody that asked me if I had ever considered it, and I was like, "No, I don't think so."

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:11

Let me ask you this, though. So you go from these experiments where you're intentionally writing in new and different ways, different outlets, and taking classes. And how did that lead for you to the collective set of opportunities? And I know there's a few different things going on here, but take us through like, what took place? What did you do? What happened as a product of doing those things?

Kristy Wenz 16:38

Yeah, for me, this is gonna sound really kind of corny and ridiculous, but a lot of the writing, I started to do those little snippets I was doing on Instagram, and it was primarily for me personally, I, kind of, still do it to this day. I get up in the morning and I write. And I write my snippets in the morning. So the pictures or the videos or whatever I'm doing could be from weeks ago, but the writing takes place that morning because it's my creative exercise. It keeps me motivated, keeps me going, keeps kind of my practice happening. So from that, that's where a lot of those opportunities started to come from. And in fact, everything, all of my little job buckets right now have been from opportunities through connections I've made there, whether it's somebody that saw my writing and enjoyed it, or I met some people at the vineyard I worked at, for example. I met them on Instagram, and we were talking about harvesting, and one thing led to another, and I helped them last couple years on their vineyard. And so it's just through connections and opportunities that come about from putting yourself on the right path, I think. Once you start putting yourself out there and start keeping your eyes open, doors start to open, you get to make those connections. And you get to say 'no' too, which I think is really important, because there's some things that come along that, like you said, you go back to that list and look at the list, and if it doesn't fit those must haves, even if it's in the field that you wanting to go into, if it doesn't match, it's really important, I think, to say 'no', because otherwise it's going to suck your time away from potential opportunities that could have been the right one. And obviously there's financial constraints. You've got to make some money too, but at the same time, I think you need to make sure that you're kind of lining up on the path you want to be on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:21

One of the ways that we often will evaluate if we're successful with our clients, is if we can get them to the point where they understand what they need the most, so that they have the ability to say 'no' to good things, to make the space for great things. And so I'm always fascinated by that. So tell me a little bit about what do you feel like was the hardest thing for you to say 'no' to, but you still ultimately ended up saying 'no'.

Kristy Wenz 18:51

I know I don't want to go back and work full time for anyone, and that's sometimes hard to say 'no' because some opportunities look really shiny and exciting, but I know at my heart of hearts that if I were to do that, I just wouldn't fit the things I need. It wouldn't give me kind of that creative independence that I need. But it's hard because with a full time opportunity typically comes some financial stability and insurance and all those things that we do need, and so to say 'no' to those can be really challenging. But I think I've... I know I've made the right decision and not doing that at this point. That may change down the line for me, but right now, I'm happy, kind of, doing all the pieces that I'm doing, because each one fuels something different for me, and I've been able to figure out what I want, what I don't want. In an experiment, it was actually probably, it's been a five year experiment now, working at a vineyard and it's a winery. It ended up a five year experiment. I know I don't want to do that. I know one of the things I had considered when I was going into wine was maybe I want to start a winery someday, maybe I want to own a vineyard. And that's obviously a big decision to make, and having done that for the last five years, I know I don't want to do that anymore. In that instance, I like working for someone else. I don't want it to be mine. I've learned the headaches, and the stuff, the business side of owning a winery and a vineyard that I don't want that. That's a headache I'm not willing to take on. And in those instances, I like working for someone else. I like them, "Tell me what to do. Go tell me what to do in the winery. I'll go do it. Tell me what to do in the vineyard. I'll go do it." That situation, I like working for someone else. So I did learn that. But it's funny, my husband will bring up every night, "I know someday we can get a vineyard." I'm like, "Nope."

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:36

Hard pass. I already know.

Kristy Wenz 20:37

That's done. I figured that out. Stop having to hang out on one anytime you want, but I'm not owning one. So I learned a lot from that experience, and had an amazing time. Wouldn't change it for the world, but at least in a five year experiment, it's okay. That's not the final route that I want to take my career at some point.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:56

In the situations where, well, for example, like you mentioned, there were a couple of times where there are full time organizational opportunities. What did you, let me preface first here really quick, because it's easy for us to sit here and say, "Oh yeah. Like I said no to that. And everything worked out amazingly." However, when you're there, like in that moment, and those types of opportunities are in front of you, it doesn't feel easy a lot of the time. So what allowed you, what did you actually do to be able to get to the point where you're like, "Yep, I'm gonna say 'no', and that's gonna be the right decision for me."

Kristy Wenz 21:33

I have to step back because, like I said, sometimes they look really shiny and exciting when it fits some of the pieces, like, it will check some of the boxes. But for me, I have to... I really have to step back and sit with it and kind of really remember what are the things that are important to me, what are the values that I want as a part of my work life balance, how do I want this all to line up? Is the financial side worth it? Would that make up for the other things that it may lack? And it really is kind of trusting my gut, I guess. And also being willing to, if I do pass that up, I know I'm gonna have to put a bit more hustle on the stuff that I'm doing, because I am gonna have to make up for some of that. And so I have to be kind of weigh all those options. And for me, I'll have days where I'm like, I just kind of, I'll say, like, "Oh, I would just love one job where I am", that's what I do, and I just don't have to think about it, and I can get out of this hustle. And that feels good in the moment because I'm just tired, right? And then if I step back and it's like, yeah, but if that was my reality, I wouldn't be happy. And I know that. I know I like the hustle. I know I like to be finding new projects. I know that I thrive on new opportunities, and I could not do the same thing over and over every day. And so I really have to kind of go back to my core values. And even if I'm exhausted and I'm stressed out, it's like, "okay, which is going to be the worst stress?" Is it, yeah, maybe have less kind of hectic stress, but if I can be happy, and that's going to cause a whole bunch of other stressors and trickle down effect in the rest of my life. So it's a lot of sitting with it. Obviously, you can't sit with it forever, but you have to, I think, just really be willing to be honest with yourself and really, and sometimes it's uncomfortable, not always great. It can be stressful in and of itself, just to think about it, but it's just always coming back to what's important in the long run for me, I think.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:59

[23:26] When you say it's coming back to what's important in the long run, I know because we got the pleasure of sort of sitting a front row seat with you as you were figuring out some pieces of that years ago. And I also know that's evolved along the way. But how have you come back? Or maybe, what advice could you give to someone else who really wants to come back to what's most important for them in the long run?

Kristy Wenz 24:05

Yeah, we talked about those must haves. It's coming back to those and recognizing that those can evolve, and that's okay. You know, if you look at that list and it doesn't feel right anymore, or if it doesn't sit right anymore, it's okay to change that, and you don't have to be locked in because you put it on a piece of paper, it doesn't mean that that has to be true forever. I think we grow and we change each new opportunity, and we learn things for our career, but also about ourselves. And so I think being able to be flexible in that, and being able to say, "Okay, what I wanted may have changed a little bit", and think about why. Why did it change? What aspect of it changed? And being open to that, I think, is a big piece of it. I think just being able to really come back to what is important for you and for me, it's always been a nice work life balance. And there's specific things that I value in my job, but then there's also things I know I like to take time to travel, I know that I like to have time with my family– those are all pieces that are very important to me. And one of the things it's interesting, one of the things I learned over the last several years is, you know, a piece of that travel for me is solo. I love understanding with my family. I love being with them and going on road trips, that's all part of what I love to do, too. But with working at the vineyard, I would travel about once a week, once every other week, and was away from home, and that was kind of an opportunity for me to kind of reset in my own way too, like it was just me and what I wanted to do and what I was working on. And so that really kind of... I realized that was a piece that's important to me, and something that kind of, to this day, fuels me. I need to have a little piece of something that I go out and do that's just mine, and gives me kind of a real sense of independence. And so that solo travel has become kind of a piece of what I do along the way too, which I never would have imagined. That's not something I would have thought five years ago, that I would say. My husband and I, when we first got married, had this kind of that Paul McCartney romantic notion of we're never spending a night apart every night we were together. And I think over time, we realized, like, no this, these little times apart actually do help us, like, we both do our thing, and so it's just kind of been a good thing. So I think that's something that's definitely changed over time. So just being flexible, open and honest with yourself, and being willing to acknowledge mistakes when you make them. Sometimes, you might say yes to something you think is the right opportunity, and then realize, okay, maybe it wasn't, and being able to say, "Okay, I'm moving on from that, but here's what I'm taking from it too", because I think every opportunity, every experience you have, you're going to learn something, whether it's something you don't want or something you do want, or a new piece of a new skill, or a new talent that you didn't know you had, and just being able to kind of take those with you, and becomes a part of you, but it doesn't have to be a negative part. Even if it wasn't the right part, it was right at that moment, doesn't mean it's right today.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:07

You're going to learn something, for sure.

Kristy Wenz 27:10

Yeah. No matter what.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:13

You've mentioned a couple of times during our conversation, being open to what changes. Like what you wanted years ago, or what you thought you wanted years ago, that might change. And so I'm very curious, what do you perceive is going to change in the future for you, or what has changed that you recognize that you'll need to do something different in the near future, right now. Tell me a little bit about what's next for you, Kristy?

Kristy Wenz 27:43

What's next? Definitely changed. Yeah, we just moved to the Pacific Northwest from Chicago. So I lived in the Midwest most of my life, and so we just moved out here for my husband's job opportunity. Most of the stuff I do is remote, and can kind of come with me, and it happens to be in wine country, which was kind of synchronistic, was not planned that way. Yeah. So I'm super excited, so I know that there's just a world of opportunity out there from where I am now. So for me right now, I keep saying I have a vineyard sized hole in my life because I left the vineyard back in Michigan. So I do have that space open, and for the first time, I'm not rushing to fill it. I am kind of taking my time and saying, "Okay, it's okay that that's not there right now. Let's kind of see what else is out here." I'm not, like, "Oh, you can go find a vineyard to work at. There's 700 of them." Yeah, if I want to. But I'm not sure that's what I want right now. So I kind of want to, again, I think I'm probably going to do some experiments in that little corner of my life and figure out what's going to fit there. And I think it will look a little different. I think as much as I love harvesting, I really do, I also know that that's not something I want to do forever. I learned a ton from it, and it probably will be one of my favorite things I've ever done. But I also know that I think that piece is kind of over. I'm ready to kind of, I want to say, almost merge my past career with this current one, which I think really does sit well with my initial career plan. I think that kind of had a blend of both of those sides, and kind of taking the pieces I liked from that first part of my career and now blending it with the second. And so for me, I think that will mean some new opportunities and I think I'm leaning towards some like business development and networking and some of the things that I enjoyed from my past career and moving them into this new world. And I think that's where it's heading, but I'm going to sit with it and experiment and take some time, and I'm excited. I'm excited. And it's cool because having all of those different pieces I still have, I'm still going to be the senior managing editor, you know. I'm still going to be teaching classes. I'm still doing the other things that I have out there, but I have the space now to kind of open it up and move into a new direction. And I'm excited. I'm really excited.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:51

[30:14] I think that's super, super fun. Actually, that's one of my favorites, I'm gonna call it areas, like, where you're in the stage of you have many things going that are great in your career and in your life, and now it's about, we'll call it design optimization, for lack of a better phrase. So I'm so excited that this is the stage that you're in. And one, I gotta tell you, one of the things that I remember from chatting with you, I think it was when we had our conversation for the podcast on Episode 255, but you said something that was to the effect of, one thing that I did was I just tried to have one tiny win every single day, like, one single, tiny win every single day. And so that stuck with me so much to where we started utilizing that internally, as we were working with other clients as well. How do we help them have just one win and to create that momentum, even if it's small, every single day, every single time we interact, every single time to get that initial momentum, which then turns into things later on. So first of all, thank you for that.

Kristy Wenz 31:27

For sure. Thank you. I love that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:29

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you said it.

Kristy Wenz 31:31

I love knowing it can help people. Because there's been so many things that people have said along my path too that have helped me, that I love. That's cool. That's really cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:41

Well, here's my question to you. You know now that you did that through that initial career change, and I'm hearing evidence that you're still looking for those tiny wins, like you wake up and you write those snippets as an example, what advice would you give to someone else that is in that stage, whether it's that initial career change or whether they're trying to optimize a great situation in order to look for and get those continuous wins?

Kristy Wenz 32:06

Yeah, keep your eyes open, I think is the biggest thing. And those wins can come from places you least expect. The case of that, my teaching experiment, I was not expecting that to come through. It was a random email that I had gotten and turned into a phone call. And, you know, have you ever thought about that? And that would have been easy to kind of brush off, because, again, now that's something I'm not interested in, and just blew it off. So I think being able to just make sure you keep your eyes open for things, and in terms of, like, little wins, just don't discount them. And it can be anything from, you know, if you're in a really rough patch, which I know we talked about last time I went through some of those, it could just be get up and make your bed in the morning and just that act of making the bed, that could be the win for that day. You accomplished that. That was something for that day. And on those days where it's really hard, sometimes that's a lot. Or to send out a cold email to somebody that you know you're interested, you want to talk to them, you think you like what they do, and have some questions for them, and want to know is that something I'm interested in, and having those kind of conversations that can be really intimidating, but just send that email out. Just having sent that email is a win. It's not about the response that you get or don't get. You did that. You took that step. I think just making sure that you're stepping forward because it's not... I think anybody that's gone on kind of a career journey knows it's not the... there's no end. There's no big sign at the end, "You've made it!"

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:38

Congratulations. You've made it. You've crossed. Yeah. It continues.

Kristy Wenz 33:43

It continues. And that's a great word. That's really funny. Because my writing, the last week with the move, I've been spinning a lot of things in my head about beginnings and ends. And this past week, that was the word I came to, it's continuing. It's not an end, it's not a, yeah, there's pieces ending and pieces beginning, but really it's a continuation and and so that was the word that stuck with me this week– was continuing. I think that that's a more fun word than beginning or end. It's just continuing. It's just going. And there's going to be little wins and little failures along the way too. And it's okay, it's all part of it, and it's...

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:23

I love that. Focus on the continuation. And then also, the other piece that I took from that is focused on the efforts, not the end results, necessarily. Take your wins from the efforts.

Kristy Wenz 34:34

Efforts, yeah. Because effort, I think, sometimes, is the biggest piece. It's not easy. It's not easy. It takes a lot to make some of those little steps and that should be celebrated because it was our wins. I think just continuing, I think, is the word. No matter where you are on the path, just keep continuing and have fun with it. Don't give up and don't let circumstances stand in the way, whether it's finance or age or where you live, whatever it is, just keep continuing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:13

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:05

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

Speaker 3 36:11

The truth was that the process of litigation was just not interesting to me. It was tedious and boring, and you know, mostly what I found was that the clients who could pay were mostly not worthwhile, and the clients who were worthwhile couldn't pay. And so if you want to have those two sides of feeling like your work is satisfying and having a comfortable standard of living within the legal profession, it's very, very hard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:35

Becoming a lawyer can seem like a dream job– one of the high status ones that we look to when we're younger, like a doctor, engineer, astronaut, architect, hot dog eating competitor, just me? No. Okay. But lawyers definitely makes that list. These careers are sold to us as a destination to success. Once you achieve it, you've made it. So why is it that we work with so many lawyers here at Happen To Your Career who want out? Out of being an attorney. It turns out careers are never one size fits all. Something that is great for one person won't be great for the next. Many lawyers get to a point in their career where they feel like they need to make a change, whether it's burnout, stress, boredom, a values misalignment, a shift in priorities, they get to the point where they're interested in doing something else, something that fits them and their life so much better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:32

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.

Introduction 00:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:30

Took me a long time to find this data, but piecing together through many different studies, many different sources, as near as I can tell, less than 4% of people on Earth are doing work that they consider to be great work, and even less than 4% are in what they would consider to be incredibly fulfilling careers. It's not that there's something wrong with the other 96%, but it makes the point that finding fulfilling work is hard. It requires intentionality. It requires commitment. As we discussed in the last episode of this three-part bonus episode series on intentional career change, it requires commitment. It requires intentionality. If you're listening to this podcast, you've likely already had something happen that spurred you towards change. Also, what we know typically happens is the excuses come up, even if you don't know that it's an excuse that's whispering from some corner of your mind. Things like, "Hey, sure, it worked for that person, but that's not actually my situation." Or, you know, "This person is in an industry" like you've heard some of the past stories on the podcast, like, "That person doesn't really resonate with me necessarily", or, "I don't have the time to dedicate to making an intentional career change right now." Or, "You know what? My job actually isn't that bad. It feels pretty good right now." Or maybe even you feel like you're being ungrateful for the good parts of your job. Whatever excuse it is that you're telling yourself, we know they pop up. It's part of why people tend to stay in that 96% because it's not just about finding work that is fulfilling. It's about navigating through all of the changes and in some cases, the head junk, to be able to do work that more frequently allows you to feel more fulfilled. It's really easy to get stuck or trapped.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:35

And I'll give you one example of a catch 22 that pops up over and over again. The perpetual lack of energy and time. And here's how my team and I have heard this paradox show up when we talk to people who want to make intentional career changes. Yeah, they say things like, "When I get home from work, it's all I can do to just make dinner. Then on the weekends, I'm just so drained by that time. I spend the whole weekend recovering, and then it's Monday again. And I simply don't have the energy to be able to do the work to make any kind of career change, let alone an intentional one." If you're giving your current role everything that you have to give, and then you're depleted by the end of your work days and weekends, it's no surprise that making a large life change is going to be extra challenging. So it's not actually so much a lack of energy as the obstacle. It's just what many would be career changers think is the obstacle. Here's what I mean. Most people who've had career success got there by working hard. Working hard also usually means working a lot of hours. This is not a completely bad situation by itself. I've certainly benefit... I've had many things benefit in my life by working hard, and certainly been the beneficiary of some of the results that can come from working a lot of hours. There's definitely good things there. But when that same person who has been successful by being able to work many hours in order to produce those good things in their lives, when that person thinks about career change, they might feel depressed and hopeless because they might ask themselves, like, "How on earth am I going to find the time to figure out how to make a career change? I'm barely fitting in all the hours as it is." One of the hardest things for those of us, myself included, who have become successful in some area of our lives through past behaviors, like, working a lot of hours, is that means that I'm no longer going to be able to be successful in the same way. That means, I'm going to have to entirely rethink about not just what I want or the life that I want to create, or the work that I want to be doing, but I'm literally going to have to rethink about and relearn how to be successful in a new and different way that creates a higher level of fulfillment. That is incredibly difficult. But it illustrates the point that to make an extraordinary change, you must first commit to making the change and then do the very difficult work often to make it happen.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:14

So I want to give you just a couple of examples of how some people have navigated through this. We did a podcast a long time ago. This is an old one with Eric. And Eric has actually made a couple of career changes. And at the time that we got to meet Eric, well, he was working 11 to 14 hour days in engineering type of role, and it was intense, and he knew that this was important to him, so he would actually sit in his car during his lunch break to find the time, or dare I say, create the time to be able to do something that was important to him. He got asked all the time, like, where he disappeared to for lunch and everything like that. And another example, Scott Ingham and his wife would make time every single week, to meet weekly, to plan out logistics and scheduling for all the things that they had going on that week, plus the fact that he was trying to make time to support this intentional career change. Linnea prepared for hours and hours and hours and hours, not just for one interview, not just for one interaction, but every single time that she had it along the way, she used an extreme amount of preparation. Her end result, she was able to jump multiple levels. It takes extreme efforts to get extreme results. The extreme result that we're talking about right now is what we call intentional career change. We started out this episode talking about how very, very, very tiny, I would say, almost infinitesimal amount of people have what they would refer to as fulfilling work. And to be able to do so, it's going to require a very different, very abnormal set of efforts to get those results. And part of what that means is that, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." I don't know exactly who said that quote. I think it might have been Marshall Goldsmith, who's been on our podcast before. However, I think it's a great one, and I try to remember it all the time. Let's agree that even if working long and hard hours has served you well in the past, it's probably not going to help you do this in a much more intentional, much more fulfilling way. You're going to have to take a different type of action. You know what's common about Eric's situation, who I mentioned a minute ago where he was working those 11 to 14 hour days, and Scott who would do planning with his wife and Linnea? What's really common about all of those situations is each of those people committed to making a change for themselves without knowing all the things that they were going to go through, without knowing all the behaviors that they'd have to change, without knowing 100% of what they were doing, without knowing exactly what it was going to mean for them. And they did so because they felt it was important for them to make that type of change, to do life and work much more intentionally, to be able to have the ability to enjoy the type of way that they're spending their time, like, we do and tend to at work. And have that be a part of their life that is providing a different level of contribution, and they're getting to contribute to it in a very different way. I'd invite you to do the same thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:35

It really does, as strange as it sounds, start with a commitment to yourself that you're going to do something different, even if you don't understand all of the pieces along the way. If we can be a part of that, and we can support you in any way whatsoever, that's what we're here for. That is the reason why we exist as an organization. We want to be able to get more people to work that fits them, so that ultimately, we can change what work is for people in the world. And then when you get there, as you learn how to do this differently, we want you to be able to help others along the way, spread that knowledge, spread that action around. If you'd like our help in doing so, don't hesitate to drop me an email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. I'll connect you with my team. We have had this wonderful problem over the last six months where now we are filling up very far in advance. That's very different than if you would have asked me seven years ago, but what it means is, we have had to tell a lot of people "No". So I just want to be very transparent about that. If you'd love our help and you want to make a change anytime in the next few months and begin that, then we'd love to support that. Also, the spots are filling up quickly. We're already booked out through all of July and going into August, and now we're beginning to book out for the rest of August and September and October. If you'd like our help, just drop me that email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com, and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. I hope these super short set of bonus episodes caused you to think just slightly differently about what intentional living and intentional career change can look like. We'll be back with you next Monday, right here on hHappen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.

Introduction 00:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:30

When we look at career change or building a more intentional life, we know that taking on a big life change, of any kind, requires a great amount of time, energy, maybe even a bit of financial planning and the solid support system or partner. Making an intentional career change is more than just switching jobs or switching occupations. It's about transforming your life, and that transition often requires outside help of some kind. This is Episode Two in a series of bonus episodes discussing what intentional career change is. If you haven't already listened to Episode One, we covered intentional career change versus living unintentionally, and we compared the two, and even talked about some of the very, very, very different results that people get when they're pursuing and trying to do life much more intentionally. We gave a ton of examples, but in this episode, we're going to cover extensively why it's almost impossible to do this alone. But here's the question, who actually needs to be involved in your journey? Because, yes, an outside perspective is almost always necessary to further your progress and ultimately do a career change intentionally. But before we answer that question, let's talk about why it is nearly impossible to do something as big as an intentional career change and that type of life change alone. Okay, I think it's fair to say that anytime you're making this type of change, you're going to get stuck along the way. It's not a case where, like, you're pursuing a degree, or you are doing something that happens in a much more linear fashion. This is much more complex than that. Anytime you're trying to do something that is a complex problem or challenge or project, it means that you're solving many problems along the way. It means that you're going to grow, you're going to develop, you're going to go through periods where you begin to feel stuck. When that happens, you're likely to lose your focus, motivation, or let your mindset get the best of you. So why is it so hard to do this alone? Well, here's just a couple of reasons. Number one, you are incapable of seeing your own blind spots. Number two, it requires behavior change in addition to making what I would call an environmental change. I'll tell you more about that in just a minute. Number three, well, it turns out, if you're not an expert in intentional career change or doing work intentionally, then that means you're gonna have some learning to do from other people along the way, and that's okay. Let's go through these and break down some of these. That way you can figure out what do you do about them and why are they so difficult.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:17

For example, let's go back to number one. Let's talk about why it's so hard to see outside of yourself, making it difficult to see your own blind spots. Well, it turns out, on one side, we have qualities and skills. Every single one of us has qualities and skills and talents that we might not fully recognize or fully appreciate, partially because we are who we are and we just do them, and you know whatever they are. An outsider can provide an objective perspective and helping you to identify what we might call strengths, or signature strengths, that you likely are going to undervalue and even weaknesses or challenges that you might overlook. Now, we actually have an exercise in our process that does exactly that. A lot of times we're going through this with clients where we're helping them to surface what are those strengths that they might not necessarily recognize. And so I just want to give you an example of a super simple way that we help people begin to understand what those patterns. One of the ways that we will do that is we'll have people go through and we'll have them reach out to their friends, co-workers, people that know them well, people that know them less well, and be able to collect feedback on what are they great at, what do people appreciate about them, what they believe they do or how they act that is valuable to other people. Okay, so this sounds sort of simple, and it sounds sort of absurd. One of the things that we found over and over again is that when people do this, or actually, let's even back up a half step, when people think about doing this type of exercise, it feels a little bit scary. Because even though you're asking other people for, "Hey, tell me the things that are essentially good about me", it feels a little bit revealing or intimidating to ask. And a lot of people, in fact, most people, have a little bit of trepidation about doing this type of exercise, which consequently, many of the clients that we work with almost don't do it. I know that sounds strange, but most of them don't do it. We have to go to some extreme efforts to help people prepare for this and anticipate what's going to happen and that it's going to be okay, and who to reach out to, and all of these different things. And, you know, we're honored to be able to do that, but most people wouldn't do it, and it would be a shame because the other thing that almost everybody says after they've done that is, "Wow, that was so revealing." You know, many people said the exact same thing, and I under appreciated how big of a deal that was and what I do, or how I act or how I tend to behave that other people really do seem to value. It's actually kind of crazy, but that's like a perfect example of how it's really difficult to see your own blind spots, and to be able to uncover those blind spots. You can't just like, go ask another person. You sort of have to do it systematically, otherwise, you're going to still not be able to see some of those blind spots. But why does that happen? Well, why can't we see those things? It turns out, we unknowingly hold biases and assumptions about ourselves and our career paths, and these tend to be in the form of beliefs. These tend to be in the forms of knowledge that we have or don't have. These tend to be in the forms of assumptions that we make along the way, sometimes as we're growing up, sometimes in how our career has come along, sometimes in what we've had exposure to or haven't had exposure to. These tends to create what might be referred to as limiting beliefs. And when you start to remove these limiting beliefs or expose yourself to new possibilities, especially if we're doing this in a systematic way, that is one of the things that really opens up to see what type of life and or career you could actually build or perform or move to. These outside perspectives can really shift how you think about your strengths, how you think about your experiences, your skills, and ultimately, what you truly enjoy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:32

But let's talk about that second area of why it's so challenging to do this alone. When any people come and they are interested in working with us, one of the things that we've seen over and over again is this sort of funny phenomenon. You know, many people, even as we talk about intentional career change or making a more intentional career change, a lot of times, people come and they're thinking about it as, "I'm going to make a job change, or an industry change or a role change. And that's going to take care of a lot of these situations. Because maybe I love my boss and the people that I work with, but I don't love how I'm compensated, and I don't think that that's fair. And maybe also, at the same time, I'm looking for additional flexibility." And when that happens, when we get to talk to folks in that situation, they perceive that if they find a fit as it relates to additional flexibility or any of those other areas, then that's going to essentially take care of everything, and it's going to create a more fulfilling situation. Well, that's only half true. Here's why. Because let's just oversimplify this whole idea of intentional career change for just a minute and say that if you make an intentional career change, there's going to be two sides to it. There's going to be, one, which is getting the right situation, or what I might call environment. Those are the things that are not necessarily you, but they're the areas that are external to you. What is the culture at the organization? Do the people at the organization that you're making a move to, or the people that tend to be in that industry, do those people share similar values? What is your compensation level? All those things are environmental. Environmental, meaning they are external to you, not necessarily internal to you. So let's think about the other side of that. If we're dividing this into two ways that impact more fulfilling work and ultimately more fulfilling life, then one side is that environmental, and then the other side is you. Your ability to behave in a way to take advantage of that new situation. You can get to the perfect situation for yourself, but if you are behaving in ways that do not allow you to take advantage of that, well, then it's not going to be a good situation for very long. One of the best examples of this is, let's say that you struggle to draw boundaries, and you have accidentally trained many people that work with you to understand that you're going to respond to anything at all hours of the day. So it might not be intentional, and you know, maybe in some of your past situations that has been an expectation of the culture. But there's more than just the environmental pieces. There's also your behaviors and whether or not you are supporting that. So in this case, if you're still going into the new situation and you're behaving the exact same way as you were in the old situation, it's not going to be good for very long, because those things that weren't that great for you are going to follow you over there. So that's what people don't tend to expect. They tend to think that, "Okay, if I make this environmental change, it's going to be good, it's going to take care of most of the things." What they don't anticipate is that it's going to require behavior change along the way. Behavior change is really difficult to diagnose and understand what are the specific things that are going to need to change if you're doing this by yourself. Because a lot of our behaviors tend to happen on autopilot. That's how they became behaviors in many different ways, not all of them, but many of them, which means that we have to be able to recognize what are the behaviors that are serving me well, and what are the behaviors that I need to change that are no longer serving me well, or I have outgrown or I don't want to be a part of my life anymore, and then how do I change those behaviors to work well in the new situation when I get there? That's the other side. So it's going to be more than just changing roles or industries. There's going to be a lot of self reflection, work and habits to break, behaviors to change, and beliefs to challenge. And as I mentioned before, if you're not an expert in intentional career change or helping to recognize those behaviors, it's going to be nearly impossible, you know. And you know, let me give you a another example here. Earlier today, I went with my daughter to take her car. She's 16 right now, and so she's driving and everything, and trying to teach her about car maintenance. So there's a lot of different ways that could have done some of the things that the car needed. It needed new brake fluid, needed an oil change, needed a few other things, right? So we could have busted out YouTube and allowed her to figure out how to change the brake fluid herself, or helped her be able to change the oil or something else along those times. Today, time definitely didn't allow for that, but that's something we could have done. We took it to a professional at a shop. So she could have done it either way. It would have taken longer if she would have done the YouTube route. We took it to professional on a shop, took about four hours. But you know, ultimately, if she wanted to do it, she could learn it for the most part, right? Okay, but here's the thing. The shop called us back today, and they let us know that there were a couple other problems with the vehicle, and we were able to make the decision about whether or not to fix those. And if we hadn't done that, let's say we've gone down the YouTube route, well, probably what would happen is, a month later, two months later, some other problems would pop up, and then something else, and then likely we would have a deeper issue in this case than what we initially realized. And,you know, my daughter could have continued to pull up YouTube and do the work on that, and she's a smart girl, she could have eventually figured it out. But definitely it was so much easier if we took it to an expert, it was done in four hours, they anticipated all of the future proactive things, they recognized that, actually, they recognized that they didn't even need to do a brake fluid switch right now, that, in fact, it could wait quite a bit longer because of the...because it happened to be like a certain type of brake fluid. Anyhow. All that to say, this is not that dissimilar from making an intentional career change. What is very different, though, is this isn't even a fair comparison. This isn't a fair comparison at all to intentional career change because instead of like changing the brakes, it would be more like you decide that you're going to take a car down to the frame and completely start over. You're going to, not just put it back together, but you're going to completely engineer a new vehicle, and you're going to put it back together. You're going to do all the painting, you're going to do all the sanding, and you're going to do everything else that is required to create this new vehicle from scratch, starting over from just the frame and the engine.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:05

All right. So do you even have all the tools for that? Do you have the time for that? That's where it starts to get really, really challenging. For myself, you know, I've spent years and years and years learning about this. I have become obsessed with it in many different ways, and it's fun for me, but that doesn't mean it's fun for everyone. Took me approximately seven years for me to begin to figure this stuff out for myself, not even necessarily to make all the changes that I wanted to, but just to begin to do so. All that to say, this time, you know, intentional career change is really something that you can do on your own, but it's so much more effective, and it's going to be really hard, in some cases, even impossible to do with the time that we have on Earth if you're trying to approach it without support. So whether that is having feedback and friends and co-worker type of support, having mentorship support, having experts in this area, you know, the equivalent to a mechanic in the form of career coaches or otherwise, all of those things make it much more feasible, much more possible, but more importantly, it allows you to do it within a smaller amount of time. If the average person lives to 80 years, one of the things that we've seen over and over again is that even with expert help, it still might take 8 to 10 months, sometimes even longer. So if you say that that's one year out of eight years to be able to do this type of thing, that's a pretty significant chunk. Okay, with everything we've covered today, I think it's safe to say that it's going to be really difficult to do this alone. There's a variety of behavior changes that are going to need to happen. There's a variety of psychological barriers that you're going to need to navigate in order to live a much more intentional career, let alone life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:50

It becomes so much more possible and arguably, not easy, but much easier when you bring the right people into the picture. Obviously, we would love to help with that, if it makes sense. But I would encourage you to find the right people, begin putting together your team if living the more intentional life and certainly work as a part of that life is a goal for you. Otherwise, it's pretty unlikely to happen. So certainly, a career coach is a great way to incorporate someone that is impartial to help you navigate through this. A coach is often somebody that doesn't carry any predispositions of like, you know, a family member, or a friend, or a co-worker, or an employee, or even a mentor, or what. But having a coach by your side, or having an expert by your side, is going to allow you to continue to navigate through the career change path much more intentionally and provide structured guidance as you're dealing with those questions of what next, or how do I navigate the next priority, or what is even the priority right now, or how do I move through this type of place where I'm getting stuck, or how do I even recognize what are the places that I'm not even thinking about to move to next. So no matter what, begin finding and piecing together help. If that's us, amazing. If that is some other combination of building your team, that is also amazing. But certainly, if you're looking for support to make an intentional career change, then by all means, schedule a conversation with our team. Our capacity is filling up quickly, and once spots are taken, there's no guarantee of immediate availability. So that has shifted a lot over the years, and as more and more people have found us, we're currently filling up spots. We've completely filled all of July, and now we're beginning to fill up most of August and through September and even into October. Schedule a conversation with our team just by opening up your email and typing in Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and I'll connect you with our team. You can have a conversation, we'll figure out the very best way that we can support you, what makes sense for your situation, your budget, and get you on to finding your version of ideal and extraordinary. But in order to be intentional, just like we covered in the last bonus episode, you've got to make the decision to start. So don't push it off. Take your first action. And if that first action is scheduling a conversation with our team, that's amazing. If it's something else, do it. I would encourage you to do it right now. In the next bonus episode, we're gonna discuss what will it take, what will it actually take for you to make an intentional career change? How do you make something like that happen. Bonus episode three of our intentional career change series will be released tomorrow. I'll see you then right here on Happen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.

Introduction 00:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:29

A while back, just a couple of months ago, we released a bonus episode called "How Long Does An Intentional Career Change Take?" The feedback we got from that episode from, maybe even you, was astonishing. What I heard over and over again was it changed how people thought about what it takes to make an intentional career change. And then we started thinking. We started thinking about, "You know what? We actually haven't done that many episodes to really help people understand what's the difference between any other type of job change, career change, unintentional career change, or less intentional, versus an incredibly intentional career change, and how does that differ in terms of the life that you can create once you start doing things that vastly differently, that vastly intentionally. Well, if you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to guess that you might not be completely satisfied or fulfilled with your career. You might even be wondering what else is out there. And what I'll tell you is that when I started on this journey in learning more about fulfilling work, way back in 2005, has been a continuous learning experience ever since then. At that point in time, I had what most people would call a good job, one where I had a steady paycheck and I didn't love it. I certainly didn't derive purpose from it, and most definitely did not describe it as meaningful. What I learned over the years is that the process of making a change toward more meaningful work, and ultimately, a more meaningful life, is not just about improving your career. What I found is that many people struggle to understand how every single person that you've heard on this podcast is someone who has not just made a career shift, but now they're actually living life more intentionally. And so we have made a three part series of bonus episodes they're going to air over the next few days. This one plus two more. Where we break down what is intentional career change, and what do you have to do to be able to do life and work on a whole different level, far more intentionally.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:44

In this episode, I'd like to help break down what is the difference between a career change or a job change versus that intentional career change. But first, let me just point out that the whole reason our name of our company is Happen To Your Career is that intentional is built right into the title. A lot of times people here happen too, and they think I'm happening to things as opposed to things happening to me. But I would point out that, in some ways, is part of the definition of being intentional. It's proactive. It's you making things happen, versus just allowing them to happen to you. That, in itself, is part of the big difference between intentional versus unintentional. Let's walk through that a bit here. Let me just give you some examples of intentional versus, shall we say, less intentional. Unintentional career changes often happen due to external factors rather than a deliberate decision. They're usually reactive and influenced by circumstances or opportunities presented by others versus intentional. Intentional career change is about identifying what creates fulfillment for you. This often means looking at the bigger picture of the life that you want to build, and understanding how your work fits into that vision. Very different, right? Decisions with an unintentional career change are often made without thinking through what's most important to you, what you need out of your career, and how you want to fit it into your life. Very often they are myopic or narrowly focused. Versus intentional career change, that's where you're deciding what you want in your life and your career, and then you're actively seeking out those opportunities that align with those goals. Again, very different approach. Okay, so let's give you another example. Unintentional, well, these changes often occur when someone else, like a job, or a friend, or a recruiter reaches out and says, "Hey, guess what, I have this job opportunity that you'd be perfect for." Well, this can be a good thing. We also need to recognize that this is someone else's agenda. It's not a decision that is solely based on your own life goals, because it puts you in that position where now you're evaluating, "Do I accept this or not?" And what I've learned over the years is, if I'm in that very narrowly focused, binary type of decision, "do I do this or not", that's an indication to me that I'm probably not looking big picture enough, and it probably means that I'm just about to make a decision that is more focused on settling as opposed to what I really want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:24

Okay, now on the other side, doing it intentionally, this would have your focus on creating a fulfilling life, not just finding a job. This means for example, instead of, you know, somebody else reaching out and say, "Hey, come do this thing that I need you to do that I think could be a great fit for you, but ultimately it's sort of about, you know, what I need from you." Instead, this might be happening in reverse. You are deciding, here is an organization that I want to work for. Here is the type of opportunity that I want to spend my time in a role. Here are the types of tasks that I'm interested in. Now, with that organization that might potentially be in a fit, that might be you seeking out them and building relationships in the organization, and then determining where is going to be a great place for you in that organization, much more difficult to do, for sure. But arguably, if the goal is to build a life that's intentional and ultimately much more meaningful or more fulfilling or supports the goals that you want, then it's far more effective. So I guess you know that can be the difference sometime. Intentional, if that's the goal, then are you looking for effective, or are you looking for a job? Sometimes you need a job to serve temporarily until you can get to effective. Let me give you another example here, unintentional career change. This is like a huge game of this and that, right? Okay, so unintentional, it might provide immediate benefits, but often lacks a strategic approach to achieving long term fulfillment. Where intentional career change, it might be about considering all aspects of life. We've talked about that, but let me give you some examples. That might be finances, in terms of, "what income do you want to be earning?" Usually, people are looking at that the opposite way. They're like, "What can I earn?" As opposed to, "What amount of money do I need to support my longer term goals?" And then backing into that, and then saying, "Okay, well, how do I find what is going to allow me to earn that?" Very, very different approach. Another aspect would be, "What is the type of work functionally?" Or, "What are the types of tasks?" Or, "How do I work best?" "What is the type of situation?" You also might be considering, what are your personal goals, or what do you value most. I'm not just talking about this set of what people might call your core values, but ultimately, what are the pieces that you value most. What are your highest priorities? It's not just about the work itself. It's also about aligning your job with those broader life goals or broader life priorities. Setting up the foundation there and making strategic moves that align with longer term aspirations is what allows you to perpetually move closer and closer to that. So that can be done with your career, but it's difficult to go that way, which is why most of us tend to end up in a more unintentional type of approach.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:28

And here's another example. Okay, so, you know, I mentioned the friend earlier. One example of that is your friend calls you or texts you and says, "Hey, guess what? I just started working at this organization. You know, I'm a director over here, and maybe this is somebody you used to work with at some place. They have a working relationship with you. They know that you would be amazing in terms of performance at that company, at that role. So they're reaching out to you to try and fill one of their needs." Now this is great. This is how it normally works. And you know, I think that I will speak to myself and say that, "I've had some really cool experiences that way." I really have, but it's not been me being intentional necessarily. Yes, I intentionally decided, "yes or no". Do I decide that decision? But by focusing on just that one tiny, little, micro decision, and do I say, "yes or no" to that, I'm distracting myself from the bigger picture of where do I actually want to be. It's kind of almost like, okay, like, let's talk about it in terms of financials as an example here. So I might spend... This is something I've actually done, so this is kind of absurd. But long time ago, I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, obsessive amounts of hours trying to find what is the, you know, what is the best deal I could get on this TV. And this has been a long time ago. This is like pre-LED, you know, screen TVs. So I spent all this time, and I probably did save, like, $50. Amazing, right? That's $50. However, if I'd spent that same amount of time deciding where to place money into investments, and then actually placing money into those investments, then it would have been a far, far, far bigger impact in my life. One saved me $50 for, let's just say, it was like 20 hours worth of research and everything else. If I'd spent that same time and effort and ultimately, you know, put that same $50 into, say, ETF that was an index fund for the S&P 500, then I would have a very, very, very different amount of money to show from. Or let's say that I put that same amount of time into assessing where I want to invest overall and focus on the broader picture. It's a similar scenario, like, one basically saves me pennies, and then the other makes me, you know, far, far, far, a large amount of money. So that's part of what this is about. Like, are you penny wise and pound foolish with what creates fulfillment for your life? If you want to think about it that way. It's not just about the finances. That's just one example. But instead, how do we be much more intentional by looking at the broader picture, as opposed to focusing on just one tiny little aspect, like, the friend who says, "Would you like to do this?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:34

Another example, vice versa. Let's say that you're looking at it as, "I want to spend the majority of my time with my family, and I want to prioritize flexibility. That way, I can be there for the small things, not just necessarily the school plays and things like that, but the smaller things too, like picking up my kids from school or dropping them off on a daily basis. That can, in some circumstances, feel like a huge luxury, but what if it's my priority? Well, then I need to know that going into my job search, my career change and intentional career change would focus on finding a job, finding a role, finding an organization, finding an environment, finding the people who also value that that's going to support that type of lifestyle. A job that would support all the must haves that I've defined, those things that are highest priority to me." Okay, very different than that offer from the friend at, you know, this company that they just got to, right? So you can sort of see the difference. An intentional career change is where you're spending time figuring out that destination in a different way, not just I'm looking for a job, not just an arguably better situation, but figuring out what is the life that I want to build, and then how does my work support that. When you do that, it's really the definition of not settling, versus when you don't do that, when you're not looking at that larger picture, then by definition, you are unintentionally settling.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:13

Okay, let me give you a couple examples, and you can actually go back and listen to these episodes. You can go back to Episode 532 and 533 and you can listen to Nancy. Nancy in her case, by the way, 533 was called Creating Your Ideal Career by Asking For What You Want. You can actually search that or just search ideal career and a lot of times, you'll find many of our episodes that pop up here. Okay, in this case, Nancy co-founded an event planning company where she worked and grew her career and the company for over 20 years. When she realized she wanted a different degree of autonomy, she actually left her role as a VP there, and she was able to create a new role and align it with everything that she had defined that she needed in her next opportunity, and did so at a company that she was really excited about. And in fact, she actually, what you'll hear, if you go back and listen to those episodes, is that she experimented and figured out, as she was making the transition, what was really going to create a great situation for her. And that's one of the really fun things when you start to live work and life more intentionally, you realize that part of how you get to living a more intentional life is you start doing some things intentionally. Those things provide you feedback, and then that feedback a lot of times in the form of experimentation and exploration, that feedback then allows you to make different decisions going forward, and this starts to provide a compound effect. And that's exactly what Nancy experienced. She ended up trialing a couple of different things, and realized that what she thought was going to be amazing for her actually was not as amazing. And once she got into that, she realized, nope, she needed to make a different decision. Both of them were better than her previous situation. However, it allowed her to get that feedback to make better decisions that she couldn't even imagine back show and she was thinking about changing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:17

Okay, here's another example, Michael. Michael's story, I really love Michael's story. Partially, just because I've gotten to meet Michael numerous times and he's become a bit of a friend. And so Michael, we mentioned his story in the book. His story is also back on Podcast Episode 395 it's called Executive Burnout: Making A Midlife Career Change. You can go back and listen to that. Just search midlife career change, or search executive burnout in your podcast player. Or go into 395, we'll have it linked in the show notes too, so you just click back there. In his case, he was a former finance exec who went from... He worked with a studio. He went from, burned out, and he was, oh my goodness, he was so stressed, it was affecting his health. He lost 20 pounds, and he went all the way from that to learning that work can be fun. I remember him saying that when my wife, Alyssa, and I got to meet him and we had breakfast with him on Pacific Beach in California. Anyhow, he's like, "You know what? I didn't actually know that work could be fun. I had enjoyed, you know, quite a few different pieces of my career, and it had certainly been good for me. But I didn't actually know that it could be fun." And could add to his life in that particular way, versus taking away from it. So, of course, in his case, he did the work to figure out what was more fun, what fell more into that category, and realized that that was part of what he wanted to build for his life. Fast forward, he's continued to iterate on that over the years. It's been pretty cool to see what has continued to progress, even beyond that episode when you go back and listen to it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:59

Okay, Cheri, whose story you can listen on a much more recent episode too, 572. Well, after finding herself in a role that she didn't love, Cheri figured out the type of work that she needed to be doing to align with her strengths. The type of people, this was interesting too, she delved deep into who are the type of people she wanted to work with, and even the amount of money that she needed to make and wanted to make, and then she found an organization where all of that came together, and she ended up making a change to that organization. And then the work, of course, not a surprise, this was a much more intentional approach, so the work was not so magically, checking all of those boxes. She's a much happier person, and is able to enjoy her life outside of work at a different level too. She even went on to say that she's a, you know, she's a better parent and partner because of it, and so she shows up differently too. A fun fact about her story too. If you go back and listen to her past episodes, we have a couple of them on the podcast, but you'll hear that she ended up making another transition inside that organization because she was already a great fit that showed that led to a promotion, and then she was able to, instead of just accepting that promotion, consider go back to her what we'd call an ideal career profile, all that work that she did to figure out what intentionally creates a better situation and life for her, and then she was able to use that to evaluate the decision right in front of her, which is very different, very, very, very different when you say yes to something like that versus just, you know, the friend that calls up and you're like, "Yeah, well, I guess it seems better than what I'm doing. Maybe." So Cheri was able to take that situation and flip it around and say, "You know what? Here's what I actually can do. This does mostly line up, but there's a few things that I'm concerned about." And she was able to work with her leader, her boss, to make sure that the promotion was going to be structured in a way that was truly going to be good for her. Pretty cool, right? Perfect example of being able to flip the script and do things very intentionally, even when those opportunities pop up. Now, it's truly an opportunity that's gonna build on the life that you want to create, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:16

Okay, so, Karen. Here's one more example of what intentional career change looks like. Karen, she was in episode 561. She stepped away from her all encompassing job as a dean and redesigned her career and life to revolve around what she considered to be her true priorities. Her new role has the student interaction that she was missing from one of her previous roles, but isn't as stressful in the ways that are negative for her. So it allows her to spend the extra time that she would have been spending. She now gets to spend that with her daughter, which is ultimately what she determined was one of her highest priorities. So you can imagine that this allows her to be able to spend more of her time overall in the ways that she wants to, which adds up when you do that day after day after day, that adds up to a much more intentional life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:08

So if you're here considering making a change, know that it's not just about the job, it's not just about the tasks, it's not just about finding the work that fits. It's also about creating a life that fulfills you, and you can make that happen. It takes practice. It takes courage. It takes a very, very, very, very different way of thinking. But if that's something that you're interested in, we'd love to help, of course, it's what we do. It's what we love to do. And my hope here is that I've helped you understand a little bit more, just a tiny bit more, in this episode about what intentional versus unintentional looks like. If you want to live more intentionally, if you want to do work that fits into a more intentional life, then by all means, I would encourage you to schedule a conversation with our team. You can send an email to Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and I'll put you in touch with our team, and you'll be able to meet them, they'll have a conversation with you. We've got a few different team members that are really wonderful at putting together the right types of custom support that fits your world, fits what your needs are, your challenges, like what kind of industry and everything that you're coming out of, your budget, etc, all of those things, and then creating that custom type of approach to allow you to ultimately do things more intentionally. Now, one thing I should probably mention too, now that we've been 11 years into this organization, and people are starting to share our podcasts and share our books and everything else with their friends and co-workers and family, we're pretty booked up. So what I would encourage you to do is we're booked through the end of July, we're now booking into August and September and October at this point, so if you're interested in working with us anytime before the fall, then I would encourage you to send that conversation email now, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. Send it to Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and then if you want to, feel free to tell me a little bit about your situation. I will connect you with our team. And then we're basically now scheduling for that remainder of time, August through October, and that scheduling closes July 19. So do it sooner rather than later. But in the next episode, come back for that. It'll be released tomorrow. We'll discuss why you can't do this alone. And I'm not just talking about a career coach. I'm talking about it's gonna take more than just you. It's gonna take a different type of support to get a different result than what the rest of the world has. So we'll chat about who needs to be involved in your journey next time right here on Happen To Your Career in our next bonus episode.

Natalie Bernero 00:01

It was just a feeling of dread, like, going into work and having to deal with these conversations. And then that led me to trying to avoid doing that work, even though that was my primary job. So it was just this... It just felt like a battle every single day.

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard someone say, "Well, work is supposed to be hard. That's why it's called work." Or even, "Work is supposed to suck." It's the mindset that has been ingrained in us as a society. We are unconsciously taught from a young age that work is grueling duty and we have to put in our dues during our prime working years because that's just the way of the world. Luckily, this narrative is very misguided, and people are starting, just barely starting, to realize that work doesn't actually have to suck. And it all starts by looking inward and asking, "Do I really want work to feel like work, or could it feel differently?"

Natalie Bernero 01:32

I was so keen on getting out of finance that I almost wanted to ignore any job that had to do with finance, but that's actually where a lot of my skills lie–is in analytical work dealing with numbers, that financial analysis piece.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:47

That's Natalie Bernero. Natalie was working in the finance industry when she started to feel very misaligned. She felt she was not working on her strengths and that her values had evolved since she accepted the role and that it was no longer a fit. Natalie's support system really didn't understand why she needed to leave her comfortable finance role, but she pushed it back because she knew a more fulfilling role was out there for her. Natalie articulates the ups and downs of her career change process very well, and I think you'll be able to relate to her mind blocks that she had to overcome to even begin the process. Listen for those as we get to later on in the interview with Natalie. Here she is as she talks about the origin of her career change.

Natalie Bernero 02:34

Up until this point when I made my career change, I've only had one job in my one career, and I had a great experience at that company. I had great mentorship, great leaders, great co-workers. I felt like I had a really good support system. So hence why I stayed at that company so long. I was learning. I was growing. For a long time, I did enjoy it, but I found myself growing into a role that I came to realize in this process didn't align with my values and wasn't something that I wanted to do long-term.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:05

Tell me about that. I'm so curious about that. I think that's something that many of us experience over the course of our lives, where something that was wonderful changes because it no longer aligns. What would be an example of your values? What changed for you?

Natalie Bernero 03:24

So, for context, the job that I was in prior to my career change was, I was a trust officer at a wealth management firm. It's kind of, it's a very niche career. So if people aren't familiar, it's basically in the estate planning and trust world. It's a little bit of legal, essentially, I was managing trust funds–is the best way to put it. And so when I initially started my job, I was working... I was growing up into that role of being a trust officer. And so I was being heavily mentored, and I was kind of in a role that was a hybrid of real work and doing supporting and learning the ins and outs of wealth management. And then I was also growing into a role that was more relationship management and working one-on-one with clients and customers. And so I think I really enjoyed it at first because I was learning something, but I was doing a lot of analytical work, which is something that I really enjoy. However, when I grew in more into that role of being a trust officer, and more relationship management piece, that kind of analytical work fell away, and I found myself just working with clients, which was okay, I was good at it, and I did enjoy working with some of my clients, but unfortunately, a lot of my clients were kind of really entitled individuals. And that's where I found the value misalignment– is I really value working hard for the things that I have in life, and the clients that I was working with necessarily didn't share that value. And so I think at the end of the day, that's where that shift happened, where I found myself not enjoying it, because that's what I was dealing with day to day, and the analytical work that I used to really enjoy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:58

When you began to realize that there was that misalignment and values that particularly around working hard, what did that feel like? Do you remember?

Natalie Bernero 05:10

Oh yeah, absolutely. How can you forget? I found myself just constantly stressed and anxious and constantly thinking about the interactions I was going to have with my clients on a day to day basis. There was some... I'm sure anyone who's worked in customer service can, you know, there's always those tough cookies that seem to call you more than the good clients. And so I would just find myself constantly worried in thinking about, "What am I going to say? What am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? Am I doing the right thing? Is this what I'm going to say, I'm going to do? Is that going to be the right thing to do? Am I going to make it more mad?" And so I just find myself so anxious about that, to the point where I was like, dreaming about it, dreaming about having interactions with clients. And so it was just a feeling of dread, like going into work and having to deal with these conversations. And then that led me to trying to avoid doing that work, even though that was my primary job. So it was just this... It just felt like a battle every single day.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:10

Once you began to realize that this was the pattern for you, what caused you to realize that you needed to make a change?

Natalie Bernero 06:17

I think I knew that I needed to make a change for, I would say, a couple of years. And it really kind of hit for me, and I think for a lot of people, during the pandemic, there was this big shift in how work was being done, and I realized that I wanted to make a change, but I just didn't know where to start. And there were periods where I would just kind of randomly apply to jobs on LinkedIn because I was just so fed up at my job. I was like, "Well, I'll just start throwing my resume out there into the universe and see if anything sticks." Naturally, nothing did. And then I would go back into a period where it was okay, things were okay, and I could sustain it for a little while longer. But I knew that being young in my career, if I was already having these feelings of, "I need to get out. I want to make a change. I want to do something different.", there's no way that I should stay in that job for another year, two years. I didn't want to find myself 10 years down the road still in that job and wishing that I had done something differently. And that's kind of what got me inspired to search for help and search for career coaching.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:16

What caused you, do you think, to wait several years? Because I heard you say that, "I think I knew for a couple of years", what do you feel like caused you to wait several years before deciding to take action on that?

Natalie Bernero 07:33

Well, I know what caused me to wait. I was making really good money for my age, I was good at my job, and I had great mentors and c-workers. So those three things I love, and so on paper and in my mind, it was like, "I should be happy here", because it's ticking all of those boxes. And yet, inherently, I was stressed, anxious, dreading my day to day job. And so I think I stuck it out for so long, hoping that I would be able to push through that stress and somehow get through this hard time, and then everything would come into place, but that value misalignment was never going to go away. And so I finally, you know, I needed to take the leap. And that didn't mean that I couldn't find a career that still ticked all those boxes for me, but was also doing something that I really enjoyed. That was the hope that I always had, especially going into this process.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:26

When you look back, what do you feel like, functionally, whether it's big or small or anything else, what worked to be able to allow you to decide to do something different?

Natalie Bernero 08:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess it was just, I had to... I guess I just, I remember one day I was running errands after work. It was dark after work, and I had a tough day. Lord knows what was going on, but I was stressed, I was unhappy, and I was just on a whim. I just searched on Spotify for a career advice podcast or something like that, and Happen To Your Career came up, and so I was just driving somewhere, and I just started listening to a couple of episodes. And then hearing success stories, people saying, "I never thought it was possible, but I did it, and I'm so much happier, and my life is so much more fulfilling." I had that inkling of a, "there's no difference between me and that person that's talking of their success. The only difference is that they took the leap and they took the time to immerse themselves in this process. And I can do that too." And so it was just seeing the examples of people coming out on the other side and having success in their career change was inspiring to me, especially because when I would talk to my family about wanting to be in a career that made me feel happy and fulfilled, my mom would say to me, she's like, "I don't think I've ever known anybody that's happy in their careers. It's work. Work is supposed to be work." And so I feel like in my own support circle, there was just kind of this feeling of like, "Oh, work is work, and you're never going to enjoy it." But then I'm listening to this podcast that's telling me, "I made a change, and I'm so much happier, and I love my job." And so it was that moment of inspiration, but then also having to shift my own mindset and belief that I could find that happiness too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:11

I'm so glad that you had that experience. Also, now that you know it's possible, you get to help spread the word. Because almost everyone in the world has that type of conversation, whether it's with family, friends, other additional co-workers, it's like, "Work is work. Work is supposed to suck." And especially now, in today's times, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way at all, but it is what we're taught from a young age. And that is, by the way, we have that but we don't talk a lot about it on the podcast, but you may have heard us say it, "Our secret mission is to get enough people in place, influential places, into organizations that they have made that change for themselves where they can then help pass that knowledge and those skills on to other people." So ultimately, we can create a movement that causes people to be able to thrive at work, as opposed to thinking, well, "Work is work. Work has to suck. Oh, bother me, or..." I don't know, insert your cliche here. May I read a thing that you shared with us early on, for you, about one of your biggest fears?

Natalie Bernero 11:19

Sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:20

Okay, so you had shared with us, "My biggest fear is that industries I would like to work in are hard to make a livable wage or are hard to get into higher up positions where the salaries would be more desirable. I'm afraid it will be hard to find positions I want in industries without having to take a big salary cut." Tell me a little bit about that.

Natalie Bernero 11:39

Yeah. I think I was, again, I came from wealth management, I came from financial services, which I think has this element of prestige in that industry– when you think of like, super wealthy people, their investment bankers, venture capitalists, all that kind of a thing. And so being in that world, it just felt like a guarantee, of like, no matter what you're doing, if you do well at the company, you're going to grow and make good money. Unfortunately, that was a really big focusing point for me going into this process. But the industries that I was interested in and thought would really fulfill me, really excited me were things like the travel industry, hospitality, restaurants, things like that. And so I knew that there was companies, organizations out there where, obviously, people are making great money their living fulfilled lives, whatever that looks like for them. But I just, I felt like it didn't have that same guarantee with it, especially going into just those various industries that I named. And so that's kind of where that fear came from, is like, "Yeah, maybe I can get into the hospitality industry, but I'll have to drop way back my salary, and that'll feel like a step backwards for me, coming from such a prestigious, high paying role."

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:51

What helped you to change your mindset and your outlook on that?

Natalie Bernero 12:55

Talking to people that did work in the industry and had the success. So when it came to the reach out portion of career change bootcamp, and I started to meet with different people and talk to people at companies that I was interested in, they just came back and were telling me that they live their successful lives and they have enough money to support their lifestyle and so, yeah, just speaking one on one with people that had lived in that experience and told me about what they did. It was completely different than stereotype that I had in my head.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:26

What do you think caused that stereotype for you personally, if you're reflecting back on it? Because this is, I'll say, first of all, it is definitely a common conversation that we have all the time. We've had it many thousands of times over the last 10 years, so you're not alone. And you know what, looking back, what do you believe caused that for you?

Natalie Bernero 13:47

Yeah, I think I was definitely thinking of like, when it came to the restaurant industry, like thinking of people who are actually chefs, or people who are bartender service, that kind of thing. And that's notoriously a job where you have to work really hard, really long hours, and not for great money, unless you're working at a Michelin star restaurant or something like that, which is pretty prestigious. So I had that connotation. And then when it came to the travel hospitality industry, I was just thinking of like hotel management and things like that, like roles that I didn't know a lot about, but I just had this assumption that they came with long hours and low salary and, don't get me wrong, I'm sure those roles do exist, but there's so much else that goes on behind the scenes to run organizations, companies in those industries, where people with my skills, like financial skills, analytical skills can also get into the industry and kind of earn those higher salaries as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:45

I think that, well, I guess, first of all, I'll say that the stereotypes are there for a reason, to some degree. And also, within every single industry, there are exceptions to that, that reflection that you had just described is definitely what we've seen over and over again. And we've also found that for individuals, they don't even need to worry about the stereotypes for a particular industry, because most people are not looking for the amount of jobs that an entire industry contains. They're looking for like one opportunity. And if you only need one opportunity, why couldn't you be in the situation where that is the exception, and that's a very different way of looking at it, instead of looking at, well, the average says this over here, but that's true for almost every industry. So here's what I wanted to ask you, though, as you think about your career change, as you started to get into it, what do you think was harder than you anticipated?

Natalie Bernero 15:46

I'd say there was a couple things that were hard for me. And the first was in the first couple of modules, it's all about building your ideal career profile and what you want that to look like, everything that you want and need in a new career. And that wasn't necessarily hard for me. I had this idea in my head of what I wanted, but putting it all on paper and seeing it, it felt like this perfect thing that I was never going to find, like I was never going to find a job that ticked all of these boxes for me, especially, as I got more into the process. I had that feeling, but then I had the hope of, well, maybe I can. But then as I got into the process of doing reach outs and connecting with people, I was very optimistic about it, but there were some conversations that didn't go great, there were tons of people that didn't get back to me who I really wanted to talk to. And so as I was kind of riding that roller coaster, that ideal career profile started to feel more and more out of reach. And so I started getting to a point where I thought, at this point, I'll just take anything that I can get, because I want to get out of my old job so bad. And that got me into that negative headspace of kind of ignoring everything I had built in the ideal career profile. So it was hard to continue trying to reach out and continue to try and find opportunities that did take all those boxes on my ICP, and to keep pushing through that process and hoping that I was going to find that opportunity that I really wanted, even though I was so close to just giving up and taking anything. You know what I mean?

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:18

Yeah, absolutely. And is fascinating to me, no matter where someone is coming from, how far or not far they are along in their career, however much experience they have or don't have, everyone that we've ever worked with goes through that same kind of dip where they have done a lot of wonderful work in defining what it is that they want, and now they're actually actively working on it, whatever that looks like for their particular process you're talking about, where you're reaching out and you're having real conversations with people, and at some point along the way, something, or a series of somethings don't go well, and they hit that wall. And it sounds like for you, that was exactly the point where you started to feel like, "Oh my goodness, I will just take anything. I put in all this work. I need to get out of this other role that I'm in currently and just get me out of here." And that I think is normal. So my question becomes then, when you get to that point, arguably one of the hardest points when you're working towards something that is meaningful for you, what worked for you? What allowed you to move through? What were some of the parts and pieces that other people might be able to duplicate that you found worked really well?

Natalie Bernero 18:37

Yeah, it was definitely in those hard times that working with my coach was really helpful and beneficial. I would go to her and tell her really honestly how I was feeling, "I'm having a hard time, I just want to quit my job, and it's not going as I thought it would go, like, what can we do? What should I do to keep moving forward?" And it was at those moments that she would kind of take me back, and we'd revisit my ideal career profile, but we'd also revisit the values that we had gone through and listed at the start of my process, the things that I value and we want to make sure align in my career. And so she would just kind of keep those as a constant reminder to me of like, "Even if you can't tick all of your boxes on the ICP, make sure that you're hitting your values. Make sure that the people you're talking to share your values. Make sure that the companies you're looking at share those values, because that is where you will find that alignment and that happiness." So her reminders to go back and really put my values first, really kind of helps me. And then she also helped me find different ways to find different people to talk to, different ways to look for companies, rather just then spending hours and hours on LinkedIn, which I found myself kind of getting trapped in that cycle of looking on LinkedIn constantly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:48

Give me an example of one of those ways that you were able to go in and look for a company that fit with your values.

Natalie Bernero 19:58

Yeah. Well, first of all, she pointed me to other job boards other than just LinkedIn, you know, we looked at Indeed, too. There's one specifically for... it's a website called Built In there's Built In Colorado, I think they have others in different states, but, you know, they highlight mostly tech companies. We looked at, there's a couple of other resources that she gave me that talk and specify in different companies. And you can filter for companies that you want, especially on Built In, you can filter for industries that you're interested in. You can filter for remote work. You can filter by job type. And so just looking at those different resources pointed me to a lot of different companies that weren't on LinkedIn or work didn't have as much of a presence there. And then I would go take those companies, and then I would start searching for people that I knew or connections that I might be able to reach out to that way. So just having those, just additional online resources was extremely helpful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:50

What do you feel like you did an especially great job at? When you look back, you're like, "Oh, not everything worked that well. But this I did pretty well."

Natalie Bernero 21:02

I'm pretty self-critical. I'm sure I did some things really well, but that's a tough one. I mean, at the end of the day, even though the reach outs were really hard for me, when I go back and I look at all the reach outs that I actually did, I did a lot more than I thought I was going to. It felt like I only had one or two for a while, and then I had three, and then I had four. But by the end of it, by the time I made my change, I connected with, I think, 12 or 15 people, something like that. And that was a lot more than I thought I was going to do. And now I've connected with, in having those reach outs and connecting with those people, I feel like I have not a larger network that as my wants change, as my life changes, and as I may want to make another change in the future, I have so many more resources and connections that I can go back to in the future. So even though that was probably the hardest part for me, I think at the end of the day, I surprised myself in how much you can actually accomplish if you just keep working on it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:04

What do you feel like was the surprise to you? What stood out as the surprise to you for just how much you can accomplish? What was it about that?

Natalie Bernero 22:13

Just the fact that I was able to be bold and asking people to have those conversations. It feels kind of awkward to just reach out to someone that you don't know or that you've never talked to before, but that was the biggest surprise, was that even though you're putting yourself in that uncomfortable situation, you just kind of got to do it, and then you realize that you're capable and people are willing to talk to you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:36

It seems as though, well, I won't speak for everyone, but for me, when people say bold or like making bold moves, a lot of times it feels like that is instant, or that is massive moves in some way or another, but I also hear you referring to, it was the build up of these specific smaller moves that felt uncomfortable, but it was the build up over time that really caused you to be successful through this process. Is that fair? Or what would you say to that?

Natalie Bernero 23:08

Yeah, I would agree. My coach was great about that, too. In moments when I would say, "Oh, I don't really want to do that, or I feel uncomfortable doing that", to push me and say, "You need to do these things. You need to. I'll help you with a template. I'll help you draft how you're going to ask for this thing, whatever it is, along in this process." And so she would help me with that, but then she would kind of give me some tough love and make sure that I followed through and did do that. So yeah, it built up slowly over time, just with starting with reach outs. But then when it got to the end, when it came to negotiating for my job that I ended up getting, she made sure that I did negotiations and I asked for more. And so, yeah, it built up over time, but she really helped me be successful in that regard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:51

It sounds like definitely having another person there who was able to, as you said, give some tough love and be able to urge you to keep going, was effective for you when you got to those uncomfortable parts. Is there anything else that worked really well for you to be able to move through that discomfort, especially since that was such a big part of your success?

Natalie Bernero 24:13

Yeah, I would say some other things that helped me be successful through that process was talking to my other friends and family who had gone through career changes in the past, and a lot of my friends and family that I talked to about it didn't do career coaching, but, you know, they had made successful career moves. And this being my first time that I was actually going to be leaving a job and making a change, I had a lot of anxiety kind of built up about that. So hearing other people's success stories, just how they were able to do it on their own, gives me a lot of hope knowing that I also had HTYC in my career coach to back me up. That gave me a lot of hope that, "Okay, I'm not on my own in this. I have these coaches, I have these great resources, and I've seen other people who have just done it completely on their own." So, I know that I can be successful in that as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:03

That is super cool. I am also curious too, talking about the reach out process, and within that reach out process, do you remember any of the interactions that you had where you're like, "I don't know if this is gonna... I don't know if this is gonna be effective." And then it turned out to actually work. Do you remember any of those times?

Natalie Bernero 25:26

Oh, yeah, yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:27

What was the first time that happened where you had that experience?

Natalie Bernero 25:30

I would say the first time that happened was, no, it's not the most effective way. But I just randomly messaged a guy on LinkedIn who worked at a restaurant management company in Denver, and it was a total shot in the dark. And I wasn't... I've done this before, so I wasn't expecting him to answer me, but I reached out and I said, "Hey, we have a mutual. Here's our mutual thing that we have in common. I'd love to talk to you about what you do." And he instantly got back to me and was like, we met for coffee, I think, three days later. And so I know, again, I know that's not the most effective way, but just having one of those times that was a total shot in the dark, and I wasn't expecting anything out of that to then him becoming a connection, and him introducing me to people at restaurant management company and talking to me about what he does and what the opportunities there were was mind blowing, and gave me a lot of hope for continuing this process. The other one was I reached out to an old friend from college, and he worked at a company that I was interested in, and, you know, obviously was willing to have a conversation, since we knew each other from school, but he actually ended up, after a conversation, ended up sending me an opportunity that then became the job that I took. So I wasn't expecting much out of it, other than just to talk about the company and the conversation, but he was the one that ended up getting me the opportunity that I ended up taking. So those two just kind of random shots in the dark that I took throughout the reach out process ended up getting me: A, great connection, and, b, my next job.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:57

I think what's amazing is that, although it's easy to see how that one particular person and that one particular interaction then snowballed too much later, turning into an actual opportunity. It's much harder to see that in the moment. You don't know which of those connections or which of those interactions or which experiments you might run that are going to yield feedback about what you do or don't want to spend your time on, or yield a relationship that turns into something really fun and wonderful and then later ends up turning into an actual paying opportunity. So really, really nice job, because when I know from both personal experience and from us working with many people over and over again that it doesn't always seem like it's going to work out that way in the moment. So kudos to you. That is awesome. What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about making a career change? Where... Let's go way back here to the point where you had realized for a while that you needed to do something different, but hadn't quite accepted it yet, and you were just considering, you're at that consideration point, we'll call it off, "Do I make a career change? Do I continue to stick it out? What does that look like? What does this mean?" What advice would you give to that person who's in that place?

Natalie Bernero 28:17

Yeah, there's a couple pieces of advice that I would get. Is one just starting to believe that it is possible and that you can do it, you can make a career change successfully. I feel like I had a lot of mind blocks that kept me in my last job for probably longer than it should have. And I know that other people experience that as well. So just starting by shifting your mindset to believing that you can do it and that it is possible is definitely the first step. And I think my second piece of advice is to not get attached. I feel like I had, kind of when we were talking about our ideal career profile and everything, I started to get really attached to this idea that I had to find the quick job at the perfect company, and it had to be this glorious opportunity that paid six figures, and I was kind of searching for that one perfect opportunity. And the job that I ended up taking, if you had told me at the beginning of the process, I probably would have not been interested in it. And so I feel like you can't get too attached to any one specific thing. You have to keep your mind open as you go through the process because you never know what opportunities are going to present itself. You never know what connections are going to be, the ones that lead to opportunities. And so just kind of keeping an open mind and not getting too attached to one thing, I feel like really leads you to success in the end.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:35

I think that's amazing advice. I just taught a session for a group of our clients the other day, and that's one of the things that had come up during that session, is, "Hey, how broad or specific or general or not general should I be when I'm creating my version of ideal?" We use the tool of an ideal career profile, but ultimately it is that picture or vision of what it is that you're going after. And I think to your point, if you're not necessarily locked in on it must be this industry or this way, or this particular thing, or at the time we were talking about someone who wanted to go into learning and development, and was very focused on learning and development, and instead focused on shifting your focus to say, "Okay, how do I not get attached to this, but experiment with it. And how do I look at the pieces that are most important to me? And if they happen to fit outside of learning and development, that's amazing." Because, as you said, if you would have seen this job at the beginning, you probably would have written it off the list.

Natalie Bernero 30:35

Yeah, exactly. And I was surprised that it ended up being the role that I'm in because it's a financial level, and so I was so keen on getting out of finance that I almost wanted to ignore any job that had to do with finance. But that's actually where a lot of my skills lie, is in analytical work dealing with numbers, that financial analysis piece. But I was just so keen on ignoring the finance piece of it, that at the beginning of this process, that would not have been my ideal career, but it's the opportunity that I ended up taking, and I'm really excited about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:10

Tell me about negotiation. This is an area of struggle for so many people. I think it's fun. I know that that makes me crazy, and I'm okay with that. However, for you, as you went through the process of negotiating and asking for what you were looking for and that set of interactions, what do you feel like worked really well for you?

Natalie Bernero 31:35

Yeah, I was definitely adverse to negotiating. I found it really interesting when I got the offer from my job. The salary that they offered me was above what I had asked for on the application. They say, "What do you expect to make in this job?" And what they offered me was above that, which I feel like is a negotiation strategy on a company's part to kind of make you feel like you don't need to negotiate because they're offering me more money up front. So when I talked with my coach about the offer, and I said, "Hey, they're already offering more money, like, I don't feel like I need to negotiate." And she was like, "Nope, we're absolutely negotiating." So she really pushed me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:14

Thank you for your concern. No.

Natalie Bernero 32:17

She's like, "Nope, I'm gonna push you out of your comfort zone anyway." And so I feel like it's hard. I'm a very much a people pleaser, and I definitely don't want to rock the boat and avoid a confrontation. And so going into negotiations, it feels like you're going into... you're not confronting somebody, but it feels like you're asking for more. And so it feels uncomfy, for sure, and I'm sure 99% of the people listening feel the same way. But what really helped me was going through a template of how to authentically ask for more money or for more benefits or something like that. Authentically do it and in a way that we can frame it as a win-win scenario. Let's benefit me, but it's also going to benefit the company, X, Y and Z. And hearing that, it sounds like, how can you make it sound good for the company? But my coach really helped me, kind of walked through that and created that template for me, and then sending that email felt a lot better than just the idea I had in my head of being like, "I want more money, please and thank you."

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:16

Do you remember any of the verbiage that you used that felt authentic to you? And also recognizing the caveat here is that what feels authentic to you, especially in negotiation, where you're trying to have a genuine conversation, may not feel authentic to the next person. But do you remember any of that verbiage that you use that made it feel more authentic to you and to still be able to ask and find that wonderful win-win type of ground?

Natalie Bernero 33:45

Yeah, for me, it was really highlighting in that email that I was really excited about the company and the opportunity. And so in highlighting that and making sure that they were aware that I was really, really excited about the opportunity, but there was just this one little piece that I needed to get over the finish line. I feel like helped a lot because I wanted to let them know that like they weren't going to lose me as a candidate just because the salary wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. But I would also love if we could come to some sort of mutual agreement that's going to benefit both of us. So that felt really authentic to me to make sure that they knew that I was still a very willing and excited candidate.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:23

So it sounds like part of what you did was making sure that they fully understood that you were on board, excited to be there, and also simultaneously, there was a piece or multiple pieces that didn't line up with what you were looking for. And one thing I should mention for everyone listening, many times it's not appropriate to send an email. Sometimes it is. So in listening to Natalie's story here, definitely was appropriate in this particular time to send an email. But before you just assume that it's email versus conversation versus anything else, definitely partner with somebody that is experienced in negotiation, because it's very different on an interaction by interaction, and company by company, and motivation by motivation basis. So really, really nice job. And also on the other side of that, what's the biggest thing that you learned through this process for yourself?

Natalie Bernero 35:19

I think the biggest thing that... I learned so many valuable skills in this process of just how to build a network, how to shift your mindset when you're approaching any challenge in life, whether it's a career change or whether it's any other obstacle that I'm going to hit in life. But I think I just learned a lot more to trust my instincts, and learned a lot about what I value, and that has really helped me from a career standpoint, but also just a life standpoint. When I look at things that make me mad or upset, I now think of it from the standpoint of this is probably misaligning with something that I value. And so just having that expanded self-awareness, I feel like is going to be amazing going forward, as I evolve and change my career and then my life in general.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:07

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:00

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

Speaker 3 37:05

We were actually leaving for a sabbatical in Europe, and I knew it could be gone for seven months, so thought that this would be a great opportunity to kind of really explore things, come back and know what I wanted to do. And of course, that didn't happen. I went over there with, you know, high expectations of I'm going to have that 'aha' moment, and I'm going to come back and know exactly what I'm going to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:25

Over time, you've definitely heard the word clarity come up as it relates to careers, career change, everything in between, and certainly once or twice on this podcast. The interesting thing is that most people think clarity means knowing what you want. And it does, in a way. But interestingly enough, clarity comes from the root word, which is the same root word that declare uses. So when you think about clarity, it really is about declaring what you want. In fact, declaring what's most important to you. That's what creates the knowing what you want. Now here's also an interesting thing, you can't get you to your ideal role unless you know what ideal means for you, what's most important for you. And the truth is, most people just don't know what they want or have the courage to declare what is most important. One of my favorite success stories about landing an ideal role comes from Kristy Wenz. Kristy traveled around the world thinking that she would be able to have clarity at the end of that. She was visiting wineries, tasting wine, and she learned that she loves wineries and wine. However, she still came back without clarity. We got the opportunity to help her answer the question and declare what she really wanted. And once she figured it out, things really opened up for her.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:51

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.

Charles Duhigg 00:01

There's a normal distribution of extroverts and introverts among super communicators. There's a normal distribution of charming and curmudgeonly. And if you ask super communicators, "Were you always good at communication? Is this something you were born with?" Inevitably, they say, "No."

Introduction 00:21

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

If you want to get anything done, results of any kind, you're going to need to be able to communicate with other people. And if you really want to excel at just about anything career related, working with team, making meaningful connections, job interviews, salary negotiation, networking, and, quite frankly, anything else that you might be interested in being successful at, well, then it helps if you are a skilled communicator, or what our guest today calls a super communicator.

Charles Duhigg 01:20

There's this common cultural myth, which is that people who are really good at communication are born with it, right? We say born with the gift of gab, or that they're extroverts, or they're really charming. And the thing is that the research shows that that just isn't true at all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:34

That's Charles Duhigg. Charles is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, New Yorker staff writer, and best selling author. His previous books include 'The Power of Habit', 'Smarter Faster Better', and his newest book, which is out now, is 'Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection'. Now I think this is going to be a great conversation for you to hear because, well, quite frankly, I found his insights extremely helpful over the years. I loved 'The Power of Habit', and for the last 10 years, I've been buying the book for our team, and quite frankly, anybody who I thought would benefit from it as gifts for people. So when Charles came out with his latest book on communication, honestly, I bought it because I'm familiar with his work. However, it was a pleasant surprise, because I've read so many books on communication, and this is very different than every other communication book, and I've probably read, I don't know, well, over 100 now at this point. Many other books try to oversimplify communication by saying, "Here's the research, and here's the tactics, and here's what you need to do in all circumstances." But supercommunicators, it adds a lot of nuance. Charles walks through helpful details that he pulls from research, like the different types of conversations you need to have in different situations at work. You're even going to hear how we walk through a specific example of how a supercommunicator would ask for a raise. But before we get to that, I asked Charles to share a bit about where his career began.

Charles Duhigg 03:09

So, after I graduated from college, I started a company back in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is where I grew up, to build medical education campuses. And after doing that for a couple of years, I realized that I didn't know as much about business and management as I wanted to, and so I went to business school. So I went to business school to get my MBA, and during my first year in business school, we ended up selling the company. And so suddenly I kind of had this... I had this, like, sort of freedom that I hadn't anticipated on. And between the first and second year of business school, you do an internship. And the idea is that you do an internship with a company that you hope is going to hire you. And so that's what I did. I went back to Albuquerque, and I did an internship with a private equity real estate firm, and I was trying to decide between becoming a journalist or going into business. And while I was doing that job, I realized that I really actually much more enjoyed doing journalism, and so that's kind of how I ended up here. It's not a particularly exciting story.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:05

Well, let me ask you about that. I'm curious, though, because you were considering between business and journalism. But what caused you to lean that direction? What was happening way back then, where you're like, "Yeah, this is it. This is where I'm gonna lean."

Charles Duhigg 04:18

I think that the thing about business is that you spend a lot of time building spreadsheets and trying to get better and better and better and faster and faster and faster at evaluating deals. And so the fact... You learn something really, really well, and then you continue sort of focusing and getting better and better at one small thing or one large thing, but it's one thing. Whereas in journalism, you get to learn something new every single day, and that just seemed more entertaining to me, more interesting. And the idea of storytelling sort of seemed like it could be interesting to me for the rest of my life. So yeah, I mean, like many things that, I think that, in retrospect, we sort of force a narrative on our decisions and at that time, it just seems like this is the most interesting thing to do right now. And then there's some path dependence.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:06

I think one of the things I really enjoy about your work is that you do a great job bringing people along for the ride. And what I mean by that... Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you what, I love 'The Power of Habit' so much that now, for the last 10 years, have been buying it for people– we buy it for our team, we buy it for gifts.

Charles Duhigg 05:27

Oh, that's very kind.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:28

Yeah. So definitely enjoyed it. But also, I think about almost all your work, you tend to say, "Hey, I'm learning about this in one way or another, whether it's from an investigative point of view, or whatever else." And then you bring us along for the ride. When you think about supercommunicators, because we're going to talk about that here momentarily, so tell me about like, what is that central idea that we keep either pulling away from or coming back to, what is the drawing point that you were talking about earlier?

Charles Duhigg 06:04

The central idea is that communication is a set of skills that anyone can learn, and that there's nothing inherently special about supercommunicators, except that they understand those skills and they understand they can apply them the same things that they do with a best friend or someone who it's very easy to talk to, those are fungible skills that they can bring to any interaction. And when they do that, they'll achieve this kind of what's known within neuroscience is neural entrainment. They'll feel connected to each other.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:32

I think it almost feels like the title and the subtitle are a little bit in conflict with how someone might understand, because it almost feels like supercommunicators, which you make the point in the book that anyone can become a super communicator. But when I first read the title, I felt like it was about these exceptional people in some ways. And I think that's one of the things that you address early on in the book, too, is that it seems like some of these people must have superpowers, and that was your theory, if I understood, as well, like, "hey, these people must be different in one way or another. But turns out, they're not."

Charles Duhigg 07:11

No, not at all. And in fact, I think that there's this common cultural myth, which is that people who are really good at communication are born with it, right? We say, born with the gift of gab, or that they're extroverts, or they're really charming. And the thing is that the research shows that that just isn't true at all, right? That there's a normal distribution of extroverts and introverts among supercommunicators. There's a normal distribution of charming and curmudgeonly. And if you ask supercommunicators, "Were you always good at communication? Is this something you were born with?" Inevitably, they say "No." They say something like, you know, "I had trouble making friends in high school, and I had to study how kids talk to each other." Or, "My parents got divorced, and I had to be the peacemaker between them." And what that's really telling us is communication is a learned skill. It's actually a set of learned skills. And so most people stop there. They say, like, "Okay. So, that's great. I want to learn those skills for having a hard conversation, or having a conversation with someone I disagree with, or a friend." But the next step that's really interesting is, you know, it is a fungible set of skills. The same with reading– no one would ever suggest to you–if you learned to read a nonfiction, that you can't read fiction, right? Or that if you can read a menu, you can't read a computer instruction guide. That would fundamentally violate what we think of as a skill. A skill is by inherently fungible, and yet, when it comes to communication, people assume that they are not fungible. But what the research tells us, and what supercommunicators the book tells us, is, once you learn how to do this, once you recognize the skills, then you begin to understand how you can apply those same skills to literally anyone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:54

We have so many people that listen to this show where they'll contact us and while I'm honored to have many of these questions, we'll get quite a few questions like, "Hey, how do I say the right things to convince my boss that I need a raise?" Or, "How do I go into this situation to persuade or, you know, convince that this other thing that needs to happen?" And what we find over and over again is that there's this misconception in many different ways, where it's like, "Hey, if I say all the perfect things in the conversation, then miraculously, people are going to get this different result." And...

Charles Duhigg 09:37

Totally. And they'll just agree with me, because, like, yeah. So okay, to answer your question, so let's distinguish what's happening when I sit down with someone. The first thing to figure out is, "do I want to actually have a conversation with them?" Because if my goal is simply to persuade them, then I'm not looking to have a conversation. Now, I will argue to you that that's a pretty ineffective way to persuade someone , it turns out, like, all the research tells us that if I sit down with you, and I'm like, "I want to convince you of something that you don't want to believe." It's probably not going to go well, right? A conversation would be better. But at the outset, like you have to decide to have a conversation. And a conversation does not mean I say something and you listen and you change your mind. A conversation is, I say something in a way that you can understand me, and you say something in a way that I can understand you. And we might walk away disagreeing with each other, but as long as we understand each other, then the conversation has been successful. So okay, so let's say I'm going in, I'm trying to, like, trying to get a raise, and I decide, "Look, the only way I can do this..." If I walk in and I demand a raise, if I don't have a conversation, my boss is going to be like, "Sorry, see you later." So what I want to do is I want to have a conversation. So in a conversation, we don't think just about what we want to say, we think about what the other person wants to say. And so the best way to start a conversation about getting a raise is to go in and ask your boss a question like, "What would you expect to see from me that would make you feel like I deserve a raise?" And oftentimes, when we're preparing for a hard conversation like that, whether it's a good conversation or bad conversation, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to say, right? I'm going to go in and I'm going to tell him X and Y and Z, or this person is bothering me, and I'm going to tell give them a piece of my mind, but we should spend as much time trying to figure out what we are hoping to learn from the other person, right, what questions we want to ask the other person, what they might want to say in this conversation, because that's the way that we engender a conversation, rather than just competing monologue, which is usually what happens when you ask for a raise, right? You go and say, "I want to raise", and your boss says, "Here's all the reasons you can't have a raise." And then you say, "Yeah, but I still want to raise." And they say, "Here's all the reasons we can't raise." They're just competing monologues. They're not actually conversations. But the key is, in a conversation, I never go into a conversation just saying, like, "Here's what I want to say, and I don't care what the other person has to say." I go into conversation saying, like, "Here's actually what I want to know from the other person. Here's what I want to learn. Here's the question that I really want to ask", and that should be at least as important, if not more important, than what you want to say or what you want to tell them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:18

Well, and it really seems like conversations, what you're describing as conversation right this moment, are the way that people get exceptions made for them. Like in that case that you're describing where it's like, "Hey, I'm gonna tell you that I want to raise. You're going to tell me all the reasons why I can't have a raise, and I'm going to be unchanged. I still want to raise." And that's not going to help, ultimately, in the end. But having a conversation, this different type of approach, where I can hear you what is going on with you, and want to understand you, then that allows me to be able to respond, and ultimately have a dialog which then leads to, or can lead to, at least those exceptions.

Charles Duhigg 13:05

Totally. And think about how different that conversation would go if you said, instead of my goal is to persuade you to give me a raise, to say, "Okay, here's my goal. I want to find out what would make you want to give me a raise. Not to convince you, like, what would you need to see that would make you want to give me a raise?" And because we're not just learning about you,"Here's something I want you to learn about me. Not that I want to raise, because everybody wants a raise", that's not really like an interesting piece of knowledge, "But rather, I want you to understand how a raise would impact my life." Because it might very well be that, you know, "I've basically estimated I can continue to have this job for another six months. But if I don't get a raise, I have to look for another job." Or, "I want you to know that my spouse is pregnant, and we have a baby coming, and I need to be thinking about my financial future. So it's not so much that I want you to give me a raise as much as here's something I want you to know about me, and here's a question that I want to know about you." That doesn't mean that necessarily the conversation will be perfect. It doesn't even necessarily mean that it will be a conversation. But that's a much better thing than saying, "I'm going to go in and I'm going to ask for a raise and I'm going to give them these seven reasons why I deserve it" without knowing whether those reasons matter or are interesting, and without wanting to have a conversation, but rather just hoping that this other person will listen to you .

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:24

Well, when you ask that type of question, what would it take for me to be able to get a raise? Or what would I need to do in order to...?

Charles Duhigg 14:35

Another way to do it is to even just say, to even make it sort of more general, "What would you need to see in order for you to want to give me a raise?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:45

Which is even one step back from that.

Charles Duhigg 14:48

And in some sense, it's better, right? Because now it's not, I'm not saying to you, I'm not mandating that you have to talk about me. I'm inviting you to talk about whatever you want to talk about. And this is a big distinction when we're asking questions. So what we're talking about right now are deep questions. Right? A deep question is something that asks about values or beliefs or experiences. And so I'm basically asking, like, "What do you believe is necessary in order to want to give someone a raise?" And we can ask those questions in ways that mandates, right? You know, "What did you think of my last movie?" Puts you on the spot. I am mandating that you talk about me rather versus saying, "Hey, what do you think... I'm just wondering, what do you think about movies, in general? What makes a movie good or what makes a movie bad?" Now, what I'm doing is I'm inviting you to talk about your perception of movies. Now, obviously, the fact that I have been in a movie, you know that I'm really curious about me, right? If I say, "What would it take for someone to get a raise around here?" You're not going to suspect that I'm asking the question in an academic sense, right? I'm obviously asking about myself, but by asking the question in a way that invites rather than mandates a particular response, what I'm doing is I'm making it easier for you, to be honest with.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:04

I find that it also creates a different type of ability to partner, for lack of better phrase. So when I ask that type of question, then if I am shifting the focus from me to you, what do you think that strangely allows us to now partner on this thing? What would it take?

Charles Duhigg 16:33

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I and the way I think about it is, getting on the same side of the table, right? Are we facing each other, or are we both facing a question or a problem together? And you're exactly right. That if I come in and I say, "I want to raise", and I know you're going to say, "I don't have the money for a raise", then we're on opposite sides of the table, and ultimately, all we're going to be able to do is kind of battle with each other, at least tussle. But my goal, and this is true in any conversation, particularly in any hard conversation, is to get you on the same side of the table with me, and to say, "In a perfect world, it would be really easy to give me a raise, but we're not in a perfect world. So let's look at this question together and try and solve how do we make the world a little bit more perfect together?" Now, again, that doesn't mean that necessarily this is going to work like gangbusters. It doesn't mean that your boss is going to be like, "Oh, this was such a brilliant way of asking me. I'm now going to give you a raise." But that's not the goal. The goal is to understand, right? Once you understand better, then you actually can start moving towards that raise. Because there is something in your boss's mind where they're saying, "If X, Y and Z happened, I would want to give this person a raise, because otherwise, I would be terrified that they would leave. I'd be terrified that someone else would hire them." And so the goal is, let's figure out, and again, this is something we're going to work on together, shoulder to shoulder. Let's figure out, "What is that X and that Y and that Z that you wish I was doing? So much so that you'll actually pay me more to stick around, because you know how valuable it is."

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:10

I find that people tend to ask questions where they're really tactical focused and certainly self focused, to your point earlier. And it seems like shifting the goal from the... Here's the thing that I want: how do I get that to, instead, how do I connect with and understand the other person. Is a really difficult goal shift. Why do you think that is? Or do you find this?

Charles Duhigg 18:38

So I don't think it is a difficult goal shift once you understand that, right? So, yeah, again, I think it's about how we like the three to five minutes we spend before we walk into a conversation, right? I mean, again, our default is to be like, "Here's what I want to say. I want to tell that guy so and so. I want him to know that I need this and I need that." So we're very focused on ourselves in that situation, right? And if we just realign, and we just say, "Look, there are some things I want him to understand about me, but what do I want to understand about him?" And we put that forefront in our mind, that it actually changes our approach to the conversation. It changes how we behave in that conversation. Now, that being said, sometimes the tactics of achieving that are hard, right? Like, what do I do in the conversation? Well, at that point, your best friend is always asking questions, right? Because the nice thing about asking a question is it gives you more information without necessarily angering the other person. And so the question is, the question to ask yourself is, "What kind of questions can I ask that I think are going to make this conversation what I'm hoping it's going to be?" And that means that they have to be honest questions because if you ask a question like, "Why don't you think I deserve a raise?" That's not actually completely honest, I mean, it could be an honest conversation, but it's not going to come across as an honest guy. It's going to come across as an argument embedded in a question-like form, which is why it's better to say, "I'm just wondering, when you've given raises in the past, what are the things that made you decide to do that? When you look at my career here, what do you think I should be thinking about in terms of trying to increase my salary?" Right? Those are more genuine questions, and the other person can detect a genuine question versus an argument hidden in the questions form.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:33

We're very good at that. We're really doing question detectors in many different ways.

Charles Duhigg 20:39

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:41

So let's take a different situation here. I'd like to talk about the three different types of conversation. Let me just give you a couple other scenarios that we encounter all the time– we've had people who are experiencing serious racial discrimination at their work and they're trying to navigate through that, or even decide, can they impact that all the way to people who are trying to realign their roles with what is going to be a much, much better fit, so that they can contribute to this organization that they actually do enjoy, but they're not having a great experience with to many, many, many other thing. So I guess my question to you is, how can we approach those types of really challenging situations differently so that we can truly, one, understand the conversation that might be going on, or even approach it in a way that we can have a hope at understanding the other parties?

Charles Duhigg 21:41

Yeah, okay, well, and then I have a question for you. But before, you had mentioned the three kinds of conversations, so just for people who aren't familiar with them. So one of the big findings from the last decade is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? We're talking about getting a raise, or we're talking about my job, or we're talking about where to go on vacation, or why I'm upset today. But actually, what researchers have discovered is that every conversation, or every discussion, is made up of different kinds of conversations. And in general, those different kinds of conversations, they fall into one of three buckets. There are practical discussions where we're talking about making plans or solving problems together. There are emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, and I want you to acknowledge and relate. And then there are social conversations, which is about how we interact with each other, how we interact with society, the social identities that are important to us. Okay, so here's my question for you, so think back to when you've been in one of those situations, right, where you've been unhappy at work, tell me what was going on. Tell me what was going on, and what you were feeling and why it was important to you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:50

Well, one that was a... this has probably been 20 years ago now, but there was a company that I worked for and actually owned a franchise for the same organization, loved that, went and worked on the corporate side and had a terrible experience. And essentially, I was being asked to collect some debts for the organization in a way that I didn't know at the time, but was illegal. And what I did know at that particular time was that it felt completely against everything that I valued. And I'm not even sure that I could have articulated at that time, 20 years ago, honestly. But that's part of what was going on. I was going and trying to collect some of these debts, and everything about it felt incredibly wrong.

Charles Duhigg 23:37

Yeah, it felt okay. So, did you end up having a conversation with your boss or the CEO? Did you ever sort of...?

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:45

Yeah. It took me a while, but I did have a conversation. And this is not what I would recommend in any way whatsoever. But the conversation I had, I was attempting to articulate some of those feelings the way that it came out, which so many things are not useful to the other party. The way that it came out is I ended up feeling like I needed to tell my boss that I made a mistake because I chose the wrong job, essentially, like this is not working, and I feel like I need to consider something else.

Charles Duhigg 24:22

And why did that not go well? Like, what happened that makes you think that's not the right approach?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:28

Well, three weeks later, I got fired. So, okay, that's one indication.

Charles Duhigg 24:34

Yeah, okay. So let's break down what's happening here, okay. So what I hear you saying, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong, is that you came into a job and you were having an experience in that job that setting aside whether it practically made sense, whether this was the right business strategy or the wrong business strategy, emotionally, this was very challenging for you because it did not align with your basic values and beliefs. And simultaneously, and I'm guessing here. So please tell me if I'm off base, I'm guessing, you also felt like this was ineffective, that as a franchise owner yourself, like going and beating up on other franchise owners did not seem like the right way to run a sustainable company for a long time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:18

As it turns out, yes.

Charles Duhigg 25:20

And that's actually kind of a social conversation, right? Because it's talking about how we relate to other people. So what I'm hearing you say, though, is that when you brought this up with your boss, you actually tried to pose it as a practical conversation, instead of posing it as an emotional conversation or social conversation. What you said was, "Practically, I have a problem, which is, I chose the wrong job. Will you help me solve this problem?" And they did. They fired you. Right? If you chose the wrong job, problem solved. I mean, and from their perspective, possibly problem solves for you. You asked them to help you solve a problem that you're in the wrong job. And they said, "Okay, don't be in that job anymore." Now a better way to do that, and again, is if you had said time ahead of time, and you said, "Look, I don't want to have a practical conversation about this because this isn't a practical problem." It's not like you were having problems, like problems following their instructions. You just didn't want to do what they asked you to do. So if you had gone to them perhaps, and tell me if you think this would have been effective, if you'd gone to your boss and said, "Look, I completely understand what you guys are asking me to do here. And I think it's actually really effective. Like, I think we're going to collect these debts, and I think it's totally fine, like, I understand. The thing that I'm struggling with is it's making me feel terrible. It feels like I'm doing something that doesn't align with my beliefs and my values. Can you help me understand why I'm feeling that? Is this something you think I'm dumb to be feeling, or is it a right thing to be feeling?" Now, I'm not promising you that your boss would have been like, "Oh, I'm so sorry you feel that way. Let's try and make the world a better place for you, but it probably would have been a little bit more effective. And I think what this indicates, what this point said, is one of two things. Number one, when we isolate the conversation to the kind of conversation that we want to have, it becomes much easier, because we're no longer pretending like you can solve my emotional problems through a practical solution. Instead, what we're doing is we're engaging very explicitly on the emotional level. The second thing is, you could have had that conversation and still gotten fired. In fact, you might have gotten fired just for having that conversation. So having a conversation does not mean that all of us... iIt's not magic.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:37

It doesn't guarantee an outcome.

Charles Duhigg 27:38

Doesn't guarantee an outcome. It doesn't guarantee that, like, you're going to agree with each other, but you're going to be much closer to understanding how to agree to each other and figuring out if there is some overlap what researchers refer to as the ZOPA, the Zone of Possible Agreement. You don't know what the ZOPA is when you go in and you're having an emotional issue and you pretend that it's a practical issue, because they're going to say something like, "Oh, okay. Like, if this job doesn't work for you, like, we'll just remove you from the job. We'll help you solve the problem." But for you, the actual problem was not that you wanted to be removed from the job, but that you wanted to be able to do the job a little bit differently. Is that right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:19

Absolutely, that's right. So let's talk about how we can better prepare for those types of discussions. Because the reality is, you know, I was in that situation, if we go back 20 years ago, I was working 90 hours a week, and I was pretty stressed out, and there were so many things that weren't working. I didn't do a great job of prepping for that conversation at all. Also, I think that that is very much the case when people are getting into these conversations. Sometimes it's difficult to even think through what kind of conversation this is, let alone how I'm going to go about having this conversation. What advice would you give based on what you've seen for how people can better prepare for these?

Charles Duhigg 29:02

So if you know what kind of conversation you want to have, that's one thing, right? If you're saying, like, and it's worth spending some time to just sit down and say, "Do I think this is a social conversation? Do I think it's a practical conversation? Do I think it's an emotional conversation?" And then in the book goes through a lot of the steps to do this, right? But let's say, again, it's 20 years ago, you're young, you don't have the presence of mind to know exactly what kind of conversation you want. You're confused yourself. Is this a practical issue? Is this an emotional issue? Then the best thing you can do is to sit down and say, "Okay, what do I actually want to know? What am I desperate to learn from this person? And what questions can I ask them to help me understand it?" So in this particular case, the questions might have been something like, you know, "I know that we do it this way, and this way doesn't seem to me like the best way. Can you walk me through why we do it this way? What's the history here that's led us to the point where this seems like the best way forward? Help me understand how this technique, this approach to debt collection, how it helps the long term goals of this company." Right? And again, you have to ask them honestly, it can't be like, like, "How do you think that this approach helps the long term?" Right? It has to be like, "I'm just wondering, like, I know you guys have thought about this a long time, and I know everyone's really smart. And I see a like, a little bit of tension here. And hoping you can help me understand why that's wrong. Help me understand why this approach makes sense." And here's what might happen, you might learn that actually you are wrong, right? That you're feeling all these emotional qualms, you're feeling all these ethical qualms, and that, like when they explain to you, "No, no. The only way this company works is if people actually pay their debts. Like when, when this franchisee does not pay their debts, they're actually creating risk for this other franchisee that's doing everything right? That's doing everything by the book. So, like, we have to come down hard on these people because they're threatening other people who don't deserve to be threatened." And you might walk away saying, like, "Oh, I didn't see it that way before. Now I understand why I'm doing what I'm doing." But I would say the number one thing that people can do is, instead of focusing on what they want to say, focus on what questions you want to ask because that's going to give you... and by the way, you do not have to resolve it. You do not have to resolve everything in one conversation, right? If I go in and I ask you a series of questions, I ask my boss a series of questions, then I can walk away and I can spend some time with that and processing that, and then come back and say, "Look, I want to reflect on what you told me. I have another question for you, but I want to just share with you my thoughts on it." That's a dialog, right? Then we're actually dialoguing with each other. And again, that does not mean that your boss is going to say, like, your boss might very well say like, "We do it that way because we can, because we hate our franchisees, and either you hate our franchisees too, or this isn't the right place for you." And that's fine. But it's better to know that than to get fired three weeks later, unexpectedly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:13

You know something that is really interesting, I went through and I listened to some of your interviews recently, just on different podcasts, but I went back 10 years ago because I was curious about, you know, how has this changed some of your conversations? First of all, have you done that? I don't typically go back and listen.

Charles Duhigg 32:34

No, no. I'm very impressed. This is a lot of preparation, but no, I haven't gone back and listened to podcasts for 10 years ago. Do I sound different now?

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:44

Well, yes, in very subtle ways. We were talking about nuance earlier, but I think some very subtle ways. So I think one of the things that you do really well now is you create a dialog very differently compared to how you did 10 years ago, it felt more like a traditional interview versus any conversations you've had in the last, say, year or so. It feels much more like a really interesting dialog every time. It's a way to go.

Charles Duhigg 33:13

That's really... Okay, so I'll answer this in two ways. The first is, how much do I or anyone else do it deliberately? This is actually kind of the awesome thing about the human brain. So if you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower, right? It's the thing that has allowed us, our species, to succeed so well. And our brains have evolved to maximize and make that superpower as efficient as possible. So one really interesting thing is, when we are exposed to a communication skill and we say to ourselves, "I'd like to do that", we start doing it habitually, very, very quickly. So with many activities like running, you have to practice a dozen times, right? You have to push yourself to run a dozen times before it starts to feel automatic. With communication skills, if you push yourself to do it two or three times, it starts becoming a habit. And that's because the brain latches on to communication skills very quickly, and it makes them into habits very, very quickly. So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is the reason why... So in every interview I do now, I try and make a conversation, I try and ask questions, I want to learn about the person. In part, just because otherwise it's insanely boring. It's insanely boring to like, spend an hour with you and not learn anything about you. That's not that much fun. I like myself, but I've already talked about myself a lot. And I think that the thing that I have learned in writing this book is, it is okay to listen to that little voice inside your head that says, "Actually, this person wants to ask me a bunch of questions about real estate, but what I'm really interested in is I want to ask them about accounting", right? It's okay to give into that instinct, that curiosity that we feel where we want to learn about the other person, that is a good instinct. In fact, that's part of the same instinct that allows these habits, or these communication skills become habits so quickly. Our brain is really, really good at communication when we let it be good at communication. And the key is to learn how to listen to your own brain and to have a dialog. But let me ask you, does that correspond to your experiences?

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:19

It does.

Charles Duhigg 35:20

You do a lot of these interviews, right? How many interviews have you done at this point?

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:24

A thousand.

Charles Duhigg 35:26

So it's a lot. And what makes a difference when you walk away, setting aside whether the audience likes it, how the audio turns out, when you walk away from an hour interview slash conversation, feeling energized versus feeling drained and exhausted. What do you think makes a difference?

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:43

It's always the connection or lack thereof in one way or another. And so it is always the pieces that lead up to or block that connection from being had.

Charles Duhigg 35:55

I totally agree. I totally agree. And I will tell you, the worst conversations I have, the worst interviews, are when it's a person who they haven't read any of my work and they have a list of questions that some producer gave them or that they like found on the internet. And then what will happen is they'll ask the question, I'll answer it, and then, regardless of what I say, they move on to the next question. Right? So it's not a back and forth, it's not a discussion, it's not a dialog

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:23

That's not that exciting to listen to, in my opinion.

Charles Duhigg 36:25

It's not that exciting to listen to. It's not that exciting to do. It's super tiring and boring. And so I think that the thing is, if we approach every interaction with another person saying, not every, you never have to have a conversation, like when sometimes you get in the Uber and you just want to check your email, you do not want to talk to the driver, and that's totally okay. There's no rule that you need to have a conversation all the time. But when we are interacting with someone, if we say to ourselves, "I want to make this a conversation rather than competing monologue, rather than just some transactional interaction", it ends up not only being more fun, it's actually easier. Our brain literally can default to conversation much more easily than to the alternative.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:12

Fun and easier. That's a hard sell, Charles. I don't...

Charles Duhigg 37:17

And some people listening are not going to believe me. They're going to be like, "No, it's so tiring to talk to people", and here's where that you don't have to have a conversation, not only do you not have to have a conversation, you can start a conversation and then just stop having it. Right? You can get in the Uber and you can chit chat with the driver for three or four minutes, and then you can just stop. Because it's oftentimes these anxieties of, "how do I end this conversation? How do I begin this conversation? How do I keep this conversation going if there's an awkward silence?" It's those anxieties that prevent us from having conversations. But actually, once the event manifests, you don't feel anxious about it at all. It's very natural.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:02

Hey, if you've been listening to our episodes here at Happen To Your Career and you want to make an intentional career change to much more meaningful work, and have it neatly laid out into an organized framework, well, guess what, we actually have that available for you in the Happen To Your Career book. It's available on Amazon, Audible anywhere else where you get your books. You'll learn about the five hidden obstacles, stopping your career change, how to figure out what would truly make you happy with your career. And what brings you more happy more often. And more importantly, how to transition to a much more fulfilling career and life. You can find the book on Amazon, Audible anywhere where books are sold, by the way, people are particularly loving the audio book, which you can access right now in second.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:50

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up for you next week right here on Happen To Your Career.

Speaker 3 38:57

It was just a feeling of dread, like, going into work and having to deal with these conversations. And then that led me to trying to avoid doing that work, even though that was my primary job. So it was just this... It just felt like a battle every single day.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:11

I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard someone say, "Well, work is supposed to be hard. That's why it's called work." Or even, "Work is supposed to suck." It's the mindset that has been ingrained in us as a society. We are unconsciously taught from a young age that work is grueling duty and we have to put in our dues during our prime working years because that's just the way of the world. Luckily, this narrative is very misguided, and people are starting, just barely starting, to realize that work doesn't actually have to suck. And it all starts by looking inward and asking, "Do I really want work to feel like work, or could it feel differently?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:59

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.

Edna 00:00

I just didn't have the autonomy that I know I needed, in retrospect, to thrive. So after a year in I said, "That's it." They were shocked, but I was not, because I was actually, between you and I, was miserable. Because I wasn't enjoying it. I was busy. But for me, the work wasn't meaningful.

Introduction 00:27

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:51

A big part of what we do here at Happen To Your Career, on this podcast, in our company, is not just to get people to better jobs or enjoy their work more or do work they love or whatever. Instead, it's much more about helping you realize what creates more fulfilling work and ultimately a more fulfilling life. And when we're talking about making an intentional career change, that process is pretty fun, or at least it can be, especially at the beginning, and it also is really challenging. For example, if you're in the situation where you just quit your job after a year because it wasn't a fit, how do you identify opportunities that do, in fact, fit?

Edna 01:37

Week one was fine. Week two was fine. Week three, I'm like, "What the heck did you just do to yourself?" Right? So, we're about four months in, and things got slow, and you start to ask yourself, "What are you thinking?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:51

That's Edna. Edna is a scientist who spent 19 years working in consumer packaged goods for the same company. During that time, she moved from role to role around the world in search of more fulfillment. Eventually, she decided her search for the fulfillment needed to move beyond her longtime employer, and she moved to a new organization within the same industry. It didn't take her long to realize that the new company was not a good fit, and she needed to move to something new, something different. This time around, she decided she wanted to take a more holistic approach and figure out what she truly wanted, instead of sticking with the familiar. Edna began working with a coach on our team, and she ultimately moved to a new role as a scientist in pharmaceutical research and development, a completely new industry that she had never considered. In our conversation, you're going to hear all of the details that went into Edna's year-long journey in search of much more fulfilling work. Strengths, she trusted the process. She figured out what would work for her specific situation. She ended up using executive recruiters. By the way, we haven't covered this strategy of using executive recruiters a lot on the Happen To Your Career podcast, because for most people, it's actually not a great strategy. Most people think that they're going to go find a headhunter. The Headhunter is going to be a great way to introduce some new people. And generally, you find that that's not useful if you're looking for fulfilling work. But there is a way to do it, and for some situations, it's fantastic. You're gonna get to hear that strategy as you listen to my and Edna's conversation. Let's dive in. Here's Edna sharing a bit about her career journey up to this point.

Edna 03:37

I worked for a consumer package with companies, CPG companies, for 19 years. As you mentioned, I'm a scientist by training for a PhD in chemistry, and I was literally hired out of the lab. I was doing my postdoc, and the company came on campus to recruit, and I interviewed, I got the job. And it was, I honestly say I had an awesome time because, in retrospect, I change jobs every three to four years on the most part, and I change jobs into something that was different enough, challenging enough to allow me to learn and grow. So for example, I started off my first job was formulating laundry detergents, and I did that for four years, and then I moved on to formulating cleansing liquids. Your body washes, your liquid enhances but I did that for three years, just getting water out of my mind. I moved to formulating under antiperspirants, and all of this was in North America, and then I got the opportunity to move to Mexico and lead a team that was based there formulating our household service cleaners. So toilet bowl cleaners, kitchen cleaners, I did that for three years. And so I, you know, you get the sense. I had the opportunity to work on a lot of different product types for a lot of different biographies with a lot of different teams, with a lot of different stakeholders in the US, in Mexico, and ultimately in India. So even though I was with the same company for 19 years, I felt every time you make one of these changes, it's a big enough switch that it stretches you. And what I've learned through the process with them, and the reflection of myself is learning and growth is important to me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:29

It sounds like that is something that you've arrived at as you made different moves through your early career. Tell me about that.

Edna 05:39

And it is. I mean, the minute... I used to tell my bosses that, well, maybe I just used to reflect on it, "The minute I can do my job on autopilot, it's not good for me, it's not good for the company, it's not good for anybody around me." So I need to feel stretched and challenged to be at my best. I just love to learn. I love to learn. And it's great, and it's frustrating sometimes, because it does result, at least my career has resulted in multiple changes, right? And not small changes– Moving to Mexico, coming back to the US, moving to India. And ultimately, actually, why I left my first company was because, as I projected my career, you know, another decade, the opportunities to continue to learn and grow at the magnitude that I wanted were not there, from what I could see, right? So I guess there's a bigger job, more money, but is it stretch enough for me? I wasn't sure. So I actually wasn't actively looking for career move at that time. And I was based in India. So, you know, the R&D organization that's based in India for my company there. And they found me, my second company found me, and when they reached out, I said, "Listen, I don't do..." I was curious why they reached out to me. Because I'm like, "I don't know what to do." They said, "Let's talk." I said, "Where would I go?" They said, "Where do you want to go?" They said, "What do you want to do? We're hiring you. We'll find a place where you're in the organization." And so after six months, we talked, and I decided to join. And so came back to the US, leading the team that was based here, big company lead in its industry. And what I discovered is company was good. It was not a fit for me, and this is coming into the values as well, right? I, in retrospect, realized that I thrived with when I have autonomy. So and I didn't realize that the 19 years of my previous company, I had a lot more autonomy than I felt I had in this new environment. I was extremely busy again. It was a growing industry. The company was doing awesome, but I just didn't have the autonomy that I know I need, and I needed, in retrospect, to thrive. So after a year in I said, "That's it." They were shocked, but I was not because I was actually, between you and I, was miserable. Because I wasn't enjoying it. I was busy. But for me, the work wasn't meaningful. I was doing a lot of work, for my taste, it wasn't meaningful. So I quit. And I quit start without a job in hand. I was done. I was done. So I quit. I didn't realize how tired I was. I slept for two months. I traveled a bit, and then I found a coach. And part of finding the coaches, I needed some help. Yes, recruiters were calling me even then, but I wasn't ready to have the conversation with them because I didn't want to make the same mistakes I had made in the first transition, in the second transition. Second thing is, I wanted to make sure I was looking more holistically at opportunities versus just going into an industry, similar industry that I had known before. I could have ended up there, but I wanted to make sure that I was looking more holistically at opportunities. And third, I needed... I wanted some structure, right? Because you go from, as you said, go from going, going, going to stop, and it's a little bit jarring to the system when you used to some sort of structure to absolutely none. So I wanted some sort of structure and guidance to help me navigate through this, right? So someone to be accountable, otherwise it could also keep my life away, right? So that is how I found you. It's really looking for that holistic. I want to make sure I'm not just going to what I know, I'm comfortable with. I needed a structure, and I needed accountability. For me, and trusting that even though my coach would not tell me when I get the job, what or how I get the job, trusting enough in the process, because that's what you, your team is designed to do, is trusting enough in the process to get me there, get me to the end point, the outcome that that I desire. But not knowing exactly, putting at some point, putting the trust in, you know, these guys started, this is what they do for a living. You do your piece, it'll work out. So I think it is, but I don't know. I don't know that I really thought about it from the fact that I'm a scientist, maybe it's just because I'm a scientist, so I just approach things in a certain way that I don't even think about it. But yeah, like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:34

Obviously, is there any other way to do it? So here's another thing that I was really interested in. I think you did a phenomenal job when you were going through and identifying and taking feedback and inputs for your strengths.

Edna 10:56

I love that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:57

I could tell. And, you know, here's one of the things we don't actually talk about this a lot on the podcast, but internally, we understand that our clients are ready to move on to the next milestone, if you will, if you want to call this a milestone, once they've taken ownership over their strengths. And when we talk about ownership, that is partially in the verbiage and how they're able to externalize those but there's a couple other elements too, that where we consider ownership. However, one of the fun things about that is it shows up in very different ways from person to person. Not a surprise, we're all different people. And I think one of the things that you did that was really fun and fascinating was you took all of these different inputs and just for a little bit of context for everybody listening, one of the things we'll often do with many of the folks that we work with is we'll ask them, in this case, you Edna, to collect inputs from other people who know you, who've worked with you, or friends or family members in terms of what they believe that you're great at, you know, what are your strengths, what do they see that is great about you? And sometimes people are apprehensive about this process, but it always ends up with, like, all these really wonderful things about the individual. And I think what was fun about what you did is you color coded every single piece of feedback, whether it came from an assessment, whether it came from a person, whether it didn't matter what the source was, but you had all of these different types of inputs. And then you said, "Okay, well, here's where I see my strengths." And then you took that and color coded so you could visually see where and how they showed up in the feedback. What prompted you to do that in the first place? And I'm curious, what did you learn from that?

Edna 12:50

Yeah. So I'm visual clearly, and sort of colors for me helped. And the Gallup StrengthsFinder already had that sort of color code. So I took that color code and sort of matched it with what my feedback with Gallup. And it was interesting because I was also a little bit about apprehensive about getting feedback, because I've done enough assessments at this point in my career. But I took a step back and said, "Hey, this is from a different lens." And I like that the questions that you reach out to people, folks with are all positive, right? So I took the opportunity to seek feedback from people that have managed me, people who have managed, people who've been my peers or my stakeholders, and I did it from the US, India and China, the scientists. So this is the one data that represents.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:39

Let's get a significant sample size. Let's represent enough data. Let's get...

Edna 13:43

On every level, I don't want it to be by. So yeah, I guess there are some scientists in, right? A lot of scientists. And then you've done the StrengthFinder assessment, and I got my top five strengths. It was so fascinating to see when the feedback came that my strengths are my strengths. They were saying exactly what Gallup StrengthFinder was saying in different words. They express it in their Mexican way, in the American way, or in the Indian way. But what they were saying about me is me. So I'm very consistent. And very reassuring to know that who I am and how I show up in the workplace has value. One of the questions I asked is, "What things become easy for me, that others struggle with? What do you think I could teach others?" And the consistency that came out of those, that feedback for me just solidified that understanding and appreciation of my strengths. And also, at some level, helped me not to minimize because you see, individualization is my number one, and I'm like, it's just what I do. You know, but it has value, and it was so clear to me from the feedback I got from people around the world that it has value. And for me, I actually did StrengthFinder before, and I said, "Do I need to do this again?" And, you know, they said, "Yeah, you do need to do it again." What I found, for me, in retrospect, is this exercise really anchored the process. It's because you have to start by understanding what it is you're good at, where that comes from, and you will then be able to appreciate, hopefully, for the individuals listening, is the successes you've had and the contribution, which is in your career, and the contribution that your strengths have had towards that success. Because I bet you, they're rooted in your strengths. The successes you had are rooted in your strengths. But until you're able to sort of step and see that link, you may not fully appreciate it. So what again, for me, one of the great things about this whole process is, I walk away with a deeper understanding and appreciation of my strengths, and the process is rooted. It starts there. It starts with understanding the strengths, which is again, so basically, I've done this before, but I hadn't never done it like this, never done it like this. And I said appreciation, and the choice to leverage my strengths even more in the future. So not only do I walk away with appreciation and understanding, there is a very deliberate decision and the intention to leverage moving forward, because more success would come out of that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:26

Yeah. And to your point, the first step really is that awareness, which creates that foundation, or grounding that you had mentioned earlier, if everything else decision-wise to come later is going to be grounded. If you want to do more work in your strengths, you have to understand your strengths at an incredible depth. Otherwise, how likely is it going to be that you're going to choose to do work or spend more time in your strengths? It's highly unlikely, right? Of course. So a really great point. So here's my question for you, when you think about that and you got that grounding, how did that help you functionally, later? When we fast forward ahead and we say, okay, now you got this really wonderful opportunity that I think is a great fit for you from everything that I understand, and everything that Ben and I have talked about, but I'm curious, you know, how did you see that functionally show up along the way? That being your strengths understanding.

Edna 17:32

For me, I think, one, it helps me on a day to day. So I actually understand myself better sometimes when I'm in situations and I'm struggling a bit, it helps certain things, I'm like, "Oh, I can understand why this is off for me, because I'm missing XYZ." And, for example, I'm an achiever, right? And sometimes I like to procrastinate, and I've discovered just put on a list. If I put it on a list, it's going to get done because the achiever in me will ensure that thing is checked off the list, right? Little tricks like that, exactly the little tricks like that. I think the biggest one for me, though, is leaning into my individualization during the process. And I'm sure it'll show up on the job what you know as I've taken up this new role. But because of what I discovered, and I'm going to fast forward to the experimentation phase, there was a lot of emphasis in the experimentation modules around making sure you're connecting with whomever you're reaching out to. So if you're reaching out via email, or if you're reaching out via phone, make sure you understand who it is you're talking to, try to spend some time connecting. And, honestly, I struggled with that a bit because I'm here to get some information, I don't have time to connect. What I realized is, because of my individualization, I'm inherently curious about people, and what I realized is, to the extent that you can connect, it impacts the transaction. Every interaction has a transaction and a connection. The quality of your connection can impact your transaction. So for me, just focusing on trying to... And I'll step back. I'll give you an example of even going into interviews. In the past, I would want to get through the interview, and interviews usually come quite naturally for me, but I'll be so focused on the interview. And as a result of going through this process, it shifted a bit. I go in and try to understand who's on the other side of the interview, who is this person who's talking to me? So have the conversation. The interview will happen. We know we're both here for an interview. None of us don't forget to get that part in, but spending the time upfront to connect was a shift for me, and seeing how that connection then, in turn, impacts how the interview happens. And I done it, yes, within the interview space, but even outside. You know, you go to a restaurant and you're waiting for a table and you're talking to the hostess. In the past, you know, I wouldn't really bother Tuesday party or too waiting. But now you have, okay, it looks like you're busy today. How's the house? Just spend a minute. Spend a minute connecting. Because that connection oftentimes impacts the transaction. The tables come up on you, would you be willing to, it's just little things. And recognizing that because I'm inherently wired to connect to people, connect to people, so that in somehow, individualization is my number one. So I would do it anyway, but being mindful of, you know, one, it's a strength. Two, it's not work for me. And people are people on the other side of any interaction as a person. And that person, you know, try to get to know that person a little bit. You may not, you may have hours, you may have seconds, spend a minute, spend a second to connect.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:05

Yeah, so that's really interesting. So what I hear you saying is that you realized somewhere along the way about how important it is to make that connection and to connect with others. And then it also sounds like along the way you realized that your tendencies or strengths, or it doesn't matter what they are, whatever we'd like to call these, your tendency to be individualistic or to individualize, and then also that, paired with your curiosity, those make a way that is easy for you to connect with others. So I love that example because it is very literally harnessing your strengths and tendencies and utilizing them in a different way than what you were thinking about it before. That's cool.

Edna 22:01

Exactly. And because, you know, I end up knowing a lot about people anyway because I, in retrospect, individualization is my number one. And so, from the taxi driver in Mexico City who showed me pictures of his vacation, you know, and so... But just be mindful that you can lean into that as I have the choice as to how much I want to it or not, but being mindful top of mind that listen, spend the time, if you can, spend the time to connect, because that connection usually impacts the quality of that connection impacts the transaction. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:37

Edna, tell me a little bit about the role that you're moving into and what makes it a great fit for you?

Edna 22:44

Yeah. So I'm changing segments slightly. And I remember in the beginning I said I wanted to be able to look holistically. I would not have picked this segment for myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:55

Interesting, yeah.

Edna 22:58

And what makes it a great fit is that it's an innovation. So I'm staying within research and development, which is what I love. I love working with scientists, or within the science space. I am going to lead innovation. This is what I love to do. I love to lead innovation. Because, as I said, one of my things is about one of my values is learning and growth. And the beauty about innovation is that you're not doing exactly the same thing repetitively. You're constantly pushing and learning and trying something differently or doing something totally different altogether. In addition to that, what I love about this opportunity is that the company as a whole is pivoting, but one that wasn't necessarily innovation focused, to one that wants to be a lot more innovative.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:47

So time and place is an important part of this for you, too.

Edna 23:52

They don't know how to do it quite, hence, people like me coming in. I don't know them. I don't know their segment, so we're going to have to figure it out, but they're open. So what makes it beautiful is, yes, it's innovation. It's in R&D, the organization is pivoting, and so having the opportunity to help shape what this organization will look like in future is music to my ears. This is what I do. This is when I'm in my sweet spot. Yeah. And in a meeting, in an organization that does meaningful work, so it's in healthcare, about affordable healthcare. Never done it. So gotta learn. Opportunity to learn for me is huge. Get learning and growth is important to me. And in a space doing stuff, the type of stuff that I love to do, it'll be a challenge, lot to learn, lot to figure out, but for me, I feel like it's the role that was created for me at a time when a company that's at the right spot and it's open– open to be changed, open to be influenced, open to be shaped. And I'm looking forward to that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:03

That's a lot of fun. That right type of challenge in the right environment, yeah, tends to create really enjoyable and healthy growth.

Edna 25:16

And everybody I talk to, it just feels like interviewed with, it just feels like it's my tribe. When one of the things that along the way, when the coaching journey is, I need to find my... You used to tell me, you need to find your tribe. I need to find my tribe. You know, when you're talking to them, I'm like, "This is my tribe. These are my people. They approach leadership the same way that I do. This is my tribe." So very much looking forward to having the autonomy to drive, lead, shape the future of an organization that's working in a very meaningful space. For me, yeah, that's changing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:04

That's cool. That's amazing. I appreciate that we got to sit front row while you were working on this. This is amazing.

Edna 26:13

Highs and lows on a good, bad, ugly, right? It was awesome, in retrospect.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:22

Can we talk about for a moment something that we have not mentioned regularly on the Happen To Your Career podcast, tactically, one of the approaches that led you to this particular role, this particular job opportunity, was working through recruiters and you, before we hit the record button, astutely acknowledged that we haven't spent a lot of time talking about that on the Happen To Your Career podcast, and there's a good reason for that. That's really not a great approach for everyone, but it can be a good approach for some people, and I think it certainly has worked well for you. Can you tell me a little bit about how you worked with recruiters and how you worked through to figure out that certain opportunities were right for you or not right for you as you were working through recruiting relationships?

Edna 27:16

So it was interesting. I quit my job, and that I quit on a Friday. Well, my last day was on Friday. I quit actually on a Monday, and I had to put this calling me immediately. I was in no shape or form to have discussions in me, that self assurance said, "don't just jump in." I just, you know, you have to make sure this next thing is right for me. In my case, I actually never went... I never reached out to the executive recruiters. The executive recruiters reached out to me. And I think what worked for me is a couple of things, in the sense of your knowing what I was looking for, having gone through the process right, understanding the strengths, understanding your values, so I had clarity around what I was looking for. And second is because experimentation came into play for me, then, was doing the research on the organizations and the potential companies to try to get a feel for, "Is this the type of culture I want to work with?" So there's a lot of good tools and life tips and tricks that I learned through Ben into how to do that research on organizations. And then third is just, I would come back to my self assurance. You talk to a recruiter like, even though the job may sound good, this one's just not for me. And I can't tell it comes from my self assurance. I don't know where it's inherently in me, but some things are just like, it's not for me. It's not for me. So even when this opportunity came initially, I was like, "What? Doing what? Where?" But I was like, "Okay, let's have the conversation." Yeah, I hadn't thought about this segment. Hadn't thought about relocating. Actually, wasn't want to relocate, but let's talk. And once you get into a conversation, then you realize, actually maybe, and then the next conversation is like, even more so. So I think just using the recruiters, not as a channel that directed opportunities to me, versus a decision making, I still have the opportunity of this opportunity to decide, but the recruiters were the ones, in my case, that channeled opportunities to me, and then I did use some of the experimental tools to do the research in the company and the culture and the people– who do I want? Who do I know within that can I reach out to from that company that I might not get additional information? So I still did that work, but the recruiters just funneled the opportunities to me. I use them that way. That makes sense.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:10

Yeah, absolutely. And I think...

Edna 30:12

I'm not getting swayed necessarily by the recruiters. Except there was one

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:17

There was one.

Edna 30:19

Who actually, and that's like, this opportunity is not for me. So we had the conversation, and I was telling them how I quit my last job, and he's like, "Okay, you cannot say this. You cannot say this when you interview." And I'm like, "I'm not." So he almost treated me as if I was damaged goods, and I was like, "I'm not damaged goods. Listen, I learned, I went through this. This was my journey. Here's what I learned." So, yeah, there was one recruiter like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:47

There were all the telltale signs, yeah.

Edna 30:50

Some opportunities. So I leveraged them to channel opportunities to me, and then I still went through the process of assessment, evaluation, but, ultimately, was my fault.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:05

So here's the things I think that... and listening to your story made that work as a strategy for you. Number one, you had already gone through the process of understanding what you were looking for, the most important elements, pieces that lined up with your strengths, how you wanted to work, what you're interested in, what creates the right magnitude, was the word you used, of growth for you, which I love that. I haven't had anybody else use the word magnitude of growth. I've been looking for a good word around that, so I'm gonna borrow that. That's amazing. And so you'd already done all of the hard work going into this to be able to recognize what would or would not be a fit. And then, as opposed to saying, "Hey, recruiters are my end all be all, you were strictly using this as a channel to get visibility to different types of opportunities that may line up." Now, this is not a great situation for everybody, because for some people it strategically works, depending on what you're looking for, and does that line up with some of the experiences that you have. And for other people, it doesn't necessarily when you're making a career change. In this case, what I love about it for you is that you were talking to lots of recruiters and lots of opportunities, which as a function, if you get like the recruiter who messages you, and I think you'd be amazing. You go all the way through the process, you have one job offer, and you've talked to exactly one to two recruiters, then all of a sudden, it's really difficult to say no to that opportunity for many people, shelf assurance or otherwise. But what you did, you talked to many, many people over the course of time, and then that helps create a better decision making framework, too, nicely done.

Edna 32:52

Absolutely. And it also gives you confidence that even if you say no to this, there's going to be another one to come, right? I can't tell you when, where. Actually, I just had two recruiters for two different opportunities. I've diverted them to friends, but reach out to me in the past week. So, you know, you don't get so desperate that this is the only one. The first ones, yeah, and you say, if you turn them down, you can get a little nervous, but if you're in it long enough, you're gonna say, don't keep. If you have something of value to offer, they'll show up. They'll show up. So just having the confidence that they'll show up, and then having the coach to help you as well, when you're, you know, not sure, thinking doesn't feel quite right. And I remember Ben saying, "What do you think? What do you feel?" I'm like, "I don't think so." He said, "Go with what you feel." And so, okay, we're really excited. And what I also loved about this approach is you never knew what opportunities that were coming in with. They came from, or I would never have picked this industry for myself, for example, the one that I said yes to. So it did, in a sense, also open me up to opportunities there and segments and geographies that I would never have considered. I had an opportunity in Switzerland, another one in the UK, and another one lots across the US and so I would never have, but it had a diversity of opportunities come to me that I perhaps would never even have found had I gone about the approach the way I was going about the approach.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:32

I think there's one other really important note on that that it sounds like you're pointing out that this became a source of exposure to new opportunities for you. And I think in your situation, it worked really incredibly well. It doesn't always work for every single person under the sun as a strategy, and it depends on what you want, and the life that you want to build. In your case, I think that this was an incredibly effective strategy. Because it allows you to, not really sit back necessarily, but allow opportunities to come to you. And then you could evaluate those opportunities and say, "Wow, I've never heard of this. Let's investigate that." And then that allowed you to, not just gain exposure, but experiment in a very different way. A lot of times we talk about experimentation where you're seeking those opportunities out, and then you are getting some measure of feedback, and then that influences your understanding of what it is that you want. In this case, it was... I love the strategy and nature of this, because it was, "Hey, let's attract some of these to me, and then let's evaluate them, and let's still use these as experimentation." Yes. Nicely done.

Edna 35:51

It was experimentation, but it was different. Because I told them, I said, when we got to that stage and I started doing experimentation as it was initially, "It's gonna look different for me. It's gonna look differently." And so I experimented, but it was slightly different.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:10

What advice would you give to other people who are interested in making a career change? I mean, we're talking about, like, these ups and downs and all kinds of things spread over many months. So this is not exactly a small excursion when we're talking about the goal of doing work in a much more fulfilling way. Often what I mentioned earlier is intentional career change. This can tend to be fun at periods of time, but can also be really challenging. So what advice would you give to people who are considering making an intentional career change?

Edna 36:43

So I tell them to do what I did, in a sense, if you need help. We need make sure you try to get someone who has experience in providing guidance to help you through it. Two, I think for me, was to ensure that your network and or the people who surround you are supported. Because that's another thing that happened during that ambiguous time, is I happen to mention my decision to step away to someone who didn't understand what I'd done, and so had a bunch of questions of, "Why would you judge?" So that didn't help. I was already in that period of ambiguity, and I realized that, you know, up till that point, I'd surrounded myself with people who were 100% supported, and even if they were like, "Okay, now we get you. We were with you. We're with you, that's challenging, but we're with you." Because the last thing you need is people who will make you question yourself on this journey that is challenging in and of itself. So lean in, get someone to help, make sure you have the support and that dedicate the time, do the work and trust the process. Trust the process, even when it feels like, you know, you have questioning why you do it. Trust the process. In my case, just trusting the process, trust the process. It worked for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:18

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:11

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

Speaker 3 39:16

There's a normal distribution of extroverts and introverts among super communicators. There's a normal distribution of charming and curmudgeonly. And if you ask super communicators, were you always good at communication? Is this something you were born with? Inevitably, they say, "No."

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:32

If you want to get anything done, results of any kind, you're going to need to be able to communicate with other people. And if you really want to excel at just about anything career related, working with team, making meaningful connections, job interviews, salary negotiation, networking, and, quite frankly, anything else that you might be interested in being successful at, well, then it helps if you are a skilled communicator, or what our guest today calls a super communicator.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:06

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.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:01

Why is it that some people seem to move up the career ladder and make money much more easily? Well, others stay stuck in the same pay for years. Well, here's a little secret. It's not about working harder, as it turns out. It has a lot more to do with clear communication and knowing how to ask for what your work is worth to the organization, your boss, and the other people who have a vested interest. In this episode, we'll cover the most valuable ways to use 15 minutes a week with your boss, a story of how Justin got a 20% increase in pay when only asking for 12, and then how a minimum wage job making takeout pizza changed my life completely. Also, share some strategies to help you get your own raise in compensation with your company.

Introduction 00:53

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:19

Okay, when I was 17 years old, I worked for a takeout pizza place, and I really enjoyed it. It was fun. And I was pretty content with the work I was doing in the spare time for high school classes. But after I'd been there for a year, one of my co-workers urged me to do the craziest thing. She said that I should approach our boss and I should ask for a raise. She'd done the exact same thing at her year anniversary. Now I didn't even know that it was a possibility just to ask for more money. But I was excited about getting a raise, and I'd never learned not to. So I approached my boss, and guess what? I got a raise. And here's the reality, it was only a quarter on top of my, I think, it's like 5.25 minimum wage. But this quarter was the gateway quarter. That quarter opened my eyes to a whole world where I realized it was possible to happen to my career, and that I could ask for more if I believed that what I was doing was worthwhile or valuable, and from then on, I did just that. Now, okay, so here's a funny thing, if you count the businesses I've owned over the years and asking customers for a raise on contracts, and also all of the actual jobs that I've had then, I've asked for a raise around 40 times– seven of those were asking my employer for a raise. Sometimes it's been very small, other times it's been massive increases, five-figure increases even and negotiated a $20,000 raise, negotiated a raise that ended up leading to a $40,000 total increase, which was 20, I think, it's like $26,000 of actual salary, and then the remainder amount of RSUs. Here's the thing. It ended up not being that crazy of an ask or not that difficult of a negotiation. I made it easy for them to say yes, which leads me to exactly what we're going to walk through in this episode. How do you build a foundation that makes asking for a raise easy? This process will make the ask feel much more natural. It will make it easier for your boss to say yes and be on board and once that foundation is built, I'll give you an example here for what that conversation might even sound like, and often it's a series of conversations to have with your boss for that raise that, well, you might feel like you badly deserve. Okay, let's jump in here. If you're thinking about asking for a raise, you need to be providing more usefulness and worth than what is expected of you. This means you need to be doing much more than just the bare minimum in your role. Does that mean working insane hours? Well, it could be, but more often than that, it means delivering actual value– what your boss perceives as valuable, what the other people in your organization perceive as valuable, those people who are stakeholders need to understand what it is that is expected of you, as well as what you're actually delivering overall. Simply put, you must understand the expectations, and then you must exceed them. The most important expectations are in the eyes of those who have the ability to say yes, those people with a vested interest. Yes to raising your income. If you're not performing extremely well, you won't be in the kind of position to ask for anything above and beyond the norm– including a raise. You might think you're already performing well, but the question is, where do you stand with your boss? Let's walk through how you can always know where you stand with your boss. If you want to build a great relationship with your boss and have them always feeling like you're exceeding expectations, then the first step is to actually focus on that relationship, and one of the easiest ways to do this is having some kind of face time. I recommend scheduling consistent check-ins with them to discuss your progress and clarify expectations. Now you might already do this, or you might already have one-on-one setup, and this can be a proactive approach. It can demonstrate your commitment. It can also keep you on track, and if done well, it can guarantee that you're both on the same page. Now let's talk about what's most important to truly be on the same page. Because this can be simply a 15 to 20-minute weekly check-in. It doesn't have to be like hours and hours of call time or meeting or face-to-face time. It can be where you're simply explaining the work you're doing, the priorities you have, and specifically how it connects back to the goals that you've both agreed upon. It needs to have those parts. If it's missing something, it's going to be challenging to truly be on the same page. So let's just say it's every Monday. You and your boss have a 15-minute standing meeting at 10 am. You're going to prepare a document where you list out your priorities for the week and then make it easy for them to connect back how those priorities are going to support the goals that they or your company or you are trying to meet. If there's time, you can do a recap of the previous week. You can show them how you knock those expectations that you agreed on last week out of the park, and then you're going to repeat this weekly which this sounds are really simple and overly simple, and is actually relatively easy to execute if you can try not to overcomplicate it. This also feeds into the next most important part, which is, don't just meet your goals. You need to exceed them. You need to overachieve on your goals. Is another way to think about it. This means taking ownership of your tasks. It means not just striving for excellence. It means that you are truly looking at ways that are going to create value, not just what feels like value, but value in relationship to what you have agreed upon and then over-delivering. So we talked about reporting progress in those weekly meetings. When your boss understands your goals and can see your consistent performance, then as this adds up over time, especially if you are over-delivering on a regular basis, then this will make it easy, painfully easy, to recognize your value, especially if you now have all of the things that you've agreed upon, you can actually go back every once in a while, say quarterly, and then be able to say, "Hey, look, here's a quick summary of everything that we did over the last quarter. You and I met, we agreed on this, we agreed on this, we agreed on this. Here's my side-by-side results of what we agreed upon versus what I delivered. You'll notice that over the last quarter, I have delivered incredibly consistently more than what we agreed upon. So I just wanted to call that out. This seems to be working for me. Is it working for you?" This is just a way to even level up and help them see that connection over and over again. At the same time, it continues to build trust. Now that might be obvious. If you're consistently over-delivering, they see the pattern of that, they're connecting back the pattern to that. They're beginning to trust you, of course, right? By continuously clarifying your goals and overachieving on them, you ensure that your boss are also on the same page. This alignment makes it so much easier for your boss to justify giving you a raise when you decide to ask. So much easier. Once you've built the foundation to ask for a raise, the asking is just it feels like it flows a lot more naturally. This works hand in hand with what we just covered because the actual act of asking for a raise correctly can't happen without having that relationship, without having that trust, without having the awareness of your over-delivery non-performance, it just can't happen without it. When it's time to ask for a raise, how you go about this is super important. Instead of just demanding more money, we want to frame it as you and your boss or anybody else who's involved are working together to find a solution. It can be a really useful negotiation tool and technique to frame this up in a way that promotes partnership. We're working together to find this solution. This means that when you go to ask, you're not going to say, "Hey, can you give me a raise? Here's what I've been doing. I feel like I really deserve it. Here's the market data that supports that. Can you give me a raise?" That's not what you're going to do at all. Instead, here's an example of the way a usual ask for an increase might sound like in conversation. You're not going to ask a question that leads to a yes or no at all, because here's how the usual ask for a raise goes. I say, "Hey, can I have a raise? I have over delivered consistently, and we've talked about it, and I've overachieved. Here's all the things, here's the market data. Can I have a raise?" And your boss responds, "No, I'm really sorry. I don't think we can do that this year. It's not in the budget." And then you've now forced a decision, "No, sorry, can't do that." That's not super helpful. It's not helpful to you. It's not helpful to your boss, not helpful to anybody, quite frankly. Or somebody might go the absence of authority route where I don't think the higher-ups are going to be able to do that. So either way, it's based on how you approached it. You basically backed your boss into a situation where they are forced to make a decision, yes or no, not super helpful. Instead, a much better way to go about it than "Can I get a raise or not?" A much more helpful way can make all the difference.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:31

You've already built this partnership foundation at this point in time in your weekly discussion of company goals. So that is the mindset you should have going into this discussion as well. You should invite your boss, or whoever partners in solving this problem into the discussion to actually solve this problem. Here's what the conversation might sound like. It might sound something like, "Hey, I am very aware that if I changed organizations, I could get paid significantly more. I've done the research. I'm well aware of that. But I want to be really clear. I don't want to go anywhere else. I actually love it here. I have had a huge track record of success that you and I had talked on a weekly basis. I'm overdelivering. I also want you to know that it's important to me for my own goals that I am getting to the point where I am making $157,000. This supports my financial goals. This supports what I can do for my family. This supports a lot of the life I want to build. And my personal goal would be to figure out, with your help, how to make it feel like a silly thing not to pay me that amount. I'd love to have a conversation with you of how we could make this happen and what it would take, and get your advice on that." So what I'm doing here is I'm creating a partnership. I'm helping make them aware of the problem. And then, instead of asking for an increase, I am asking for their help in solving this problem. I'm making them a partner in the solution. So I'm asking, "How can we..." not them, not me. "How can we, together, make this possible? What would this look like?" I'm also not putting such constraints on it that I'm forcing a decision or that I'm forcing them to get scared about it. Instead, I want them to know what the challenges are, how I'm looking at it, and that I want to be a part of the solution as well. This approach frames it as a problem-solving partnership. It also highlights your loyalty, your value, and your willingness to work together towards this common goal. And then after this initial ask, which the ask you noticed is about how might we have a conversation to make this happen, or how might we figure out how to make this happen? I can frame that with other useful asks as well, like, what would we need to do to figure this out? Who would we need to talk to, who would need to be involved? What would the circumstances need to be for this to be true? What would this look like for this to become possible? Those are much more useful questions. First of all, those types of questions, like those–what, who, when–type of questions, those tend to focus us on, "How might we solve this problem?" And then we make the issue less about "Can this be granted or not?", and more about "What would it take?", which is a different type of thinking, and it triggers a different part of the brain as well. This approach is going to cause them to think through what you're saying, and not just give a yes or no. We're also using the language of "we" when we're saying, "How can we make this happen?" Okay, so all these things tend to work together to add up to create a much more useful ask. Because often people have in their mind that when they go to ask for a raise, it's going to be a one-and-done type of conversation, "I'm going to go, they're going to grant a raise, and it's going to be amazing. Or what if they say no?" In any case, it's not usually a one-and-done conversation. Sometimes it is. But I've done this a lot of times over the years, not just for myself, but with our clients here at HTYC. And almost always, this is a series of conversations. Sometimes it's spread out over many months, sometimes even a year or more. For most people, though, it's a series of conversations that can get things going initially and sometimes produce results right away. I want to give you an example of this, not from me, but from one of our clients, Justin. We worked with Justin to negotiate an increase. I want you to hear how he approached his boss and turned the conversation into a problem that they could solve together.

Justin 16:07

And then I simply called my boss and said, "Hey, I have something that's really, really important to me to talk to you about, and I'd like to do that in person sometime in the next three or four days. Do you have time on Thursday or Friday? " But I called him on Monday, and I didn't tell him anything else. And then he didn't really reply. But setting the conversation up like that, I feel like it was really powerful because I feel like it flipped who was nervous. Because normally, I would go in and say, "Hey, you know, I'd like a raise. And I've done a really good job." And I'd be the one whose heart was pounding and who was nervous. And when I went in on Thursday and met with my boss, you know, I was slightly nervous leading into it, but not nearly as nervous as I was before. And I could tell he was just waiting for me to hand in my resignation, and I could see the look of relief on his face when all I did was ask for a 20% raise, which was like amazing, because normally you would say that, and they'd be like, "20%? Whatever." But just for for him to sort of sit back and I know that he also talked to his boss, and they sort of already knew something was up and we were meeting for an important reason. But for them to sit there and think, "Okay, well, like he's probably handing in his resignation, or he has another job offer for a few days", it kind of puts them in that mindset of, oh, this is what it really could be like if you did leave. And framing the conversation where I was not the nervous one, really, I feel like that was probably the most important thing out of this whole process. Another one of the things was, and it's going to be different for everybody, but for me in particular, I could pretty easily trace back some ideas and things that we've implemented over the past few years, and actually put $1 figure on some of those, not necessarily to say, like, "Hey, look, I saved the company $1 million, therefore, I want you to pay me 900,000 of that." But for me to actually look at it and say, like, "Whoa, this idea actually did save the company a million dollars, and this other idea saved the company another $500,000." It definitely made it easier for me to sort of convince me of my worth in the process. Because these were all ideas that I'm pretty confident if I wasn't working there, that nobody else would have necessarily come up with them, and being able to word things in the sense that made my boss feel like we were going to work on this problem together, versus just saying, "Give me this or I'm leaving." Saying, "Give me this raise or I'm going to leave" it puts everybody in a standoffish mode, and that's not really the best place for everybody to be at. But being able to word it as, "Look, I'm qualified for all these other jobs, and I could go get them today, but I don't want to. I want to say here. Here's what I'd like to get paid in order for me to stop looking at all these other job offers and jobs that are available, and here's what I want in order for me to continue with my career here and sort of stop focusing on other opportunities. And how can we make that happen together?" Like that was really powerful because it, like you said earlier, like it puts them in problem-solving mode, and it sort of takes the threat away, which is, you never want people to feel like they're cornered and they need to do this or else. Because that's just not a great way to approach anything in life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:23

Justin's story is a great example of how approaching the conversation the right way can lead to positive outcomes. However, I know you might be thinking, "What if my situation doesn't go as smoothly?" It's a common fear. It's a significant deterrent for many people. A lot of people never even ask, never even get very far into thinking about how it might be possible because they're worried about, well, "what if I say 'no'?", and how might it be perceived? Things that they haven't even happened yet, and still it deters us. Now, I've asked for enough raises and worked with enough people asking for increases to know that this particular fear is always in the back of your mind. What if they say no? What if I present them with this well-thought-out, precisely planned collaboration and I'm met with rejection? What then? Will they fire me? Will they look at me differently? Will they think I'm ungrateful or prideful or selfish? This huge deterrent stops so many people. So let me put your heart at ease. In 99.999997, I'm making up this number of cases where you have this conversation, the outcome is going to be overwhelmingly positive. So now we don't have any data to support that, but what we do have are observations with our clients over the years and doing this many, many, many times over, like hundreds and hundreds of times. So in all cases, it's created a positive outcome. Sometimes it promoted a better relationship, which, by the way, is the opposite thing people think might happen. They look at it as a net-sum game. I need to ask, so therefore that's going to erode some of the relationships that I have. However, I haven't found that to be true. I think that it can actually be the opposite way. I think you can strengthen the relationship by having a really great conversation in here for what you need and what your boss and other people in the organization need. Also, I want you to understand that what I didn't say is you're going to get exactly what you ask for 90% of the time. It's going to be a positive experience. But it doesn't always mean you get exactly what you ask for. This is a great part about the process. Sometimes you get a better result than what you ask for. Even if you don't get the answer you want, more often than not, it doesn't actually mean no. It could mean anything like if your boss says, "I'm really sorry, we can't do that right now." It could mean not now. It could mean, "I believe that you deserve this, but the terms need to be different." It could mean any number of other things. But even if you are met with resistance, it doesn't mean it's impossible, and it doesn't mean it can't create a positive outcome. If you've built the foundation we discussed, and your boss says no to your request for a raise, he'll more than likely give you a reason why feels it can't be done or whatever else, and it's up to you, since you built a great relationship, to then begin to understand the reasons behind the reasons, so that you can help your boss work through them. Here's the magic phrase to use in this instance. "I totally understand what you're saying. I really appreciate your honesty. What would need to be true? What would need to happen, or what would I need to do in order for this to become a yes?" This can turn the conversation into a very positive manner. If you were given a no, then, it's going to help you dig to understand what are the reasons behind the reasons and you will be able to have a place to work through those. That's often why this can turn into a series of conversations, too, because your boss or other people that you have as a vested interest might not know the answer. They might not have thought it through and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. We're solving this together. You might be given items to address, tasks to complete, goals to hit, or exceed in order to get this raise. It also might be they just haven't thought about how to do something that is going to be an exception to the rule. They might need guidance. They might need you to help them think through this as a partner in one way or another, which means that you're going to need to ask questions. You're going to need to be curious, you're going to need to not give up on the first obstacle that comes along, or if they don't quite know how to make it happen. You might be told the budgets are already set, or might be told any number of other reasons why it can't be done, or why it's going to be challenging. But challenging does not mean no. This is where you're going to lay the groundwork to continue the conversation. It might feel bold but insist on wanting concrete steps, actions, or processes that are going to ensure that it's going to lead you to receiving your requested raise. What this might sound like? It might sound like saying, "I would love to work with you to figure out what the concrete steps might look like. What specifically would need to happen? You know, who are the people that would need to sign off on this, if not just you? Who else has to be on board?" This series of questions will help guide you to the next step, and also you can continue to reinforce that, "Look, I'm not looking for you to do the work for me here. I want to understand and work with you to understand what it would take. How can I turn this into a situation where everyone in the organization who holds the super strengths might feel silly not paying me this amount? And it doesn't need to happen today or tomorrow, but I do want to understand what is needed so that I can make it happen with your help." The purpose in having this additional conversation is twofold: You want your employer to understand that you're very serious about receiving this increase and you're willing to do the work that is needed for, in some cases, both of them. Both you and them. And also the second purpose is to create an actual plan, which then allows you to achieve your goal. This navigation through an ambiguous situation that doesn't have clear guidelines, is a set of skills that you can use, not just for getting raises, but for almost everything that you might want for the rest of your life. So what we're talking about here, doesn't just apply with raises. It applies in any type of negotiation or interaction where you need to do something that is out of the norm, an exception if you will. And even if you get to an initial obstacle or no answer, you'll have positioned yourself as a person that's determined to move things forward, and determined to be a collaborator, and determined to be a partner. And this helps create a better relationship overall, too, which means that even if you don't get what you're looking for, it's going to create later opportunities that you can be given to do so, or even if you don't get what you're looking for, it's going to create a different relationship, which then will get you access to other opportunities in the future. Also, here's the thing like, now that this raise and your goals are on the table, then as soon as you can pin it down to a plan and what needs to be achieved, then you can go right back to the foundation that we set up and discuss this with your boss on a weekly basis. "Hey, here's what you said I needed to do. Here's what I'm doing. Here's how I'm over-delivering to be able to make this happen." Don't fear being told 'no'. No, very rarely actually means no.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:26

I'll tell you that one of the biggest reasons that people never get a raise is what I mentioned at the front side of this. They simply never ask, or they're just incredibly uncomfortable asking, or they're worried about what asking means in the first place. There's so many things that tend to stop us. And if you want to negotiate an increase and feel like you need help crafting your ask, that's something we can help with. Sometimes all you need to do is have an outside person to help you think through, create a plan, and go into this with a strategy that's going to work for your situation. It just makes sense. And I'll tell you, I love to negotiate. I live this. I breathe this. It's one of the things I do for fun. Some people play golf. I get myself into negotiation situations. It's super fun, super enjoyable, and they look at it as an ongoing experiment. I know I'm a weirdo. However, I also know that each and every situation is different from doing many negotiations on my own, each and every situation is completely different. And even though I do this for fun, I teach it, we have built a company around much of this type of negotiation and interaction that is collaboration and partnership. I still take a partner when I'm going to negotiate something. So that's what I recommend to other people, too, take a partner, whether that's our organization, whether that is somebody else. However, if you want our help and you need support, here's what I would suggest– take the next 5, 10, 15 seconds, open up your email app. Email me directly. My email address is Scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And when you do that, I'll introduce you to someone on our team who can have a pretty informal conversation. And then we can figure out the very best way to support you in getting this increase, by the way, I'll mention this episode if it was helpful to you, and we can figure out the very best way that we can support you to make it happen. So do it right now. Drop me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:29

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up next week right here on Happen To Your Career.

Speaker 3 30:35

That just didn't have the autonomy that I know I needed, in retrospect, to thrive. So after a year in I said, "That's it." They were shocked, but I was not, because I was actually, between you and I, was miserable. Because I wasn't enjoying it. I was busy. But for me, the work wasn't meaningful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:55

A big part of what we do here at Happen To Your Career, on this podcast, in our company, is not just to get people to better jobs or enjoy their work more or do work they love or whatever. Instead, it's much more about helping you realize what creates more fulfilling work and ultimately a more fulfilling life. And when we're talking about making an intentional career change, that process is pretty fun, or at least it can be, especially at the beginning, and it also is really challenging. For example, if you're in the situation where you just quit your job after a year because it wasn't a fit, how do you identify opportunities that do, in fact, fit?

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:41

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.