Roberta Dombrowski 00:01

I talked a lot about being versus doing. Our society really emphasizes the doing. Here's what I want to achieve, here's the impact. Do more with less. Like, all just profit, all of this stuff. And it doesn't think about, "Who do I want to be when I'm doing it?"

Introduction 00:23

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 00:48

Have you ever accomplished one of your goals or reached what maybe was the pinnacle of success only to feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled? Whether that was climbing up the corporate ladder, maybe even making it to the top, only to look around and wonder, is this it? Is this all there is? The truth is, there is such a thing as fulfilling work, but it's likely not where you've been looking. So if you've ever felt like a cog in a corporate machine and questioned whether there's more to life than just climbing higher, you're not going to want to miss this episode.

Roberta Dombrowski 01:23

I think a lot of people look at the executive level and they're like, "I want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to get there. I want to make an impact." But it's almost like you're a slave to the schedule. You are confined. It's a long hour. Yes, you have the title, but your life is pretty much that. It's hard to balance things outside of work. And so now my schedule is super flexible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:49

That's Roberta Dombrowski, a self-described Job Hopper in the tech industry who navigated different roles and organizations at a remarkable pace. By the age of 29, she'd already climbed the ranks to become a VP of user research, wearing many hats along the way, including learning designer, product manager, user researcher. Although this looked pretty amazing from the outside, the rapid ascent took a significant physical and emotional toll on Roberta. Manifesting in panic attacks and other health issues, this made her question everything. Roberta, in this episode, opens up about the emotional toll of corporate success and the bold decision to step down from her executive role. You're going to hear how she transformed her experience into a powerful coaching approach, combining business acumen with mindfulness to help others navigate their own career crossroads. She, like myself and many others, have grappled with internal conflict between societal expectations and her own need for personal fulfillment. Ultimately, she made the courageous decision to leave her exact position and stare down the fears and uncertainties in redefining her path. Oh, by the way, you can assume from her track record that she's now a very established career coach with many accreditations, ACC, CPCC, and all the others. However, I should also mention, she's a part of our team and a career coach here at HTYC. Roberta understands the emotional rollercoaster our clients face because she's lived it herself. She blends traditional coaching methods with mindfulness practice, helping our clients connect with their bodies, their intuition, and guiding career decisions. Hey, one more thing before we jump into this discussion, you're actually not going to hear from me today. Samantha, on our team, who usually works behind the scenes on the podcast, got to talk to Roberta about her journey. So I'm going to let them take it away. Here's Roberta sharing where her career first began.

Roberta Dombrowski 03:47

It started when I was a kid. I've always been the person who, I was around adults, and I was a deep listener, and I would be asking questions, and I would be just really intentional and listening to like my dad or my family, anybody, aunts, uncles. And when I went to college, I was really the first person that went to college in my family. I got my first real taste of coaching. I wore a few different hats at the time. It was like a portfolio career before it was hip. I worked in Disability Services. I was an instruction leader, and then I was like a note-taker. And when I was doing supplemental instruction, it was this amazing program where I was teaching first-year student skills. I was mentoring, teaching, and then the manager at the time that I had was a coach, like she was a trained coach. It was a higher ed environment. And I would just go to her, it was my first time being away from family, and I would be just talking about my career and questions and all these questions that a 17-year-old has, and I never had someone hold that space for me. I was always holding space for other people. And so that always stuck with me. And then when I transitioned into corporate after I graduated, I actually decided to go into learning experience design. So I was creating virtual in-person training, and then I made a bunch of huge transitions after that too.

Samantha Martin 05:18

Just to briefly touch on your transitions from college, what industries or roles or hats did you wear for those who were trying to figure out what you wanted to do?

Roberta Dombrowski 05:30

So many. My first role out of college, I lived in Boston, I took a customer support success job. It was in the tech space. It was for a social media data analytics platform. So basically, like, it monitored what people said about brands on Twitter and YouTube and stuff like that. And so basically, I was answering help calls all day. It was usually, like, something went wrong, something broke, and I found myself getting really frustrated because I was like, "Why don't we just design the experience better than this so people don't get frustrated." And then I moved into learning experience design. So I was creating virtual in-person training, helping people to use the platform more effectively for the software platforms that I was working on. And then I transitioned to a company called the Predictive Index. And that was really like, that was like, I spent four years there. For those unfamiliar, it's like similar to MBTI. It's an assessment company. It focuses on, like, behavioral assessments, and I was on their learning team, so I designed virtual, in-person training. At the same time as I was in that role, I also got my Master's in Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning. And I was just like, all in on learning, of like, how can I help people learn, how can I help them learn more effectively about themselves. So that was a big transition. And then after that, four years there, I went into EdTech. I went to educational technology companies. I worked at a company called Pluralsight. I worked at a company called EdX, which is like a large open-source platform. I wore different hats in those roles. First I was a product manager, and then I decided to specialize in user research. Which is very similar to product management. And the reason why I switched to those is that it was still in the field of learning, but I wanted to have more of an impact in the work that I was doing.

Samantha Martin 07:35

Was there like a common thread that you were finding when you would decide to change from thing to thing?

Roberta Dombrowski 07:43

When I look back now, it is the values that was guiding me. Even if I look at my first role that I had, like, I was support, I wanted to be of service to someone. I found myself getting frustrated with help stuff, and I wanted to be more proactive. And so that led me to learning experience design. That one hit a lot of my goals, my needs because it was one of my core values is learning and teaching and supporting and mentoring. When I went to product, I was thinking about how can I make more of an impact in these organizations? Is it by designing training or is it by designing learning experiences in general? And I decided I wanted to, I tend to. I'm the type of person that, like, I push myself to see if I can do it or not. Like that gives me some excitement about things. And so I was like, yeah, like, I've worked with product managers. I could do product management for, like, a product that's learning focused. Why not? And when I got into it, I always described product management as my experience of it, it didn't fit quite right. Like I described the metaphor as a pair of shoes that's too tight, like, you're putting your feet into a pair of shoes that's too tight, like, you can work with it, you can wear it, but you're going to get blisters over time, there's going to be some bleeding, some wear and tear. And so when I was in product, I looked at my entire career, and I was like, "What did I find energizing from all of these roles? De-energizing from all of these roles?" And the thread that I saw was learning. Every single industry, every single role, I'm energized by helping people learn. And so that's when I decided to specialize in research and user research, more specifically, because I was doing it as a learning designer, and I was doing it in product, and it was like, I was meeting with customers, I was understanding what's their needs, what's their behaviors, what motivates them. And it just lit me up. It always did. And so any role position that I'm in, it has to have a balance of these things, like, what's energizing, having the heads down deep work, but then also, like... I call it like Meerkat syndrome, a little bit. Where I'm like, I like going heads down in my hole, but then I like popping up, and like being with other people too.

Samantha Martin 10:08

Well, we all know that you're a career coach now that seems like that really crosses over into what you enjoy working with people and then going behind the scenes to figure out things that work best for them and what you can bring to the next session. So I can definitely see what you're saying like and how that crosses over to being a career coach. But I wanted to go back before we jumped into that. And you had talked about energy and evaluating your own energy, and before we started, you were talking about being a mindfulness coach and how energy plays such a huge role. So I was just wanting you to touch on that a little bit, because it's so interesting, and I find that so many people don't recognize that, or haven't even really taken time to think about the different types of energy and the signs and things like that. So you can take it away.

Roberta Dombrowski 11:01

Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to. Most people don't, right? Society typically teaches us to prioritize analytical, especially in the United States– intuition, gut feel, feelings, emotions, are typically deprioritized. I've kind of fell into the camp because of my body just speaking to me. I was in a product management role. I had just accepted my first role in product management, and I was leaving the house to meet my team for the first time, and I was so in my head thinking about everything that could go wrong, like just anxiety, that I actually fell down the stairs and I broke my ankle. And so it was a really eye-opening moment for me because I was present, but I wasn't present. Like I was present and that I broke my ankle, but like I wasn't present in the experience. And that really kicked off my journey with mindfulness, because I actually couldn't move. So I had to have two surgeries for my ankle. I couldn't move for like, nine months. I was on bed rest, and I needed my energy to go somewhere. Like I couldn't just work all day. It was healing. And so I ended up taking some mindfulness classes, and it really helped me manage my anxiety. It was just like really restorative for me. And then over the years, I decided to go through teaching certification as well, through Brown University. And the way that I incorporate it into my coaching work now is I talk a lot about being versus doing. Our society really emphasizes the doing. Here's what I want to achieve, here's the impact. Do more with less. Like all just profit, all of this stuff, and it doesn't think about who do I want to be when I'm doing it. I have worn so many hats in my career. I can do anything. I know I can. Like, and that's not being cocky or anything, just like anybody can do anything that they choose to. But I always say, like, at what cost? And it's all about how we're being. Do you want to have that high-power executive role, have an impact, but then also be completely burned out and have no personal time and just exhausted? That's okay. That's if you want to do that. That's your choice. And so that's how, when I work with people, I introduce them to, like being versus doing modes. I do energy audits with them too. So I actually have them track their energy throughout the day, especially if they're in leadership or collaborative roles where they actually, like, keep a journal of here's what my energy is saying, like, what's my body feeling versus what am I cognitively thinking. So that they can start to tap into that muscle a little bit more. Because most of the time, we kind of override it as we go throughout our day like some people don't go for walks, some people don't take breaks for lunch. And so it's important.

Samantha Martin 13:59

That's so interesting. So you said when you fell down the stairs and broke your ankle, you were going to meet a team. Was that a new role you were starting?

Roberta Dombrowski 14:08

It was, yeah.

Samantha Martin 14:10

How did you last or how did that change that role for you?

Roberta Dombrowski 14:17

Yeah, so it was the product management role. I was in there for about a little over a year. It was tough. So I was fully remote while my entire team was in the office because this was before covid. So, there was a disconnect from the team. I was kind of on the back foot the whole time. It was hard to connect with them. It was hard for me to step into the role. I had imposter syndrome while I was in the role too. That's part of, I think, why I fell down the stairs. It was like the what ifs– what are they gonna think of me? I want to do this amazing. Like, all this talk track and narrative that I had for myself. So, yeah.

Samantha Martin 14:55

So what was your last role before you decided to pivot fully into career coaching? Can you tell me about that journey of deciding that you wanted to change to career coaching full-time?

Roberta Dombrowski 15:12

Yeah. I was a VP of research at a research company, actually. So I was researching how people do research. I was the top of my field. I was the top of my industry. It's actually very hard to find full-time VP level research roles. I've probably seen a few of them since then. And so yeah, I was in the career I could have asked for, everything on paper looked great, and when I had signed that executive-level role, I negotiated a part of my contract that I wanted an executive coach. I needed an executive coach. And the reason that I do that is that I tell people always who's on your executive team. So as leaders, whether you're an individual contributor, you're a manager, whatever it is, you have an executive team. It could be your partner if you're married, it could be friends, family, it could be your therapist, it could be a coach, but that's your team that you're surrounding yourself with that's going to help you hit your goals. And so that's what I was doing when I took on that leadership role, I was like, "I need my team if I'm going to be able to step into this level and have the type of impact that I want to." As soon as I started working with her, I realized really quickly, like, really quickly, that one, the role that I was in wasn't the right fit, and two, that I loved the work that we were doing together, that I was just like, even when I was interviewing for that role, they were asking me, like, why I loved it, and part of it was because I would have the opportunity to coach other people. Because I knew at this point in my time, in my career, I said with such confidence, like, I was born to be a coach. I know this. If you look at my entire path, nothing else, it just led to that. And so as I started to work with my own coach, I loved the work we were doing. And so I was like, all right, I had this really pivotal moment with my husband where I was just like, this job is not working, like, it's not giving me energy. Like, what I really want to do is coaching, but I'm going to do it when I retire. And my husband's like, props to him, why married him, he's like, "Why when you retire? Like, you're 29. What are you talking?" And I was like, "What?" But that was my inner critic. That was my saboteur. It's like, you can't have it at this moment. That was the talk track. And so he made me second guess that. And I was like, "Yeah, you're right. I guess I have to do it now." And that just flipped everything for me. Everything that I had thought about doing in the future, that I really would love, I was like, I'm gonna do it now. Why would I wait?

Samantha Martin 18:01

Right. That was going to be my next question before you mentioned your husband but now is about your support system and their reaction to that. Since you said like you were at the top of your game, and you were, you know, had this high level at a pretty young age, you had made it, and from the outside, it looked probably like everything you know you could ever hope for. So what were the reactions like when you were like, "Eh. Now I'm gonna go coach."?

Roberta Dombrowski 18:29

My husband, very supportive. My parents, no. My mom still thinks I'm insane for what I've done. She's like, you blew up your life. Because what ended up happening, really, over the last few years is I burned down almost every element of my life and rebuilt it in the way that I want it to be, rather than expectations of other people. The fellow leaders that I worked with who were, like, executive level, they thought I was crazy, but they thought they knew me, they're like, "Yeah, this makes sense. I would never do that, but like, it makes sense for you." So it was definitely mixed, like, my best friends so supportive, or, like, "Of course, Roberta." So usually I find that the people that really know you will see how it aligns, and they're very supportive. And then the people that had the most pushback were my parents, and it's because they have hopes and dreams. They want to see me or be successful and not blow up my life.

Samantha Martin 19:26

So that, as you know, the change from what you've always known and aimed for in a career to something you've realized fits you better can be like a very hard decision to make with a lot of emotions, baggage, a lot of things. So what were you feeling during that transition?

Roberta Dombrowski 19:52

I initially felt very confident in my decision. Once I make a decision, I'm pretty committed to it. I think, a few months after the decision was made, and I started to transition into coaching, and all of that, is when the fears kind of crept in. It's like, the second-guessing of, like, "What have I done?" But then I have an amazing session with the client, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm doing, like, my purpose, what I should be doing." The fears typically ended coming up on the business side of coaching. I don't care about promoting myself. I want to be a true coach, a master coach, that's what I'm working towards, is just like, how can I be of service. So that I'm always confident about when I'm making the decision to switch and follow it. It's part of like, you're never gonna be able to control everything 100% but it's like, how can you set yourself up for success towards the vision that you're seeing? And I'm someone who I will regret not going for it and not believing in myself 100%. So that always kind of would push me towards it more and more.

Samantha Martin 21:05

So now you've been a coach for quite some time. How do you find, like your day-to-day, I guess, your life compared to when you were, you know, at the top of your game in research?

Roberta Dombrowski 21:21

It's so much more flexible. I describe it as having true freedom. I think a lot of people look at the executive level and they're like, "I want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to get there. I want to make an impact." But it's almost like you're a slave to the schedule. You are confined. You are, it's long hours, yes, you have the title, but your life is pretty much that. It's hard to balance things outside of work, and so now my schedule is super flexible. Like I went to Pilates today, like, Wednesday Pilates are my favorite. Like, I have more work-life balance. I could pick my hours. I get to pick my clients that I get to work with. It's true freedom. Like, it's why I have chosen this path, is so that I can live in a way that is fulfilling to myself. And it's not either or, like, how do I have this great job? Or like, I need to be taking care of myself, but it's yes and yes, I can meet with clients and do something I love and like, still take care of my body and have time for myself and sleep and not hustle all the time.

Samantha Martin 22:32

Yeah. Now be up at 4 am to get a workout in before you go to work. Yeah. It reminds me of that, oh gosh, I'm gonna butcher it, but that story about a man on an island who's fishing on a boat, and a businessman approaches him and he's like, "Oh, like, we could really expand this operation, and you could do all these things and get all these other fishermen under you, and like, we could have all these franchises, and you can make all this money, and it comes around to, and then you could retire a rich man." And he's like, "And then I'd be a rich man, and I'd retire to do the exact same thing I'm doing right now, just sitting in this boat and fishing." It's kind of reflecting on, you know, pulling out of the hustle and looking at life and being like, "There's got to be more. What am I really aiming towards? And I could have it right now."

Roberta Dombrowski 23:31

Yes, exactly. Like one of the things I love so much about mindfulness is it's all about paying attention to the present moment. What's coming up for you? And so, like, I'm very tuned into those moments when I'm like, "This is it. I feel at peace." Like, in my free time, I do gardening. I'm like, on the water, I am outside, I'm with clients, and it's like, I yearn for those sorts of things. I think that one thing that I realized when I was in an executive role too, is a lot of people have this mental model that like, work has to be hard. If it's not hard, it's not work. When I worked with my executive coach, be like, flip that on its head. Like, what? Like, that's a bias that I had because of how I grew up. But work doesn't have to be hard, it can be useful. And so that's what really this phase of my life is about, it's like, how can I be useful and just embrace what is and live in my zone of genius? And that's it, and it's amazing.

Samantha Martin 24:35

Yeah. Another thing I wanted to touch on that we talked about before we hopped on here was when your body is sending you signals of when things are not right. And a lot of times that happens before you realize that something's wrong or you need to change. And I know you said that you had a few examples of that throughout your career. So do you want to talk a little about that?

Roberta Dombrowski 24:58

Yeah, I'd say that the big one was the ankle and falling down the stairs, but before I actually fell down the stairs, I was waking up in the middle of the night having panic attacks. And so that's when I was just interviewing for the role. And I didn't think about it. I was just like, "Oh, I'm stressed out. I'm having a panic attack." I didn't like connect it to the job that I was interviewing for until I fell down the stairs and broke my ankle. Over the years, I've had two experiences where I've had panic attacks. Luckily, I noticed it now. I notice it before it gets that strong. Usually for me, it's like feeling in the pit of my stomach. I notice my back hurting, my shoulders hurting. It's like where I carry tension, maybe a heart racing, maybe it's dreading going to a specific meeting. I notice, like, the way beginning stages, so that it doesn't build up to that point yet. And really, our bodies recognize how we're feeling before we actually emotionally process it. So it's really about like, I love somatic work and being able to tune into that because what we resist generally persists, and it's going to come out in other ways and usually stronger.

Samantha Martin 26:15

Yeah, and we work with a lot of people who realize after the fact that their body was something, and some that is like the straw that broke the camel's back because huge things will happen, like a broken ankle. But for anyone that is starting to realize that they're in that place, what advice would you give someone who feels like something doesn't feel right?

Roberta Dombrowski 26:42

Yeah, usually what I hear common is, "Oh, I feel tired. I'm exhausted, I'm burned out, I'm stressed." Those are like the big ones. And so usually what I recommend is time. Take your PTO, your time, integrate little breaks throughout your days as much as you can, get up from your desk, stretch, go for a walk in the middle of the day, eat away from your computer, those will give you, like, mini breaks for yourself. And then, long term, it's time to start thinking about, what is your vision, what's your transition plan? I always say, reflect on your career and your previous roles, what made you choose those paths. And then also start to think about, like, what's working, what's not working within your current environment. There's something that's causing, like, the physical ailments or the end low energy, whatever it might be, and usually, it requires actually slowing down rather than speeding up a lot of people because it's discomfort, right? It feels really uncomfortable to slow down and listen to what your body is telling you. Trust me, I couldn't walk for months like it's really uncomfortable. But in that discomfort, when you start to sit in it and listen to it, is when the wisdom comes out and you will know, you will start to see the signals. When you take the breaks, you will see your body, your nervous system, start to return to normal.

Samantha Martin 28:05

I'm just now recognizing that. So I had my second daughter last year, and when she was eight days old, I broke my foot. You know, I was just... this is the worst timing. This is awful. I had a toddler too that I needed to be taking care of, but people pitched in and helped out, obviously, I'm lucky for that, but it also just made me take a break that I wouldn't have taken that I really needed in that time. So I was on the couch, elevating my foot, but I was also, you know, like bonding with my daughter. It ended up, now my foot's all good, so it ended up really being a positive and a break that I needed. So now that you're saying this thing, that was kind of a sign that you're not going to slow down unless I make you slow down.

Roberta Dombrowski 29:06

Force. Yeah, your body will force you to slow down. Absolutely.

Samantha Martin 29:11

Yeah, very interesting reflection that I've had just from this conversation. So what would you say is your favorite thing about being a coach?

Roberta Dombrowski 29:24

Holding space for people, being able to hold their... They tell us, like, what their hopes, their dreams, their vision is, so being able to hold that for them and ground them in that and help them come to the answers for themselves. Like, I'm holding space. I always say with my clients that they're the expert in their lived experience, and I'm bringing my expertise in coaching, and together, we're helping them hit their goals. That is my favorite thing in the world. It's like the aha moments, the insights, the things they forgot about themselves, really, a lot of the time, they're coming home to their true intuition, their true vision, what they're hoping for, and being able to be a partner with them on their journey is really, really beautiful.

Samantha Martin 30:12

Yeah, we kind of touched on this a little bit, but you are just a great example of someone who had, "made it", but then really pivoted, and are loving your career even more than you could have imagined, and you were not at the place that you had been aiming towards for many, many years. So there's a lot of people that we work with that are, you know, lawyers or doctors or some type of position that they've worked very, very hard for, for many, many years, and they're still feeling something is not right. So what would you say helped you in that time to make that decision to step away?

Roberta Dombrowski 30:58

I always ask myself the question, "Am I running towards something or running away from something?" And that's usually when I know the answer. It comes up pretty quick. And it takes pausing and really getting vulnerable with yourself, of like, why is this not working right now. If I'm running away from something, that's usually a fear, that's usually the wrong motivation. When I answer, I'm running towards something, and here's what I want, I want more freedom, I want more fulfillment, I want this, I want that, I want to be able to serve people, I want to be of service, that's the sign that I'm making the right choice that it's values-driven. And so when I'm working with clients, I ask them the same question, are you running to/from? If they tell me that they're running from the career, they're running from the job, the environment because of a poor boss, a poor manager, role, not feeling appreciated, that's a sign. Then it's something else, typically, or it's something we can dig in more. We can dig a little bit more into. Usually, when they're saying, "I'm running towards this, this, this, this." I'm like, "All right, let's make it happen." And it takes being grounded and teasing apart. And there's an analytical part, there's a intuitive body part, sensation, all of that. And also, when I think about ease and running towards I actually, when I worked with, I've worked with a business coach before, too, she talked a lot about like, push versus pull energy. So running towards something sometimes could be like pushing, Like when I was a VP, when I was climbing the letter, I was push, push, push, push. I'm great at executing pushing override. I was overriding my body a lot of the times. What I want, and what I work with clients on is how can you pull yourself like you're pulling something towards you energetically, rather than pushing. Because pushing expends a lot of energy, but when you pull something towards you, it's more useful plus helpful.

Samantha Martin 33:11

It's interesting. So our podcast, obviously, has a lot of people who are wanting to make a change or working on a change, and it's helpful for them to hear about other people that you've worked with who have done the same. So I know you already talked about the things that you really enjoy in career coaching, but where do you find that people struggle the most when they are wanting to make a change?

Roberta Dombrowski 33:37

When I work with clients, typically, the first thing that they come to me with is, I want someone to review my resume, I want my materials updated and stuff like that. And so I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, let's slow down. Where are you actually aiming to go?" So that's usually like a first struggle is they want to go a million miles an hour, they're already there. And I work a lot with like, let's intentionally slow down and create the vision of where you want to go. So that's one piece. When I also work with clients, there's a lot of thoughts, feelings, mindset, imposter syndrome, things that come up. It's a lot of second-guessing if somebody is transitioning career fields, what are others going to think? Am I gonna be good enough? What's the best way to do this? So that's another theme. Once they align and they have, like, clarity about where they want to go next, typically, a big next bump is like positioning and networking. They like to forget that they've been humans their whole life and have interacted with people because there's a vulnerability to it. When you start to go out and network with people, you're basically like, you're throwing out your intention to the universe and what you're hoping for, and if it gets turned down, there's a lot of risk involved. You start to question yourself, and so people get a little bit fearful or scared or nervous when they start to do that. So I really love like, when I work with career transitioners, people are pivoting careers. It's really a journey. It's an arc. And there's ups and downs at each stage, and it varies for each person too. Some of my favorite moments are when I'm working with someone at the beginning, and I dig deep into like, what's your relationship to work. Because that brings a lot of things. Like, how do you define success? Because that's going to influence things and values and all of that too.

Samantha Martin 35:33

Yeah. What would you say to someone who's like, "Yes, that's how I want to be living life but that wouldn't work for me because of X, Y, and Z, or I got into this career field, and there's no way."?

Roberta Dombrowski 35:47

Usually, I flip the question back, and I say, "Why? Who says that? Why is it not possible?" And then usually they start to ramble off these, what I call limiting beliefs, that are there for a reason. And so I will dig into that with them, and start to poke them a little bit and be like, "Oh, well, why is that? Why is that?" It's not going to change immediately, but usually, I call these like saboteurs or inner critics. It's parts of their personality, parts of behaviors, mindsets that come up. And so usually you can't say, "don't think that way", because then it's just going to keep coming up louder. And so usually I acknowledge it. I'm like, "Why? What's the voice?" I will start to identify it with them. And then if they start to do more visioning and stuff like that, we'll say, "How can we honor this voice and listen to what it has to say?" Usually, it's a protection mechanism of, "Oh, I can't do this because I need to provide for my family, or I need to do XYZ." And so it's like, all right, valid point. How can we acknowledge it and move forward? And then, usually, it's little experiments to try and prove that wrong, or find evidence of why that narrative or way of being actually can be tested and kind of negotiated with. Like it's the same thing that I've done with myself. That was what the story that I had with my husband is, I can only do coaching when I retire. And he did that. He pokes like, "Wait, what?" We all have thoughts like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:30

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 38:22

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

Speaker 4 38:27

And now it's about what works for me in this part of my life, and I only have eight more years till my kids go to college. What do I want the next eight years to look like?

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:37

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.

Caity Noonan 00:00

I don't even know what I want to do. Like, let's back up. Because, yes, there's all these great companies across industries I'd love to work for, but what am I actually going to do there?

Introduction 00:14

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 00:39

What happens when you're in the place where you want something different, and you know that for sure, but what else could you do in your career? What else is even out there? Or how could you find out? We hear this dilemma from people all the time. We call it the restaurant with no menus. You're ready to leap into the job market, you want to find something that fits you better, there's so many possibilities, but where is the list of jobs to choose from? Wait, there isn't one. The possibilities are endless, cue, and existential career crisis. But wait, before you spiral, I want you to listen to this episode. Caity was in the same place that you might find yourself, and she found a career that she didn't even know existed, that it turns out, was a perfect match for her.

Caity Noonan 01:27

I just got really excited. I didn't even know this was a dedicated field that people did. And I knew this was something for me because I got excited. And like, it was the first role and area and field that I had felt, for the first time in a really long time, excited about something.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:45

That's Caity Noonan. Caity was a successful VP of marketing in the tech world. Her career was going great, but she began to realize she was no longer excited by her work and knew she needed a change. She took the time to explore her strengths, her passions, what she was excited about, she really dug into the questions of "what's next?" Eventually, her self discovery, combined with extensive research, led her to discover change management, which is an area that she didn't even know existed, and ultimately realized that this could be the perfect match for her. This didn't just happen by accident, though. She didn't just take an assessment and out pops change management for her. Nope. Caity did a lot of work with her strengths, defining what we would call must haves, and experimenting, and she was able to uncover her ideal fit after researching, experimenting, connecting the dots with those strengths and potential careers. I want you to listen as we walk through how she identified her ideal career. Here's Caity explaining why she first decided to step away from marketing.

Caity Noonan 02:56

In terms of my career, I started off in account management and sales. That led me to product marketing, and that really was what I loved. It was okay, this is it. This is right where I need to be. I love every aspect of this. I then grew my career as a product marketer from junior all the way up to senior level management, and I sort of have gotten to the point where it's just not the same anymore. And so about a year ago, I finished up at a company, and I just very deliberately was like, "I don't want to do this anymore." There's, you know, Product Marketing just isn't as exciting to me as it used to be. The role, the job has changed the more senior I've gotten. There's aspects I love about it, and there's just a lot of stuff I really don't like about it. And so I wanted to have a very proactive approach and saying, "I'm not just going to get back on the market, fall into the next PMM job." A recruiter sends to me. You know, I'm just going to take the time. And I had a partner who was really supportive of this. He just was there to say, you know, "We're okay financially. Why don't you just take some time and figure out what you want to do next?" And so throughout all of last summer, you know, we did lots of travel, I just took time off. I wasn't really thinking about any career moves. I just needed the time off. And then kind of earlier of this year of '24, that's when I was like, "Okay, I need to start digging into this." And being a product marketer, research is, like, one of the biggest things that you do. Like, it's one of my strengths. And so I'm like, I can do this, right? I'm on Google. I'm searching. I'm reading books. I'm doing all the things I think I need to, right? I'm sort of talking to some close friends and coaches and mentors, and I'm just not getting anywhere, right? I'm just thinking, okay, I see all the pieces to this process. And I think you've mentioned this on a previous podcast of people just kind of jump from step A to, you know, R. They just think, like, "Okay, I think this is it. I'm just gonna go target this role or this company, rewrite my resume and just go for it, right?" There's not a lot of exploration, education, learning, experimenting, right, and testing. And I didn't know that's what you need to do, which sounds kind of silly now, but it seems obvious, but you really don't know it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:04

How would you know? I mean, it's not like this is a standard class in college or anything else along those lines.

Caity Noonan 05:11

Yeah. And I think, and I just wasn't getting the hands on direction and education around what I needed to do this process. And that's kind of when I discovered HTYC, and really bought in and just understood your approach, right? I read your book, and I saw that you have the short, sort of trial bootcamp, and I thought, "This is so different", right? Like this is hands on. There's a blueprint, and it's very methodical. And as me, I'm very much like a doer and executor. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. And that's what I needed.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:46

Well, here's one of the things I'm curious before we get too far along here. Because, you know, fast forward, and let's say that one of the things that you did incredibly well is you've went into this very intentionally, you were willing to invest the time and energy in yourself to make sure that your next change is a good match and a good fit, and it's setting you up to for anything in the future too. And you had learned that areas of what many people might call change management are really great for you. So we're going to come back and we're going to talk about this. But before we do, I'm really curious, was there a particular moment or event that made you realize that product marketing in, at whatever level, in whatever organization was no longer a fit?

Caity Noonan 06:41

Yeah. I think, you know, I think the moment for me when that was happening was I wasn't excited about the profession anymore, and I didn't want to educate myself anymore. I didn't really care about furthering my education in it, going to conferences, networking with other PMMs, like, just... that's where I kind of knew I've lost my curiosity and my passion for this job. But I think what was tricky for me was that there are parts that I really liked about it, and I know we're going to get into this, I think with, you know, some of the strengths work, but it was hard for me to blatantly walk away, because there were parts that I really did like, and so that left me a struggle of, "Okay, how do I keep the elements of Product Marketing that I really that I really enjoy, but not be doing this job?" So yeah, but I do think that was the moment when I knew that that career or that profession and that role wasn't going to be the right move moving forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:35

That's interesting. And you also talked about, you just mentioned, the strengths pieces. And I think one of the things that you did really well was going into strengths and viewing that, let's call it a process. It's not technically a process, however, you're viewing it much like a detective. Okay, what were the pieces that you were utilizing over your past roles? So I'm really curious, what did that portion of the process? As you started to get into discovering, here's what my strengths are, here's what they actually mean. And I think coming into this, you already had a pretty high self awareness, at least that was my perception, since you and I got to chat. And I guess just take me through a little bit about what that section of going through, understanding your strengths and then beginning to relate that information to the real world. Would that look like for you?

Caity Noonan 08:25

Well, I had first... So I had been familiar with StrengthsFinder a while ago. I think the first time I did it, about 10 years ago. I was at a company and my findings were actually different then, no surprise, probably, but there was no real application of what those strengths were, and I didn't really do anything with them at the time. And so fast forward 10 years, we're here. I redo the StrengthsFinder testing, and I'm just blown away by the findings. Like my top five, I was shocked how accurate it was. I mean, and I could literally look at the five and say, "yes, in all my career, I can point to these things with each of these five strengths". So first I was actually really shocked about how accurate that was. So and then the process of diagnosing your strengths, which is a really in depth system where you're going through each and every one of your roles throughout your career, your responsibilities, your projects, everything you've done, and then applying your strengths to each of those jobs you've had. And I think that was a real aha moment, because I started to find these patterns and these threads throughout each job that I was starting to tie together, but in relation to my strengths. So one example was that maximizer is my number one strength, which is really about you love to optimize things, you always want to make things better, you really like systems and processes. And one of the things that was threaded throughout my whole career is I've always gravitated towards operational projects. Always raise my hand to make a process better, institute a new system. And it was really operational and more people based and less so just launch this product or go do this audience research. It was very much focused on making the company operate better. And so that was, like a big aha moment. It was like, "Yeah, all the projects I actually really enjoy doing are spot on Maximizer", or, if I think about in product marketing, I really liked the element of doing competitive analysis and market research, and intellection was my number three strength. And so all of these like little patterns of the parts that I like about product marketing kind of reveal themselves. But also part of that work in looking at your past roles and responsibilities is figuring out what you didn't like to do. And I know this is a great exercise with the grid, where you really have to force yourself to plot your strengths of what you like, what you don't like so much, what you're good at, but you don't want to be doing, right? So you have these sort of different buckets, and I think that's sort of a forcing function to really look at everything you've done in your past roles and really think about were you reluctant to do it? Did you raise your hand to do it? Did it give you energy? Did it drain you? Really had to think back through that whole, each role I ever had, doing that diagnosis. So I spent a lot of work on that, and that's when things started to emerge to me around the power of strengths, of finding your top five strengths.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:20

That's awesome. And I want to ask you about the work that you did. You said, "I spent a lot of work." So first of all, just help me understand what kind of timeframe was this for you? Was this, you know, a couple hours in a day? Was this spread over months? Help me understand as you were doing the strength specific work, what kind of timeframe was that?

Caity Noonan 11:40

You know, I worked, you know, I worked on and off on it for that whole kind of module around strengths, probably a couple weeks, you know, but quarters at a time. So I'd come to it, I'd come back. I'd have fresh eyes the next day. I'd be like, "Oh, actually, let me..." I also did that. Or I didn't quite like that as much as I thought I did. So you're constantly re-looking at that work and reevaluating it throughout doing that module around your strengths. And I really like the system where you sort of look at all the work you've done, you start to highlight the things you love, you start to look at the things you don't, you start to do, I think, the scoring was brilliant, where you look at the number of times you usually each strength. And then you can see of your top five, which ones emerged as your strongest.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:25

How frequently is this showing up? And you can start to see the different types of patterns.

Caity Noonan 12:30

Yeah, whereas, like three of mine were pretty well, you know, in the same range, and two were a little bit lower down, but it was just sort of interesting to take more of a kind of such a fine tooth comb and applying your strengths to your career. And I had never done that. I didn't even think to do that on my own. I never would have.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:48

So I think a lot of people I found are surprised about how this tends to work. I think many people that I've interacted with over the years sort of have the perception that, "Hey, I'm going to go take an assessment, or we're gonna do this exercise, and then a few hours later, I'm gonna have an absolute understanding of all my signature strengths and everything goes with it, and then we're gonna be able to talk about what this means. Am I gonna be a beekeeper in Zimbabwe, or am I going to do something else?" And so I find that there's a lot of surprise around what it takes. I heard you say this was spread over weeks where you're spending hours chunks at a time and then have reflection or allowing things to simmer in between. But what did you find surprising as you were going through that section of the process?

Caity Noonan 13:31

Yeah, I started to see patterns emerge around my values. So the biggest one for me was I really care about how things are done, and not so much the what. That was a big one for me. Where I was at so many companies, a lot of them startups or small size companies, where just getting things done with speed was more important. And I realized how much I internally thought that and I really cared more about having operational soundness, because I'm kind of a perfectionist. I think things can always be done better. I like to optimize those. I like to take time and presentations and make sure they're spot on. You know, where I'd be in these environments where speed was the priority for the company. And so I started to see these patterns of my own values, like what really matters to me in the workplace. And I could start to see where I was finding these areas of unhappiness because my values around what I do at work were not aligning with the role. So that's just one example, and then sort of reflecting on your strengths after you do all this is really interesting as well. So relator was one of my strengths, which is very more focused on sort of people to people right, kind of more individual and more supportive. And I could see how that was a strength because as a product marketer, you really have to get buy and cross functionally, across the whole company. You have to really influence others, influence your peers, influence your leaders. And so I can kind of see how that emerged as a strength. And thought about, "Okay, well, how can I take that with me into the future as well into a different role?" But, you know, from here, I could kind of go into how I discovered change management, you know, from that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:05

Yeah, let's definitely talk about that here in a moment. I think one of the things I'm interested in first is like I heard you allude to the values piece, and it sounds like that was way more important for you than what you perceived it originally. What I'm also curious about is, if we talk in terms of what we would call an ideal career profile, and for context for obviously, that's a tool that we use here at Happen To Your Career, and where we can begin to on paper, on purpose, define, you know, what a profile of the most important elements, whether it's values driven or anything else, and what you need, and then that allows us to be able to start relating that to the real world. But here's what I'm curious about for you, what were some of the examples of the must haves that you identified for your ideal profile, and why were those so important to you?

Caity Noonan 16:00

Yeah. It's funny because the ICP work, yeah, ideal career profile, it's sort of this other, sort of, parallel path, right? That's happening at the same time as the strength. I know you like to use the puzzle analogy, which I think is great, of like, you know, you sort of have your edges pieces, right? Your sort of anchors. I sort of see the ICP as the sort of macro, your sort of, macro view of what your career should be, and what those, not constraints, but directives look like. And so for me, the ICP was so helpful because I actually went through a lot of reprioritization. I think the prioritization of the ICP is super important. Like, to begin with, I had finances pretty far down on the list. I was just like, "I just want to be happy and work life balance, and I have to love my job." And, you know, a very kind of not as a practical view. But then when it came to doing a budgeting exercise, where, okay, "What do I absolutely need minimum to stay where I live in the Bay Area?" Which is a high cost of living. We aren't moving, so that kind of eliminates certain things to just maintain a lifestyle of travel is really important for us, and doing all the things we love doing and our hobbies. So I really had to actually think about that first, right? And so where I had finances kind of further down on my ideal career profile, it quickly kind of got bumped up. I think it was at like a number six. It then became a number three. But for me, my sort of real prioritize, like my one and two, was really around health and wellness and work life balance. So, you know, those were really important for me. I didn't want to be on the road, commuting every morning and every night. That's important for me. It's important for my health. So that was a real big one. So finding a job where it's not going to require five days in office and the budgeting process also helped me sort of narrow down the fact that I can't go be a travel agent or go work in a nonprofit for animal conservation. There's just certain things that I'd thought about at the very beginning, this really wide scope of all these fun things I could be doing. You know, it kind of got more narrow. It was like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I have to stay in kind of a corporate job or corporate environment, which is fine, because all these other things in my life matter and they're important, they come first." And so that was a really, kind of, not a forcing function, but it's almost like a nice reality check, but it helps you. It's a funnel, and it starts to get smaller and smaller, and you get more clarity the more you start really forcing yourself to prioritize what matters in your life. So I think that, and then combine with the strengths. So here I was kind of on the ICP side. I was like, "Okay, I know sort of what I want my daily life to look like. I want to be able to work out potentially during the day, be out in nature as much as possible, and be able to go into an office a couple days a week. I'm totally fine to get on a plane and travel at least once a month." So I had kind of all these, you know, it kind of probably needs to be in a corporate job with this minimum budget. And then over here, on the strength side, I'm starting to figure out what makes sense in the actual role in the company, and so you kind of combine those two together at the same time, and the whole picture starts to come into view a little bit better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:10

Interesting that you used finances as an example. Tend to take the view on finances that if we're talking about money as a tool, and ultimately, money helps you build the type of life that you want to build, right? So then what I hear you saying is that you're looking at, okay, what is the type of life that I want to continue to live, and what do I want to build, and how much does that cost? And then it sounds like that's influencing where that falls in priority. Because to accomplish the type of work that you want to do within the scope of the life that you want to build, then there's certain financial costs that go along with that. So really nice job on that. And then I think one of the things I'm really interested in here is you did all this work to create that ideal career profile, and it helped you begin to make clear what those priorities were and are. Can you walk us through a little bit how you combine your strengths, your insights from the ICP, and began to articulate what created, or what would create an ideal career for you?

Caity Noonan 20:21

Yeah, and I'd say first, like, what was also before I landed on my target role, which is change management, I also was considering the travel industry and being a travel agent. Because I absolutely love planning trips in my free time. It's one of my most exciting hobbies that I absolutely love doing. And I thought what a career could look like in this. And I sort of, you know, went down that path and explored that my career coach totally different, right? Just to see what could this look like. Those requirements that just weren't going to match my ICP, and that meant working really hard hours and slogging if you're going to start your own business as a travel agent, or the budget requirements just wouldn't have been met, right? It would have required some other major life change. But so that's just one example of how I did go down another path, exploratory mapped it against the ICP, and had to go in a different direction. But...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:15

Hold on, can I ask you about that? I think that's such a great example. And I think sometimes when people hear those stories about, "Hey, I pursued this and decided it wasn't quite for me." I think it's really easy for people to understand that. But also, on the flip side of that, when people are going through that themselves, I think sometimes the tendency is to get all the way to the end of that exploration and say, "Oh, now I have to start over this thing I thought I was interested in is not actually, you know, not actually something that is going to fit in one way or another." And sometimes when you're in the thick of it feels like you're being set back, not for everybody. And it also depends on how you're looking at it and how many things you're pursuing at the same time. But what was that like for you, and what did you perceive as the benefits to finding out that didn't work?

Caity Noonan 22:04

Right. Well, first I'll say, I'm so glad I did this during the program. Because before the program, I started exploring being a travel agent on my own, and I started this program, and it's going to cost X dollars, sign up now, and I got so close to just launching into it, right? And saying, "This is what I want to do", without having stopped, you know, evaluated, understood the roles within the industry.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:24

Being a travel agent.

Caity Noonan 22:25

Yeah, any sort of networking experiments talking to the right people, and that's actually where it came to, where I figured out it wasn't going to work. I think, you know, I was able to make a few critical connections of people I didn't know, who have recently either become agents or were new to the field, or people have been in the business for 30 years and found out a lot of things I would have not known otherwise of just, it's extremely difficult to get your business started. It takes a lot of, you know, self promotion, and business promotion, a lot of the stuff in marketing, I just didn't know I didn't want to be doing looking over at my strengths, right? Like going over there and seeing, okay, it's actually a lot of this job that's not quite what I want to do. The part that I love doing was the planning. And so then I was trying to figure out, here's there a role within the travel industry that is just the planning piece. And the role doesn't... I didn't find that the role exists in the space that I wanted it to. So I think there was this discovery that the piece that I love doing so much about travel doesn't exist in a profession unto itself that would have paid for a full time job, that would have sustained my lifestyle. But it made me feel so relieved that I did the work. Because had I not figured that out, I always would have been thinking in the back of my head, "Oh, I should go do this." Or, "Why didn't I?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:42

Why didn't I pursue this one thing? Like...

Caity Noonan 23:47

Yeah, and I did all the work and education required to be able to rule that out and feel good about it, like, feel no hesitation that this isn't right for, not only is it not right for me, but it could actually also hinder my hobby, right? I also don't want to hate travel planning, because I'm doing it day in and day out in a role that isn't quite the one I want. So I also had to weigh that against it too. Do you kind of want to be doing this 8 to 10 hours a day, and you're not going to have any room to do it on your own when you love it so much, right? So that was kind of interesting discovery.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:19

So I think that's really cool what you're talking about, because it sounds like in doing that work, not only did you reach a more effective approach, where you're like, "Yeah, I shouldn't spend any more time or money or effort on this", but at the same time, it made you feel better about the decision that you're making and what you're choosing to not pursue as well as what you are choosing to pursue. So how, then, how did you lead towards change management? Take me through, like, what were all the parts and pieces that happened along the way where you get to the point where you're like, "Yeah, definitely want to dive further into change management." How'd that happen?

Caity Noonan 25:02

And what's funny is, I didn't even know it existed. And I think this and how I discovered it was so interesting. So, you know, I kind of rolled out a few other things. My ICPs in a good place. I know what my life priorities are. I have a good sense of like, okay, this is the arena I need to stay in. Part of the process when you're finishing a lot of this work is then deciding, okay, "Are you going to go in a company direction? Are you going to go in a role direction?" And so I think a lot of people go to the company and I actually started going down the company path, and I quickly realized, I was like, "Wait a second, I don't even know what I want to do. Let's back up." Because, yes, there's all these great companies across industries I'd love to work for, but what am I actually going to do there? So I had to quickly pivot over to the role side and just get really specific about what is a new job going to look like for me. You know, I loved all the strength work I had done. I had so many aha moments, connected so many threads there. And then I just started doing a little bit of research. I took all my five top strengths, started saying, like, doing some online research around, like, what are professions, studies, education, around people who have these signature strengths? And, you know, I did a little bit of AI plugging, just to see what would pop out there. And I landed on discovering organizational psychology, which I didn't even know what that was. And it was like, "Oh, this sounds really interesting", and it's the first thing that popped up that I was actually excited about. And so from Organizational Psychology, I started to learn a bit more about the people side of how companies are organized and how they go through transformations. Then I sort of from there, discovered change management, which also kind of popped up in that whole space. And I thought, "Whoa, what is that?" And I remember one of my last jobs, a couple companies ago, I had done a two day seminar from HR around change management, and not really knowing that that was an actual profession, was more just change. Like, how can employees go through change, adopt change? And I was very fascinated at the time about that, I was really into it, because I had been through so much change throughout the course of my career, small companies, I've been through three acquisitions at three different companies. Change has been a constant and in every place I've been. And so I just got really excited. I didn't even know this was a field that people did, and I knew this was something for me because I got excited and, like, it was the first role and area and field that I had felt for the first time in a really long time, excited about something in a corporate space, right? Like a role still within a corporate environment, business environment, that I was excited to explore because I was looking at other kinds of adjacent fields, right? There's project management. I had done tons of project management throughout my product marketing career. Okay, that's kind of an option, but I wasn't super excited about it. It's very executional. I had done a lot of that already. Then there was sort of operations roles, which, again, kind of adjacent, but not focused so much on the people's side could end up being very heavily, like numbers related, right? Sort of company performance related. So there was the space just missing that was sort of operations focused and people focused, and project focused. And change management, as I discovered, is sort of like the role that takes all three of those into one space. And so I just kind of randomly discovered that. And then I just started looking into it. I jumped on LinkedIn. I just watched a couple really quick courses, just to quickly familiarize myself with it. I landed on some of the sort of industry de facto companies that are the standard, you know, the change management, training standards, you know, the ACMP, the industry's body, right? The main kind of body, and everything. So I just started going on there and learning about the whole field, the different roles in the space, yeah, and so that's kind of how I discovered it. And really what kicked off my decision to have that be my target.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:58

So I'm curious then, as you were doing some of that research, what are some of the examples of where you were getting that feedback that caused you to reinforce that, "Hey, this is actually a direction that I should go." Where were you getting those little tidbits of information that, from an experimentation standpoint, caused you to think, "Yeah, this is actually an area that I should further experiment with or further dive into."?

Caity Noonan 29:23

Yeah, I think there was a couple things. I think one of them was the more I was reading about the role, the types of projects, who you work with, kind of the different, the wide scope of it, right? So you could be, you could work in change management everywhere from a major firm like Accenture or Deloitte all the way down to a small firm that specializes it, all the way down to a tech company that has an in-house change management team. So first there was, like, a lot of variation and scope. It wasn't too narrow. There were a lot of options here for this role and growth opportunity. I think the second was, the more I was reading about it, the more I was looking at all of my past experience and basically thinking to myself, I've done a lot of change management in Product Marketing already. It just wasn't called that. And it was the pieces that I really liked. So for example, at some of the small companies I worked at, because we were really small in startups product marketing, because it's such a cross functional role, I was often assigned to do these big, sort of company wide change projects, which is everything from like, new processes, you know, an entirely new hire training curriculum, or designing new deal review systems, like all of these things that I loved doing that I didn't know at the time were actually, could actually be considered change management projects more formally. So I started to actually have this aha moment where I was looking back and thinking, "Okay, back to my strengths, all that whole diagnosis I did around my career, what did I like doing? What I not like?" All the things that popped out that I liked were actually related to change management with me not even knowing it at the time, or even what it was called that could fall into that bucket. So that was sort of kind of one internal aha moment, the more I was learning about the field. And then also just going and, like, starting to read JDs, I was like, "Okay, what do these jobs really look like?" Right? Like, everywhere, from a junior level through to, like, you know, a senior consultant level. And I think what I liked about that the most was nothing put me off. Nothing was like, "Oh, I don't know about that. I don't like doing that." Not one thing sort of stuck out as being like, I'm going to be resistant to having to do that. And that's not to say that this field doesn't come with its challenges. I mean, change for human beings is one of the hardest things to do and to work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:41

It's going to be challenging, absolutely.

Caity Noonan 31:44

And knowing that too, didn't put me off either. And I think that was like a huge sign. And then I don't know if we want to get into it yet, but then when I started to do the networking piece around finding people who were in change management field, either new to it, been in it 20 years, with all those conversations, nothing really put me off.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:03

But here's the part I think that's fascinating about not just doing work more intentionally, but living life more intentionally, is, I think that almost everybody, I shouldn't say everybody, a lot of people believe that you're going to be able to shortcut this process. Like, I should just be able to do a couple of assessments or whatever else, and then I should be able to go look at job descriptions, and then I'm going to have the results, like you just talked about, like I'm reading through the job description, and not only is nothing putting me off, but the same time, I'm excited about a great chunk of it. And that doesn't just happen by accident. There's a reason that it is a stereotype now that when you look at job descriptions, everything sounds just terrible for the most part. Yeah, and it's unfortunate.

Caity Noonan 33:00

Yeah. Deliberate process. And I think one thing is, I wouldn't have even known to look for those JDs had I not even known this field existed, which is...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:08

Needle in a haystack, right?

Caity Noonan 33:10

To even start, right? And yeah. So that was a big part of it, and there was so much work that went into that, right? And yeah...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:18

Just a moment ago, you mentioned, as you started to talk with actual people that are in this industry, this type of profession, occupation, they're actively fulfilling these roles or have, what were some of the realizations that further reinforced for you that this is actually an area that I'm wanting to make a move into?

Caity Noonan 33:38

Yeah. I would say one of the first big discoveries was targeting, you know, if I wanted to go into change management on the consulting side. So you're kind of, you're an outside company firm, come in, you help a business go through change or you go in house to a change management team that might be at a big company that can afford, they actually know change management. They're growing it as part of their award. And so I started to figure out, okay, within this industry or within this field, which direction do I need to go? And I needed to start targeting that even further down. And I landed on the consultant side only because I liked this idea that I could then be exposed to multiple industries, multiple companies over the course of my career, being able to work with different clients. And, you know, having been at tech companies for pretty much the last 20 years, this would be, like, a nice change, right? Like, yeah, change. But like, for me, just a very different experience to say, and I've never been on the consultant side, so that kind of got me excited to just hear people who I talked to, who work more on the consultant side about how they get to meet with different clients, they get different challenges, they work on different programs. And importantly, the change is very readily, probably more bought into if the company's paying for an outside firm to come in. So that was important because I know one of the struggles can often be adoption of the leadership with change. So that can be trickier. So I think the consultant side was the direction I went in. I was getting more reaffirmed by the people who I was talking to on that side than on the in house side. And yeah, and then just looking at kind of the growth path people have had in this field. And you know, what was really interesting is when I asked them their challenges, you know, what they've come up against, nothing really scared me. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm gonna have to deal with this like I did in my product marketing and career" right? I think I was nervous that it was going to be too close to what I was doing before where I was going to start to pedal back, or have some anxiety about making this decision of this role. But I never had that which I think was important.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:43

Very cool. That's really cool. Anything else that your perspective has changed on through the course of doing this work for yourself?

Caity Noonan 35:50

Yeah, I think also just having there's so much more self awareness after this, right? It feels so much better about walking away from certain things that, you know, I have to just, I had to choose, right? Like, what things in my life are most important to me? And it's really, it's self reflection. There's so much self reflection. It's amazing. And stuff you wouldn't know to do this yourself. Just the amount of work, the prompts, the writing, the discoveries that come through that writing and seeing it on paper is huge. Just saying, like, "I wrote that X is more important than Y. Okay, well, what does that mean? That means I can't go do this job over here, and I'm okay with that." Because, you know, I went into this process thinking everything was on the table, right? Like, I want to work with animals. I want to go plan trips.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:36

I can do anything.

Caity Noonan 36:39

Yeah. But this helped me be okay with coming back to being in a professional corporate job. It was so great to make me feel great about it, and know why I'm still in this space, and it actually shows the things that are most important to me in my life. So yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:57

That's really cool.

Caity Noonan 36:58

The big learning moments for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:06

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 37:58

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

Speaker 3 38:04

I talked a lot about being versus doing. Our society really emphasizes the doing. Here's what I want to achieve, here's the impact. Do more with less. Like, all just profit, all of this stuff. And it doesn't think about like, "Who do I want to be when I'm doing it?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:21

Have you ever accomplished one of your goals or reached what maybe was the pinnacle of success only to feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled? Whether that was climbing up the corporate ladder, maybe even making it to the top, only to look around and wonder, is this it? Is this all there is? The truth is, there is such a thing as fulfilling work, but it's likely not where you've been looking. So if you've ever felt like a cog in a corporate machine and questioned whether there's more to life than just climbing higher, you're not going to want to miss this episode.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:58

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.

Kate Gleason Bachman 00:01

I was quite disillusioned very quickly, and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life by becoming a nurse. Even though this is something I had worked for, it took me years to do the prerequisite courses and get prepared.

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 00:46

All right, here's one that we see all the time. What happens when you have the realization that the career or industry you've been working towards for years isn't the right fit for you? Many people have this epiphany when they're well into their careers or after years of schooling, and some have it the first day they walk in the door and realize this is not at all what I was expecting. It can be a really hard pill to swallow because our identities are often closely tied to what we say we do for a living. So how do you untangle your identity from a career that you once felt passionate about in order to start working towards the right fit for you?

Kate Gleason Bachman 01:22

I think what really drew me into the role of the nurse was the advocacy role. That has always been something that's important to me. In doing the career change process, I was able to actually really hone in on that being kind of a core value of mine is to be an advocate.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:37

That's Kate Gleason Bachman. Kate made a change early on in her career and decided to go back to school for nursing. However, after a short time working as a nurse, she realized it was not everything she had imagined it would be. In fact, she felt a little bit duped because she was not able to care for patients in the way that she thought she would be able to. After hopping around to a few different organizations, she decided something had to give, and maybe it was time to go after what she really wanted, even if that meant leaving nursing. Here's Kate going way back to explain the origin of her career journey.

Kate Gleason Bachman 02:13

In high school, I always had an interest in social justice issues. And I think from a young, young age, I knew that was going to drive the work that I did in some way. So I used to volunteer. I used to ride my bike to the next town over and then take the city bus to go, I'm from upstate New York, into Albany to volunteer at the Social Justice Center, which had all these different things going on. And I just knew that was kind of a world that I wanted to be a part of. So I ended up, you know, I went to college, and my first job out of college was working in public health research. And so I kind of found my way to public health as a way to, kind of, work on social justice issues. And then I actually worked for a training and technical assistance organization, and I saw through visiting programs and health centers the work that nurses were doing and advocacy. And I was like, "Oh, I want to do that. I want to be a nurse." So I went back to school to become a nurse, and then kind of started a second career in nursing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:18

So what was it that you saw or you experienced, that caused you to believe, "Yeah, this is something I want to pursue in one way or another."?

Kate Gleason Bachman 03:29

I think what really drew me into the role of the nurse was the advocacy role. That has always been something that's important to me., In doing the career change process, I was able to actually really hone in on that being kind of a core value of mine is to be an advocate. And I saw nurses on the ground, they're running outreach programs, we were actually working with farm workers, we're working in the fields and helping connect people to services. And it was that advocacy piece that I think really drew me in and made me say, "I want to do this. This is how I think I can be of most service through my work."

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:04

Interesting. That's so fun too that it seems like that is one of the big threads throughout that led to the next change. So tell me what occurred, what happened along the way. You spent some time in nursing, but eventually you decided you wanted to make it some kind of change around it.

Kate Gleason Bachman 04:24

Yes, yeah. So now looking back, I think it's a little more clear. I became a nurse, and I started working in the hospital, and I, quite frankly, was really shocked by the state of healthcare in the United States. It was not what I anticipated. I had kind of seen nursing as this model of care that took someone's global health into account and their home situation and their mental health and all the pieces that make up wellness for people kind of who we are. And I thought I would be able to apply that, and then I got into a hospital setting, and everyone wants to apply that, and it's so difficult and so fast paced, and the pressure is so immense around insurance and reimbursement and getting people in and out the door. And so I was quite disillusioned very quickly, and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life by becoming a nurse, even though this is something I had worked for. It took me years to do the prerequisite courses and get prepared to go back to do this second degree program, and then I got into nursing, and was like, "Whoa, this is not what I thought it was going to be." It was really shocking.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:33

Do you remember any moments during that time about what that felt like to have that realization, like, "I've put in all this work, and maybe this is not quite what I thought it was going to be." How did that feel at the time too?

Kate Gleason Bachman 05:47

I mean, I felt devastated and trapped, quite frankly, that first job was really difficult. I stayed there for almost two years, and then I moved to do Home Care Nursing, briefly, home care hospice nursing, which I loved, but had a lot of challenges as well in terms of the patient caseload and the amount of travel that was part of it. And so finally, kind of pivoted to find myself back in the nonprofit sphere, actually, at the same nonprofit agency that I had worked at for my very first job doing public health research in Philadelphia. And so I found myself, I had through the years of kind of being in nursing school and leading up to that, I had done work with people experiencing homelessness, and I found this job as a nurse in the city shelter system, and that was where I kind of started to feel like, "Okay, I'm finding my place as a nurse. This, I think, is where I can really do the advocacy and the education piece that I want." And so that kind of started this cycle of being in this nonprofit world as a nurse, which I ultimately decided, well, I'm still in some ways, but in a different way. I decided to make a shift, but not for many years.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:57

Tell me more about that shift.

Kate Gleason Bachman 06:59

So I worked in the shelter system for three years, and then as part of that same agency, then in a health center that worked pretty exclusively with people experiencing homelessness, that's in Philadelphia, and I was feeling burnt out. That's kind of how I would describe what was going on for me. I was feeling like my work was coming home with me. There was so much going on. It was very, very chaotic. And I have a strong drive to solve problems, so an interest of mine. And so I really liked that aspect of it, but it was the volume of problems was so great. It was overwhelming to me. It was like a mismatch with my kind of need for balance in my life and the needs of the workplace, which were huge. And so that was when I actually first kind of saw myself as trying to make a career change within nursing, and that was back in 2016. So I had been a nurse since 2007 and I had decided that I really need to make a shift, and I attempted a career change on my own without the guidance of that Happen To Your Career team, and it didn't go as I thought it would. So I made a change to still being a nurse, but working for a hospital system. I was hoping to have kind of more organization around my role, and just to be working in a little bit of a less chaotic environment. I think that's what I was wanting. And I was kind of trying to pivot to do something different. What I found was that it was just not engaging to me at all. It felt very corporate, which is not my style.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:43

Not your jam?

Kate Gleason Bachman 08:44

Not my jam. And I just felt like I kind of felt trapped there, too, to be honest. I felt like I wasn't doing the advocacy that I wanted, and I had swung very far from a quite chaotic environment to an environment in which I felt like I had no flexibility to meet the patient needs in the way that I wanted to, and so that was almost more frustrating than the situation I had been in.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:10

Yeah, I could definitely see that really infringing upon that strong value of advocacy for you.

Kate Gleason Bachman 09:16

Yes, it was a challenge. I felt like my hands were kind of tied in terms of doing what I wanted to do for the patients. So I didn't stay. I actually stayed at that job for less than a year, and then went back into a very similar role as a nurse in a different nonprofit in the city, which is the job that I was in when I sought your help. And that job was great in many ways too. You know, there are so many things about it that were wonderful and it was still not a good fit. And I think in terms of thinking about the kind of lessons learned from this process, another thing that really stuck out to me as I was reflecting on the past year since beginning this process, is something doesn't have to be all bad in order for it to not be the right thing for you. And that, I think, was partly what was keeping me in those positions. There were a lot of things I loved about them, and it was not a great fit for my skill set and kind of the balance that I needed in my life. But I kept trying to do that because there were things that I was getting out of it, of course, and it was fulfilling, and I felt like I was making a difference, and I had patients that I loved and a great team, you know, all these things were wonderful about it, and it was still not a good fit. So that was a difficult and important lesson.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:36

When you were in that situation, what caused you to realize, "No, I need to do this differently from how I've tried to approach career change in the past."?

Kate Gleason Bachman 10:46

I felt that I needed more of a work life balance. I think that is how I would have summed it up at the time. And I wanted something that was not as kind of chaotic and fast paced as where I was like, something has to give, something has to change, and I don't want to do the same thing I did, and so I felt that I needed professional help, and that's how I found myself with Happen To Your Career because I really wanted to make a change that was meaningful, and I didn't think I had the perspective to do it on my own without having a coach and some kind of external support to check what I was doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:28

So tell me more about what you mean by perspective, and then, why did you feel like that was going to be helpful to you at the time?

Kate Gleason Bachman 11:38

I think especially when you're kind of, you're in your own situation, it's difficult to kind of see yourself in an objective way. It's very difficult. And so I think what I was looking for was that kind of external view of someone to be able to analyze and understand what was happening, who wasn't me, who wasn't in the middle of it, moving away from something that has some good components. I think for me, it was even more difficult because my identity was so enmeshed with being a nurse. Nursing had not been an easy journey for me. I had had to work hard to find my place in nursing, and so much of my identity was caught up in being a nurse. I'm a nurse. I help people. This is a passion of mine, and I really care about it. And so to even consider that that wasn't the right thing for me after having, it's like a sunk cost fallacy where I have done this for so many years, and how do I walk away from it? And my identity is so part of this. And so that made it even more difficult. And that was also why I felt like I need another person who's able to really look at all the pieces of this and help me kind of figure out what it all means. Because in the end, you know, the pieces of it were all there. It was a matter of putting it together, like ,your puzzle thing, and thinking about, how do I think about this in a way that I can understand it and then make a change from it that, you know, is the change that will work for me?

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:15

Yeah, and I think you're referring to the puzzle analogy, where we talk about that pretty frequently. We've talked about that on the podcast quite a few times too, but that idea of it's really difficult to try and see the puzzle all at once, especially when we don't necessarily even know what pieces to get go where, or even which pieces we still want to keep and which one we want to throw out, and which ones actually don't even belong to this puzzle, because all the puzzle pieces from all the other puzzles are mixed together, and that together and that whole thing. But my question to you, though is, as you were going through this process, not necessarily our process here at Happen To Your Career, but your career change process for yourself, what do you feel like really helped you the most? Do you remember any of the parts or pieces or tools or questions that was really most useful for you along the way?

Kate Gleason Bachman 14:06

I think for me, the thing that really launched the change process was the ideal career profile and developing that. And within that process was the realization that I was able to come through with my coach that I actually did not want to be a nurse. You know, I did not want to. I still am a nurse, but you can see I still have my identity, but I did not want to be a frontline healthcare worker every single day. And that was very hard to accept. And at first I was saying to my coach, "This is important to me. My identity as a nurse is important to me." And so he was reflecting that back to me, and that kept feeling wrong to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. And finally, through this process of talking it out, I remember, he said to me, like, "It sounds like you don't actually want to be doing this type of nursing work." And it took me a little while to sit with it, but once I was able to incorporate that and realize that was actually true, my ideal career profile came together. Like that, I had a piece in there that was not meant to be in there, that I was reluctant to let go of. And so once I was able to, I just had the best time writing that thing. Once I got there, I just remember spending so much time on it, and it was feeling I was truly in a flow state. Things were coming out. I knew what I wanted. And the other piece that was super helpful to me in terms of developing that was looking at other people's, you have some example ideal career profiles available, and having something to reflect on. My profile was quite different in the end from the ones that were available, but it was so helpful for me to kind of see how other people had organized their thoughts and what their interests were and what they wanted. It just helped me so much to then solidify my own. So once I got there, I just had the best time making that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:11

That's interesting. And so I talked with your coach, and the way that he had put it was, it's almost like initially. She was trying to fill it out like a form, and then it wasn't until that breakthrough where you started grabbing hold of it and making it your own. And it seemed like the big piece that was really stopping you was that separating what you had been doing and what you'd worked so hard on, from the other pieces of your actual identity, and teasing those out to figure out what was actually true for you, as opposed to what you'd been holding on to. So that's really interesting because I think so many people think that a portion of this process is like, "I'm going to go through and I'm going to basically figure, like, follow the steps and then boom, at the other end, gonna have the answers", right? And it doesn't work like that in reality. How long would you say it took you to start that process before actually coming to terms with the way that I've been approaching nursing isn't actually the way that I want to continue to approach nursing. Do you remember how long that is? Is that like, a week or months, or what?

Kate Gleason Bachman 17:24

Oh, it was probably a month and a half or two months, I would say. The coaching sessions were very front loaded, and that's where I need the most support. I really needed help in figuring out that part of it. And once I did it, and I was able to say, this is what I want, it became such a powerful tool. And as we may talk about, and I'm sure, as it is for other people, the process never goes in a linear way, or as you expected. You can't say, like, as much as you might want to, "I'm going to do this, and then I start to reach out to people, and then I find something, and I sample this, this and this", and it certainly didn't work that way. And I think, had I not had that document, which was much more than just a document, that had I not done that work of kind of knowing these are the things that I want, when the opportunity that ended up coming across my plate came to me, I don't know that I would have recognized it as such a good fit. Had I not done that work, I think I would have let it pass by and said, "This seems kind of similar to something I've done in the past, and I don't know if it's... I don't want to do something that I already did because I'm trying to make a change", but because I had that ideal career profile when this job opportunity did present itself to me, I mean, I was able to look at it and know almost immediately, like, this is exactly what I have been saying I'm interested in. So it made a huge difference. I think it allowed me to see what I wouldn't have necessarily seen had I not done that background work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:59

And I think you make such a great point too, that we talk about the tool of the ideal career profile. We mention it from time to time. And I think when people show up and we start to help them, some people are like, "Hey, I really want to do the ideal career profile and things like that, or Strengthsfinder, or whatever else." And at the end of the day, those are just tools to be able to understand what you really actually want and what you really actually need. And I think the thing that you've done such a wonderful job at is grabbing hold of that work, and pushing through to be able to get to the point where on the other end of that, yes, there's a document there, and yes, the document can be valuable. But really it's the work that went into that that now causes you to understand what it is that you want that is the most valuable. So I appreciate you pointing that out.

Kate Gleason Bachman 19:47

Yeah, I agree, and I think there's some power in putting to paper what it is that you want. After having done this process, I have used that strategy in other aspects of my life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:59

Oh, really? In what way? What would be an example of that? Now I'm so curious.

Kate Gleason Bachman 20:02

Actually, part of my ideal career profile, like my dreams, things I wanted to do, was run an ultra marathon. And I will be running my first ultra marathon at the end of September, and so kind of putting that to paper. I mean, this has been a dream of mine for many, many years. And I just very recently decided to do some of that work. And I wrote down that I wanted to do yoga teacher training, which I have also wanted to do. I've been practicing yoga for 25 years, and I said I wanted to do that. And one came across my similar to the job. I wrote it down. I said, "This is what I want." And I think so much of it is about your focus. Like that kind of trained my focus in this area. I said, "I wanted it. It's on my mind." Something is not going to pass me by because of that. And so I happen to see an online opportunity at a yoga studio that I work with just in virtual sessions, and I signed up for their teacher training. So now I'm doing it. I'm starting it next month.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:02

That is so cool. That makes me so happy. And what we don't often talk about on the podcast is that the behaviors and skills that often are a part of this process, they transfer everywhere. Everywhere. And you've done such a wonderful job of transferring those into other places in your life. That is so cool. I am curious, you started with us in the midst of doing some work, and you had a bit of a tragic event. A bit of a tragic event is actually probably understating it. But I was wondering if you would be willing to share just a little bit about what happened and how that impacted some of the choices that you made throughout your career journey and your career change.

Kate Gleason Bachman 21:44

Yeah. So to give some background information, I knew I wanted to make a career change. There were a number of reasons I wanted to do it, and I was kind of on this journey. And I won't go deep into all the things that were happening at the organization where I was, but there were some safety concerns, and at that organization, we had an act of violence and active shooter event in which a colleague was killed. So it's pretty much the most horrible and dramatic thing that can happen in any workplace. And I'm sure, unfortunately, other people have had similar experiences of violence in the workplace, and I just know the impact it's had on me. And so I decided I did not want to stay there. It did not feel safe, and so I decided to leave without another job. And that was extremely terrifying and scary, but with my coach, I decided that was the right thing. That was a huge loss, a loss of human life, but it also accelerated my career change process in a lot of ways. And looking back on it, and thinking about that loss, and the other things that I lost in leaving that job in a faster way than I anticipated that I would, is that part of the change process, I think, is loss, and that kind of, to me, goes hand in hand with that piece of there are pieces of every job that are good, and there are pieces where you excel and it does meet your strengths, and there are pieces where it doesn't, and just because things are good doesn't mean you shouldn't make a change. And there is some loss with change, and that's just part of the change process, and that for me has been really healing and instrumental in my kind of journey of switching jobs and the career that I'm in now. I love. It's so fulfilling. I really, really enjoy it. And there's a piece of me where I do feel the loss of my team that I worked with and my patients that I worked with, and the camaraderie that we had, and this tragic loss of a human life of someone who I worked with. So I think part of the journey of career change is that you leave some things behind, and that's true in other aspects of life too. And I think for me, that was a really important lesson. And I think having gone through this kind of like jump of a moment where I kind of jumped into the unknown, making a career change is a huge deal, and it's also not. Having made the change, you realize that it's not the end of the world. And if you do make a change that you don't like, and you decide to change again, or down the road, decide it's time for another shift, it's also not the end of the world. And so I think putting so much weight on the decision, "Is it right? Is it wrong?" To a certain extent, there's no way for you to know. And you'll learn from whatever you do, even if you learn that it wasn't what you really wanted. But I think you just gained so much from the process that you can continue to use like you have this new skill set that allows you to move on in so many different ways.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:48

We put so much pressure on ourselves to make this the final change, or I have to get this perfect, or however that shows up. It shows up slightly differently for every person. But to your point, it is a big deal but it's also not. Like, after you've done that and you're, I mean, you're gonna go run an ultra marathon, like, there are some elements of that that are also scary and unknown, I would imagine. And after you do many of those unknowns over and over again, it's not as big of a deal as what it feels like back in the first couple. So I appreciate you making that point. Anything else that I didn't ask about or you think is really valuable or important about your story?

Kate Gleason Bachman 25:34

I think the final lesson that I'll say, and I've talked about it a little bit, but for me, the thing that I learned was just, even if it feels kind of audacious and out there is to really kind of say what it is that you want and that can be. For me, it was very difficult. It felt like I was asking for so much, and I hesitated to even say it. And finally, in my example, my ideal thing was to find a job where I could work four days a week, and I could have one day to volunteer or work as a nurse in my community. And that just felt crazy. Like, how am I going to find this job? How is this going to happen? And it felt outlandish, even saying that. I mean as outlandish, just saying I'm going to run an ultra marathon, in some ways. But I put it out there, and I really think that allowed me, it kind of opened my eyes to see opportunities in a different way. And what ended up happening is a former colleague of mine who had started working for the company that I now work for, emailed me and just said, "Hey, we're having trouble filling this position. Do you know anyone who would be a good fit?" And it was my job. I just looked at it and said, "This is for me. I'm not going to share this with anyone. I'm going to apply to this job." And I think I had mentioned that where I work now is also a training and technical assistance organization, very similar to where I had worked before, and I think had I not done the work that I did, I wouldn't have seen that as the opportunity that it was. But it was amazing that it came across through my email inbox, and it was four days a week, and the reason was so that I, as a clinician, could have a clinical practice one day a week in my community. And so it has happened. I said this thing that felt so outlandish, like, who is going to give this job four days a week so I can work as a nurse one day? And I now do. So I, you know, I started the job with four days a week. And actually, only very recently, in the past couple months did I find the right fit for that fifth day. And I'm working in my local Health Care for the Homeless Health Center, which is amazing. I mean, this is, yeah, it just felt like the most wild thing to wish for. But it happened.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:57

I'm really glad that you shared that partially, because I think it helps break apart all the things that had to be in place to lead up to you even recognizing the opportunity. And now, like you said, you're just, in many ways, almost a year later from declaring what it is that you want now having all those pieces fall into place. And I think a lot of times we accidentally gloss over all of those events and milestones that have to happen. So that's pretty wonderful. And congratulations. That's way cool.

Kate Gleason Bachman 28:33

Thanks. Yeah, it's amazing. I really am loving what I'm doing now, and it's been great. And in hearing you say that, the other thing it makes me think of that I think I learned through the process is you don't have to meet all your needs in one place. And that was a lesson I learned from the Happen To Your Career process, that I think was also what allowed me to kind of put that goal out there. I wasn't going to find a job that had all of the kind of intellectual pursuits and writing and research and synthesis of information and being a nurse in the same place. And by being able to separate those, I was able to make it happen. And so that kind of idea of, you know, you don't get everything from one place necessarily, was kind of freeing to me to say, like, "Okay, I don't have to find something that has every single thing on this checklist. The perfect job could be a component of this, and it could still be the best fit for my life."

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:35

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 30:27

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

Speaker 3 30:33

I don't even know what I want to do. Like, let's back up. Because, yes, there's all these great companies across industries I'd love to work for, but what am I actually going to do there?

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:42

What happens when you're in the place where you want something different, and you know that for sure, but what else could you do in your career? What else is even out there? Or how could you find out? We hear this dilemma from people all the time. We call it the restaurant with no menus. You're ready to leap into the job market, you want to find something that fits you better, there's so many possibilities, but where is the list of jobs to choose from? Wait, there isn't one. The possibilities are endless, cue, and existential career crisis. But wait, before you spiral, I want you to listen to this episode. Katie was in the same place that you might find yourself, and she found a career that she didn't even know existed, that it turns out, was a perfect match for her.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:32

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.

Katja Trmcic 00:01

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

Introduction 00:19

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 00:44

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.

Katja Trmcic 01:18

Try to look back at your life as if you're 85-90 years old, and you're talking to younger generations, your kids, grandkids, grand nephews, whoever is around you, and they're asking you about your life, and what are the stories that you want to have to tell. So you could say, "I was a lawyer for, you know, like, 10 years, and then I got a little bit bored, and then I did this."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:42

That's Katja Trmcic. Katja is originally from Slovenia, and began her career as a lawyer. She chose that route because she'd always been told she should be a doctor or a lawyer due to her good grades in school. From the very beginning, there were signs that law was, shall we say, not for her. It took her eight years to finish law school, and when she began working, she felt completely disengaged, bored and like she had to keep the real her hidden at all times when she was at work. Fast forward, and Katya now lives in Canada, is a licensed mental health counselor and also a career coach. Actually, this is one of the best parts. She's one of the coaches on our team here at HTYC many years later. In this discussion, she talks about how she stopped living on autopilot and looking to others to tell her what her next steps should be, and finally looked internally and asked, "what is it that she really wanted", and now she gets to live that every day, and more importantly, on our team, be able to help others do the exact same thing. Pretty cool, right? Hey, one more thing before we jump into the discussion with Katja, you're not actually gonna hear from me today. Samantha, who's on our team, who usually works behind the scenes on the podcast and all things content is who got to talk to Katja about her journey, and so I'm going to let them take it from here. Here's Katja talking about her background.

Katja Trmcic 03:11

So I come all the way from Eastern Europe, or we like to call ourselves Central Europe Slovenia. So that's a former Republic of Yugoslavia. We're next to Italy, for everybody who doesn't know, because usually people confuse us with Slovakia, which is not the case. So I always had good grades in school, but lack of guidance about what I could do with good grades. So I always thought like most of my, not education, but education about the world came from TV. So I watched a lot of like legal TV shows– Ally McBeall and Matlock and all kinds of stuff like that, kind of, stupid stuff if I think about it now. But I was very excited about it, and it made sense, and I had good grades. And then I thought, I could be a doctor, I could be a lawyer, probably not the doctor, and my grades were not that good. And then I signed up, and I was accepted to law school, and it took me a really long time to finish. I was partying, I was doing everything else. I started working in a law office, like, after two years of studying, I think, and then it took me, like, eight years, I think, to finish school.

Samantha Martin 04:20

So you started actually working.

Katja Trmcic 04:22

Working. Yeah. So because I had to pay for some expenses, like, it was not... And in Slovenia is different, you know, you go to law school and it's paid by the government if you have good grades and stuff like that. But you have to finish in a certain amount of time. So I did finish, but I was bored at my work. I was reading all these forums about relationship problems and stuff. Like during my work, I was not interested. I was not like stimulated. I was not engaged. I had nice bosses to lawyers, and then I switched to junior lawyer after I finished. But it actually didn't really change what I was doing, but I did notice that I got in touch with the type of people a lot that, like now, I know that because I know about my values and I know what's important to me and how I want to be in the world. But I found myself in a situation when I had to kind of be good with or just kind of make people feel like I agree with them, although I didn't morally, and I couldn't really put a finger on it at the time, like it wasn't in my vocabulary, I guess. I just knew that I didn't like my work that much. I was bored. I was always excited about Friday. I was waiting for Friday. Monday was approaching, I was like, "here we go again." But most people around me existed in that way. You know, work was work. Work was something to earn the money so you can have fun. So it never even crossed my mind that I could be happy or have fun with my work, which I am doing now. Just want to say that just to skip to the end, but let's go back. And by the circumstances at the time, I had a partner and we moved to the US, he got a job at a big university, and I went with him, and it was like an adventure, a next step in our relationship. So we moved to New York state, to Ithaca. And first, I just started volunteering because, and that's something that I always recommend my clients when they're changing locations or maybe they're not able to work yet. I wasn't... because I was waiting for my work permit. So I started volunteering at SPCA. I was walking dogs, and I was helping with adoptions of cats, and I love that. And then they hired me based on... immediately when I got my work permit, they had a position for me, animal care technician, which is not where I stayed.

Samantha Martin 06:40

That surprised you. Were you looking to work there? Or had you been thinking the whole time you were waiting on your visa, like, "Okay, when I get this, I'm gonna look into legal."

Katja Trmcic 06:49

I was still thinking about law at the time. I thought, I'll have to find a way to transition to North American systems and do law there. But because I had nothing going on, I was just trying to get out of the house. The process took quite a lot of time, I would say, four or five months after I came, I only got the work permit, but it was important just to be engaged with the community, because otherwise I would just be, like, rotting away, like in the basement suite we had, like, no people, I didn't know anybody. And just now I understand better also, you know, proximity of animals, how good that is for your nervous system as well. Because I was in a survival mode. I didn't know at the time. But when you're moving across continents like that without any real support from family or not knowing people, it's a big, giant restart you create, it's like a computer restart from the beginning. You have to build everything, and how you act in the world, and when you get your groceries and where, you know, like everything is new. So those animals, yeah, that was fun. I did not look for that job. It just popped up and I got my work permit, and I said, "Oh, I'm going to apply for this." And they hired me. But then the same month, I got another position at the University where my partner worked, and it was Student Services Coordinating and Admissions. And I did both jobs for a while because when you have none for a while, and then you have options, then you just take on. And that's one of my problems. I had to learn the hard way later that I take on a lot of things because I'm excited about opportunities. I had to quit the SPCA job and just focus on the Student Services one at Cornell University. I stayed there for three years, and I had absolute blast. It was amazing. It was such fun environment to work at. There was this one coworker, I don't know if I can drop names, but her name was Jennifer, and she taught me how you can just be personable, and you can be yourself, and you can just really inquire and try to be helpful, like for the students and how they appreciate that, and how they open up, and you build this wonderful connections. And me being an immigrant myself, but kind of a couple steps ahead of them, and they were coming, you know, I had to help them. It's really put me in this mama goose situation when I knew what they're supposed to do and where to go, and I was just helping. And I really found so much fulfillment in helping, but also in a way, like Jennifer, like she had so much sense of humor, and I have that too, but I didn't know you can bring that to your work as much as she did. She would prank everybody. And then I started doing that too, and it was really fun, fun environment. So, like, little light bulbs would be going on for me, like, "Ha! You can have fun, like this." But then I had to move again. After three years, we moved to Canada.

Samantha Martin 09:44

So you started realizing, "Oh, look, I can be myself at work, and now I'm enjoying it." What did that tell you about when you were working in legal?

Katja Trmcic 09:52

I think I just didn't know. I didn't know about... I didn't know enough about life, about myself. Like I didn't know myself very well. I thought I have to find information on how to be from the environment I was in. I thought these are the ways I'm supposed to be existing in a professional world. So, like, I could say, nobody taught me, no. I didn't make those connections with my brain cells, yet, you know. Like those connections were not made, and I was strictly looking outside to understand how I'm supposed to be. And that it's impossible to be genuine in that way. You know, like when you're not listening to anything that's happening inside of you and act accordingly. But so I think that was my problem at the time, and very low confidence. Because, you know, in imposter syndrome, that basically with me like it lasted when I moved abroad, it was a big hit of imposter syndrome again. But before in Slovenia, I think just always feeling that I shouldn't ask too many questions, or I shouldn't put myself out there and put myself on the map and be noticed by people because then they might ask me questions and I will be found as a fraud I was. This is all like things that these concepts, they're clear to me now, like I studied counseling recently so I understand things. I did not understand them back there. So I did the best. I was doing the best that I could. But I see this a lot with my clients, how like existing in a way that you think you're supposed to exist, but not tapping into what are you good at, and what do you like to do, and what do you do not want to do, and actually communicating that in appropriate ways, standing up for yourself, be assertive, and just kind of creating situation and environment that works for you, because you're individual and you are unique, right? If that makes sense.

Samantha Martin 11:54

So you just mentioned that you studied counseling. So how did you go from working at the university, and then moved to counseling?

Katja Trmcic 12:05

So I moved to Vancouver, Canada. And first, because I had this new experience in post secondary institution, I said, "Okay, I guess I'm destined to work in post secondary institutions." That was my lead, right, for what comes next. And I just started applying for all the positions I found, and I got a job at a small boutique school for 3d animation in North Vancouver that had very much like a startup vibe. It was still growing rapidly when I was there and that experience, I just had to do everything there. So I was like the head of administration, my title was campus manager. Eventually, I did admission, student services, HR, payroll, scheduling, career support, events, like, everything. All the admin stuff, basically was on me, and I didn't know at the time, like, I got super burned out. It was a lot. But I learned so much. I learned so much. So at the time, when I was ready to leave that company, I seeked support of a career coach for the first time. And she was wonderful, like, for the first time, I started to kind of challenge the way I existed, or the way how I was thinking, because I always thought that's, like, that's firm, that's not to be changed.

Samantha Martin 13:23

Was it like, did you believe that that's how everyone thought?

Katja Trmcic 13:28

Oh yeah. This is universal way of existing, right? Like, I wasn't even challenging it. I wasn't even thinking that it might be different. It was just a fact. This is just. And, you know, and this is how we also people get judgmental of other people because other people are not acting according to how we think they're supposed to be acting. And we think like I thought for the longest time that we all have the same sets of rules provided to us somehow, like we are all on the same page, and some people decide not to follow the rules, but actually that's we're all so different, and we come from such different backgrounds and environments and how we are raised and families and oh, there's so much, so many factors to take into consideration. So yeah, I started... When I realized that the most of the work that the hard work that can be done on me that opened things up for me, because I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna challenge everything. I'm gonna rethink the ways I do things." And that's a very uncomfortable way to exist because what you are able to fall back on, like those constants that you have, suddenly you're kind of taking them away. But for me, it was very liberating. I felt like I've been waiting for that my whole life. I'm so dramatic. But in a way, you know, like it just opened things up what seemed very like walls closing in. I remember when I went to that career coach, my thought was, "Is that all that is out there for me I'm just going to be doing?" I was a campus manager, and I did a lot of things that were very rewarding, but I still felt that I'll be always doing, and in my mind, it was just admin work, and I'm not trying to this admin work for, you know, we are all different, and we all are meant for different things. But that was not it for me when I was doing that. I felt that it was not enough. Something didn't make sense. I wanted something different.

Samantha Martin 15:24

Well, you went from saying, "I can be a doctor or a lawyer to..." you thought a more limiting career after you moved to the US, and so you were probably left with that nagging feeling of, "but I should be a doctor or a lawyer", like so many of us are.

Katja Trmcic 15:43

Probably. Like, I should do something exceptional. Like I should do something important. But important for me, you know, like something that I feel it's important. That's also an important distinction because I always felt like I will do something great. I don't know if this is, probably we all have that feeling, but it's important to come to terms what is great for you and I feel like I got it, like I understand that my grade is so different than everybody else's great, and that's the point, and it's my individual experience, and it doesn't have to translate to anybody else, if that makes sense. But for me, it was like when you go to a career coach, which maybe a lot of listeners already know, or they're curious about, you tap, you have an opportunity to tap into everything you've done so far and kind of evaluate what were the parts that really worked for you. Like, what were the parts of your jobs, of your responsibilities that made you feel alive inside? And you just kind of got lost in those tasks. And you could do more, and you had so much, many ideas, but then you had to focus on the boring things as well. There was not enough time. Like, what was that? And for me, it was always having conversations, maybe because I talk so much like I need a lot of time. But having conversations with people, listening to them, trying to understand what it is that it's a struggle for them, and trying to be helpful or provide value in one way or another.

Samantha Martin 17:15

So before you go into where you transition to, I want to ask when you were in career coaching and you got past those limiting beliefs and shifted your mindset around all things really, what was the most impactful thing that you think that you learned that completely shifted your beliefs on you going from a fixed mindset, I guess, we can say to a growth mindset. And so what caused you to think differently? Do you remember?

Katja Trmcic 17:46

It was when you were saying it, I was like, "Yeah, It wasn't that simple. I wish it was." Like going to a career coach, that was first step, and I had six sessions with that career coach, and they were helpful, but I still had a lot of resistance. So it's just important to know that the change does not happen like this overnight. It just doesn't. I feel like it happened quickly for me, but it wasn't that fast. It was... I was... From the first career coach, I just, I recognized situation I was in that job. It wasn't healthy for me. I got really burned out. That was also a huge responsibility was on me, because I didn't know how to create boundaries, like, what kind of patterns do I have. When you keep finding yourself in certain situations again and again and again, at one point, it's not about the environment anymore, but it's about you. So it's about what am I contributing to this? So for me, I was a big people pleaser. It was hard for me to say no. I kind of got value from being useful, being helpful, being always there to help out with whatever people would need on my own expense. And later on, I recognized that that was also a way to distract myself from actually focusing on what I was supposed to focus on, which is my own personal growth. So sometimes everything is shinier, you know, other people's struggles, I'm going to help everybody. So that was my state of mind when I went to that first career coach, and she kind of helped me with changed jobs. So from that startup vibe, I went into another post secondary, partially government founded, very relaxed organization, and being there felt like vacation for me. So I changed a lot of jobs, which for career coaching is valuable, because I can understand the different energies this place have. But this one, at the same time, when I was at this new job, I got another coach. She wasn't a career coach. She was like a life coach. She saw that I could be a coach, so she mentored me for a year. And under her work, like with her, everything kind of changed for me. We met every two weeks, and she really... it's important that the coach knows how to challenge you in a kind way, but to show you those sides that you don't really want to look at, again, kindly nudging you like what's that all about. And I received a lot of that. And I had a lot of defenses, but I chose to listen and give the benefit of the doubt, and I'm very glad I did, because I learned so much about myself and how I self sabotage. And that time, at that institution, that's BCIT, here in Canada, I took all the professional development workshops they offered, like everything. They had leadership workshops, they had coaching workshops, they have crucial conversations, how to be assertive, how to minimize conflict. I took all of them because the work, I didn't find it very challenging. So I was just learning all the time. So it was a great place to do that in those two years. I was just inhaling information about personal development, self help, coaching. So, yeah, so it didn't happen overnight. There was a lot of... I was so hungry for it, I guess. Something appeared in front of me, and I was consuming it.

Samantha Martin 21:10

Were you enjoying everything you were doing at that time?

Katja Trmcic 21:13

Yes. It went hand in hand with, like, some changes in my personal life, you know, like, and then you just read books, and you learn about all kinds of stuff. And there are attachment styles, and there are love languages and communication styles and podcasts like I discovered podcasts, and I could not stop listening to podcasts because I would walk all the time just listening to podcasts. I would draw, I would listen to podcasts. Like it would be... Especially that's the time of the pandemic when I was at the cozy job. So it was also very boring. Nothing was happening. So I actually had to spend a lot of time by myself, with myself, and for me, all the time was focused on learning, but also exercising. Like I really got into, like, personal fitness. I discovered aerial arts, which was great. So that was my like two years. That was it. And then I started hopping around for jobs. I was trying to find a better job, something that would fit better. So I became an employment coach with a couple of nonprofit organizations, which I enjoyed. I worked with young Canadians, I worked with immigrants, I worked with refugees. I enjoyed a lot, but I don't know, I just always want to learn more. So I did end up going to counseling school. It took a one year intense counseling program, which now I'm a certified counselor in Canada.

Samantha Martin 22:36

Well, let me ask. If you now could go back and talk to yourself in that first law job, where you were feeling unsatisfied, I guess, unhappy, like you couldn't be yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

Katja Trmcic 22:52

I would say to myself, "What parts of this job do you actually like? Is there anything that you like?" Thinking back, I don't remember if I did, probably I would. But to encourage myself to have some, to take some initiative because those two bosses I had, they were very busy with their work, and I was there to kind of support them whatever they needed. But I think for me, it's so important to have ownership in a project or in the company. So it's mine as well. You know, I feel like this is a common cause, like I want to contribute to the success. What can I do? I believe at the time, I didn't even think I could do anything to contribute. But if somebody would tell me that this is normal to feel like that, but I'm supposed to ask questions, you know, it would be different. So for me, coaching changed that, and some very good managers I had later in life that asked me certain questions, or they modeled the way to be that was very relaxed, but still hard working. And for example, from that school in North Vancouver, the 3D animation school, the owner that I shared the office with, he would meet people anywhere he would go. He would have his card. He would start conversations. He would say, "You should come and see my school. I own a school. It's right there." People would actually come. He would show them the school. Would ask personal questions, you know, like, about their lives, and they would ask him stuff right back, and I would be typing away in that room, thinking, "This is so personal. Like, this is so weird." Like, that word is weird– it has so much judgment, right? Like, it didn't make sense to me at the time. But then I saw how, just from those interactions, these people would recommend this school to their neighbors, to co-workers, to kids that they know, and we would get clients like that. So this is actually how relationship building and networking is supposed to look like. You're just having conversations about your life, about the other person's life, what do they like, what did they struggling with, can we be helpful to each other in any way? And we remember that moving forward, going through life, and we want to refer or be helpful to the people who took the time to get to know us just a little bit when there was no agenda connected to it, if that makes sense.

Samantha Martin 25:19

It seems like so much of it goes back to trying your hardest to be genuine and vulnerable and just have conversations all the time. And I can say, like, and not have imposter syndrome, but that's a hard, you know, thing not to have, especially when you're in your first job out of law school, I'm sure. I also wanted to ask because a lot of the people that we work with have the sunk cost fallacy where they, you know, they are lawyers or doctors, or they did these things where they put in so much time and so much effort and now they're burnt out, or they've decided they just want to do something else, but they can't wrap their head around giving up all that work. So as someone who has done that, who has made the decision to not go back to law, what advice would you give them?

Katja Trmcic 26:11

I would say like, first, I have two things. One of the biggest ones is, I think I read statistics recently or this past year, that three quarters of people do not end up actually working in the field that they studied for, right? The major they chose, that is not the career they end up in, and when they find fulfillment and when they're happy. So this is all limiting way of thinking that you have to. It's, you've done what you've done, and it's a lot. You never start from scratch. It's impossible. Your life experiences, your work experiences, it amounts to something, you cannot just say zero, no, if you pivot. You worked with a lot of people. You have a lot of connections, professional connections, clients, people you work with, companies you worked for, co-workers you worked with, these are huge... these are numbers of people that know you, that you could tap into and have conversations with to figure out, to get an idea, to get ideas, conversations. So that's, probably I'm like, I'm jumping ahead, but I love to have these conversations with professionals who think that they have no options. I have a client right now who is a teacher, very close to retirement, thinking that this is what they need to focus on. That's not true at all. And it's very empowering when you recognize that. You're not supposed to know what you want to do right now, but just having conversations and exploring eventually things start to make sense, and you can connect those dots. And sometimes you have to take that leap of faith, but it completely depends on the individual, I guess, and what their financial and home situation is, but from somebody who has done it many times, it's worth it. I always say to my clients, "Try to look back at your life as if you're 85-90 years old, and you're talking to younger generations, your kids, grandkids, grand nephews, whoever is around you, and they're asking you about your life, and what are the stories that you want to have to tell. So you could say, I was a lawyer for, you know, like, 10 years, and then I got a little bit bored, and then I did this." And what is this "this"? You know, like we are creators of what chapter comes next, and we are the ones who usually stand in our way the most. To have that understanding, for me, I guess, like I said before, that was the most useful piece of knowledge to understand that things are possible, but I am the one blocking it. I don't want to say negative thinking, sometimes you have to think negatively, but yeah, with limiting beliefs like limiting possibilities, saying, "This is not possible. This cannot happen to me." No. Why not?

Samantha Martin 29:00

So now that you have settled into career coaching or just coaching, holistically, I guess holistic coaching, talk about your feelings, like when you're doing that work versus, I don't know, before when you were feeling misaligned, or when you were at that job or you were burned out, or any comparison you want to make.

Katja Trmcic 29:22

I remember when I had my first coaching call, when I started coaching, I went for a walk afterwards, and I had so much energy. Like it's just... When you find yourself doing what you're supposed to be doing. And I don't know if I'm going to be coaching for the rest of my life, but right now, it feels like it's the right thing for me to do, for sure. You don't feel tired, like, you feel energized, you feel excited for the clients and for the fact that you can be helpful in that way, because I know that it changes lives, and maybe that's a big thing to say. But I'm saying it because I felt it, I felt how... and sometimes it's just little changes that need to be made, like, little shifts. It's so hard to see our own, like, blind spots. That's why they're called blind spots, because it's a... And when somebody with compassion and empathy, like points things out for you, it just opens everything. Because a lot of us just feel stuck going in circles, like doing the same thing again and again. But to have opportunity for me to be able to shed light, because I see things than people who are in that circle don't see, and to be able to see it and communicate that and see how the client applies that knowledge moving forward, and how it opens things up for them. For me, that's just the biggest accomplishment I could wish for from my work. I would say it energizes me. I feel more alive now. Yeah, enthusiasm, excitement, energy. And before, I was self medicating, like I was still drinking. I was just bored. I was binge watching TV all the time, like just all those signs that, you know, when you just try to numb the voice that's saying, "This is not okay. This is all a pile..." you know, and you're trying to gaslight yourself that you're fine, that you're supposed to be happy because you have what you worked for so hard, you know you studied, the paycheck is good, what else do you want? But that's, yeah, it's gaslighting yourself. Like not allowing yourself to actually listen that maybe there's something else out there for you. And we, as far as we know, for sure, we only have this one life, and it's really a shame if we do not listen, and we don't take a couple of little chances here and there, and we decide how big the chances are going to be. But just to mix it up a little bit and see if something else fits better, I said, it's like a wearing a different hat, you know, like, try this bigger hat and see how it feels. Maybe it's going to be terrible, and then you go back to the small red one and have some fun.

Samantha Martin 32:09

Yeah, decisions aren't concrete, like...

Katja Trmcic 32:12

They're not.

Samantha Martin 32:15

I like that example. So what made you decide to actually get a counseling license?

Katja Trmcic 32:22

I did a lot of counseling myself. I went to therapy, and I loved it. Like, I don't know, for me, I'm like, "Ah!" I was learning new things. It was very empowering, also very hard, but I was processing things, and I was, I felt I'm more and more in control. It's, I'm just collecting all the ducks, and I'm just putting them here. And I see more and more ducks, and I'm, you know, and they're in a row. And, yeah, and I wanted to be the person who is able to help other people with their own self liberation, or whatever it is, you know, like that is keeping them down and keeping them stuck. I do that as a career coach, I do that as a counselor, like, people come with different challenges, but yeah.

Samantha Martin 33:06

Okay, so we've covered a lot. If there's anything else about your journey or about you as a career coach that you felt like you wanted to cover that we didn't get to, is there anything that you'd want to say or talk about?

Katja Trmcic 33:19

I want to just mention that, like, this last year was kind of difficult for me, and I got reintroduced to the concept of survival mode, which I find with my clients a lot. So I want people to know that it's really hard sometimes to make, like, good and creative decisions about different future when they are stuck in a survival mode, which means when they are burnout, when they are working too much, when they have been moving, when they have been going through some health stuff, like whatever it is, you know, like, if your nervous system is all out of whack and you are, and a lot of times, this is when people make decisions that they need a change, right? So to really understand that the priority should be to calm the nervous system first down, which means allowing themselves enough rest, limiting... They say the best thing is to go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, like making sure that they move their body, they hydrate enough. A lot of times, people are anxious, but they're just not drinking enough water, which is, it blew my mind, but it's true, like those simple things.

Samantha Martin 34:26

Like my mind right now.

Katja Trmcic 34:29

I just learned, like in a program I was in, that we have to treat ourselves as a plant, like we are a big plant. So what do we need? Like we need exposure to the sunlight. Like we need to, I guess, plants don't exercise, but we do need to move our body, like we need to go for that walk. Whatever makes sense to us, smartphones, like, how dissociation just kind of escaping the reality and just kind of, I know because I've been doing it myself, and I still do it from time to time, but it's so important to know that this is affecting us in all kinds of ways that are not even researched yet. You know, like this cannot be healthy for us. So for us to become, I say, to re-parent ourselves, we become a parent, and we make decisions for ourselves that maybe are not the favorite decisions, they're not the most popular ones, but they're good for us. So how can we make those decisions and create a system or routine that takes place, and then from that place we go and we try new things? Because we will fail. And when we fall back on the established systems, they're meant to nourish us and and hold us in a gentle, caring way, it will be much easier to just pick yourself up again and try another thing that might work a little bit better than the other one, because this is time to experiment, this is time to be creative. It's really hard to tap into that creative part of us if we are struggling in a survival mode. So I think that's a big one that is very helpful for a lot of people, and I'm still struggling with it myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:09

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 37:01

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

Speaker 4 37:07

I was quite disillusioned very quickly, and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life by becoming a nurse. Even though this is something I had worked for, it took me years to do the prerequisite courses and get prepared.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:22

All right, here's one that we see all the time. What happens when you have the realization that the career or industry you've been working towards for years isn't the right fit for you? Many people have this epiphany when they're well into their careers or after years of schooling, and some have it the first day they walk in the door and realize this is not at all what I was expecting. It can be a really hard pill to swallow because our identities are often closely tied to what we say we do for a living. So how do you untangle your identity from a career that you once felt passionate about in order to start working towards the right fit for you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:59

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.

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.