Scott Anthony Barlow 00:01

If you've been considering a job, or considering a career change, or if you don't love your career right now, then you literally and figuratively can't afford not to dedicate the time to doing something about it.

Introduction 00:17

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 00:43

Today, it's just you and me talking about how to find the time to make a career change even when you are insanely busy. And the reason that we've wanted to do this type of episode for a really long time is this is one of the biggest things that stops people again and again and again if you are wanting to make a career change. Finding the time, making the time, prioritizing the time, those sounds like they should be easy, and we all know they're not. And I don't want you to have to feel bad when it isn't easy, and instead, I wanted to be able to give you some ways to be able to find that time, take back that time, and do something about it here. Okay, so here's the reality. That to do something different, of any kind, you know, whether you're making a big career change, or whether you are training for a marathon, or whether you like to do anything different in your life, you literally and metaphorically have to stop doing something. It doesn't happen, like, think about it, if I'm going to spend my time in different way, I cannot do that without stopping doing something that was already in existence. It simply is not possible. Right? Okay. So now, the challenge here is that most people in the world, they get to this point, they get to this realization, and that's where they give up. And I totally get it. I mean, if you're listening to this right now, chances are high that you are a really busy person, you might have lots of responsibilities, you might have obligations, maybe even other humans depending on you, I have three little humans. So how on earth do you layer in something new, like making a career change to a new job, or you know, a new company or even a new industry with so many people out there saying, "finding a new job is a full-time job in itself", is no wonder it sounds so intimidating, and it starts to sound impossible. And then many people just give up at this point, continue to live in toleration, continue to say, "Well, you know, I guess that this is good enough." So in this episode, I actually want to give you a variety of ways, some you may have heard of, and never thought could actually work for you, and others you probably haven't heard of before in the way that we're going to talk about them. And I want to give you this variety of ways. And we'll call them techniques tools so that you can make 5 to 10 hours a week of space for your career change. And then it becomes very, very possible for you to do something about it at that point. I'm even going to share some of the more advanced techniques that I've personally used when trying to make time and space or some of the ones that we teach in our career change boot camp program as well. So before we get into those, though, I want you to truly understand what the cost, the actual cost, not just monetary cost, but also other costs as well of not doing this, not making the career change that you want to, when you're in a situation and you know something needs to be different going forward, not doing something about it or accepting it and living in toleration. So here's some really interesting pieces and a different way to look at it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:03

First of all, we've seen internally that changing jobs or changing companies is the absolute best time to increase your salary. We've seen lots of 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 dollar increases with our clients when they've changed jobs. And you've even heard some of the stories on the podcast, although we don't typically share in the episode how much they made before and after. If you've heard them on the podcast, most of the time, not all the time, they've usually made a pretty significant salary shift. But let's say that you're not getting a $40,000 increase. And let's say that you get just a 10% increase. Let's just use this as an example for a moment. You just get a 10% increase for your salary when you make this change. Let's do the math on that. If you made $50,000 per year, I know you probably make more than that, you probably make a different amount, but let's just do the simple math on $50,000 a year. So let's say that you make 50k per year, and you get a meager 10% increase, which is fairly common and relatively easy to do when changing jobs. That means that's $5,000 more than you made after making that change. $5,000 more. Okay, now, let's say that you spent 10 hours per week for four months working on that job change to be able to make that happen. Okay, what does that $5,000 more translate out to? That means that that's $31.25 per hour that you just made because you spent 160 hours working on making that job change, 10 hours per week, over spread over four months, translates to $31.25 per hour. What's crazy is that at $50,000 per year, which you know, if you make more than that, if you work around 40 hours per week, you're actually only making $24 per hour. And this means that your time is actually more valuable per hour when you're spending at changing jobs than working on the job itself. Okay, and this holds true as well when you do that same math, you know, at $100,000 as well and make it at just a 10% increase. It still is more valuable making the job change, spending your time on making the job change than it is working in the job itself, too. Crazy, right? Okay. And by the way, this isn't even counting future annual earnings at your new rate because I found that what happens is most people continue to take that raise with you over the years, wherever you go, they typically don't go backwards. And if we consider that you might have an additional 20 to 30 years before you retire, then that means that the 160 hours that you spent making a career change is now worth at least $625 per hour or a total of $100,000 over the next 25 years. And that's again, if you're just making a $50,000 a year salary. If you're making $100,000 a year salary that doubles, then, that makes that when you're looking at it spread over across those next 25 years, then it's worth significantly more, literally double that amount. Personally, I've done this, I've tracked this because I'm a total nerd like this when it comes to these types of things and really optimizing time. And I tracked this for about 10 years or so when I was working for other organizations. And the additional income I made from making career changes and getting raises each time, it made me an additional $200,000, little over $200,000 actually, during that time from just two job changes. Crazy, right? Only it's not really that crazy, this is something that happens all the time, only we don't think about it in these types of contexts. And this means that if you've been considering a job or considering a career change, or if you don't love your career right now, then you literally and figuratively can't afford not to dedicate the time to doing something about it. And this holds true whether you make 50k, 100k, 250k a year, the time that you spend changing jobs is likely more valuable to spend that way because it's the very best and easiest time to negotiate a raise. And why is that? Well, we've found that that's the time where you have more power in the negotiation process than any other time. Okay, so here's the crazy thing about all this. We just cited all that math and everything like that. And a lot of times people at this point are like, "Well, you know, it might take me longer to change industries or occupations or figure out what I want to do or anything else." But what we found is that, especially when it translates to raises, because that's the other thing that pops up too, it's like, "Well, if I'm changing industries, I can't really make as much." But we found that most of the time, this actually still holds true even when you're changing occupations or industries or jobs or roles to something that's new to you. We've seen that again and again and again and again. Are there exceptions? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you want to go from lawyer to beekeeper, then yes, you might experience different results. But most of the time, what we see is that people that want to keep their salary high and use the transferable skills that they enjoy are able to do so when that's what they're seeking out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:41

Okay, so the question comes back, of course, to how do I make the time to do this? In this episode, I want to give you some of the best ways that you can use to create an extra five to ten hours a week of time that you didn't have before that now you can devote to making a career change. So sometimes our episodes are not incredibly tactical. We delve really deeply into a lot of psychology and other pieces that have a tendency to stop people from making career changes, and some of the transformation that takes place during that process. A lot of times when you hear these stories of people that we've worked with on the podcast that have worked with our coaches, worked with our team, gone through career change boot camp, a lot of times, they're not the same person, in many different ways, when they started working with us, compared to after that transition, and there's a lot of psychology that goes into that. I love that stuff. But that's not what we're going to talk about today. Instead, we're gonna be fairly tactical here. And I want to give you some really specific ways, that way, at the by the end of this episode, you can say, "Hey, I want to pick one to two of these that I can use to get back time, so that I can devote it to making this career change." Because if you really want this to be a priority for you, then guess what, you're gonna have to do something about it. And I want to help you be able to do those things in order to make the time, make the space in your life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:08

Okay, so here's one of the things that behind the scenes in our career change boot camp program, some of our other programs, too, we use these methods. So we start out with, how can we actually plan better. How can we actually plan better. So there's two pieces to this that I've seen that are really, really simple. One, this is absurd. And you may have heard of this one before, but very few people actually take the time to do it because they don't realize the sheer amount of value that it can have. Okay, and that is taking a time inventory. So this can be really very simple. And an easy way to do this is, as you're going throughout your week, just keeping the journal, keeping an Excel spreadsheet, whatever is your style, it doesn't even matter what it is, that really doesn't matter. I have used a Google Sheet, I've used literally a notebook and a piece of paper, and capturing where you're spending your time, especially not what is on your calendar, especially those things that are taking you off of your calendar, or off of your routine, capturing what that looks like and understanding where your time is going. That is a huge hairy deal. Every time somebody does this and does a great job of it, and is capturing those pieces, and not just the actual things that you're doing, but even the decisions that you have to make that are taking time away from you, then inevitably, there are always pieces you realize that you can remove, or do differently. So this starts out with a time inventory. So that's one suggestion.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:56

Another thing that we use that is a variation of that, skips over the time inventory, we call it creating the master schedule. In this exercise of creating a master schedule, think about it as creating how you want to spend your ideal week in terms of time for whatever it is that you're doing right now. So for example, that might be, I want to make the space and time to change jobs, change roles, identify what it is that I want to do, what creates an ideal career for me, and then be able to make the space to make that happen. So going through the process of detailing out what your week looks like. And almost thinking about this as a time budget. A time budget in which you plot every 15 minutes of your day for one week. And then that makes up your ideal week at the end of that exercise. Okay, this can be really simple, we don't have to overthink this at all, you can literally draw this out on a piece of paper on one side and put the times or the hours of the day, down the left-hand side, and then on the top divided into each day within a calendar week. So seven days in total. And then draw in and write in, again, imperfectly where you want to spend your time. So for example, that might be getting up at 6 am each morning, and then what's the first thing that you do before you go to work. What do you want that time to be spent on? So this does not sound super complicated. But unless you understand the value that you're getting out of it, you may not actually want to spend the time doing it. Inevitably, here's what happens. First of all, we've never had a big go through this exercise and be like, well, I found no value out of that. We've had many people that have hesitated to do the exercise and said, "Ah you know, that seems like one that, you know, people that really haven't figured out calendarisation, or budgeting their time or anything, that's one that they should do." And instead, what we've realized is that when people go through and take the time to do this, they find one of two things– they either find that they just have tons of things jam-packed into their day, right now. And it's really difficult for them to create time, and then it becomes just super, super relevant to them to make sure that every minute or every hour is spent valuably on things that they want to or that they're going to have to get rid of something, or the other realization is more along the lines of, "Wow, I actually have more time than what I realized. And I'm just not using it in the way that I thought that I could." So we usually see one of those two extremes. I've got less time or more time than I have realized. Either one, whatever conclusion that you come to ends up being valuable. So for master schedule, this is something I actually use. I've used for, oh my goodness, probably 10-12 years now at this point in time. So that thing that pops up that we've been told in the past by some people look at and go, "Oh, that's for amateurs." We respectfully disagree. We believe that much the same way that you see somebody running along side of the road, that is training for a marathon, and you think that "Wow, that person doesn't need to run. They're really, really fit." They're fit because they run, or they're fit because they take care of themselves in that way. And they do that all the time. This is the same type of concept here. You know, somebody who has time and has created time for the things that they believe or most important at any given time are, because they do things like this, they go professional in the areas where it counts. So that's perfect example. I do master scheduling, I have done one, at least quarterly for the last probably 10 or 12 years, can't remember exactly when I started. Either way, this helps you understand what and where you want to spend your time on and creates that ideal for you so that you can then put that into reality. Because if you haven't identified what is the ideal, it's going to be really difficult to try to model that day after day in reality. So this is not intended to keep track of like every appointment that comes up, if you have hair cut, you know, two Tuesdays from now, that's not the way that you're using the master schedule. This is literally a one-week version of how you want to be ideally spending your time. Is everything going to go perfectly to that? No, absolutely not. But it does help going through this exercise helps you understand the difference between where you're at, and where you want to get to. So we use this method and we use this exercise all the time in our career change boot camp program. It is so incredibly helpful to realize where your time is going, and where you have those pockets of time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:04

Okay, so this is one place to start because it helps pave the way for just how much time you actually need to create or free up or make use of or what you already have maybe that you didn't know you need. Maybe you've got already three hours of time that you just didn't realize that you had in there. And now you only need to find an additional two or three or five hours. Okay, so let's talk about another really useful set of tools here. And we're gonna put these into a category. And this is outsourcing and automating. The things that you don't have to do yourself. We've alluded to this on one other episode on the Happen To Your Career podcast. But I think that this is one of the most underrated things that you can do is identifying and either outsourcing or automating those things that don't require you unless you absolutely love them. So were talking about things like laundry, meal prep, lawn mowing, occasionally, I mean, if somebody else picked up the kids. All of these pieces, unless you are absolutely loving them, then there may not be a reason to keep them in your schedule. They're things that take up time that are not necessarily adding massive amounts of value that somebody else easily could be doing. So let's talk through some of these pieces here. So I have kids, mentioned that earlier, I've got some small humans, and one of the things that we have found is it takes a lot of time to run them around. It absolutely does. Especially where, you know, they're into sports or into taekwondo. My son plays hockey, my two other kids play soccer. You've got all these different things. We've got tournaments, we've got games, we've got school activities, you name it. You might have those too, if you have small humans running around. And if you do, something that can be super easy to take the time to set up, even if you don't want to do something extreme, like, I've considered hiring a driver at different points in time. And we haven't done that, however, what can be the next step down that might be super easy to do for you, and also incredibly effective is set up a carpool. We found a lot of times that other parents of other kids are going to the same places at the same time, all the time. Taking the time to set up a carpool, or have somebody else pick up the kids or trade-off. I do it this week, you do it next week, all the kids got to get to the same place, they're coming from the same place, you know, it's often with a small amount of upfront planning can save you that back and forth across town at least once a week. Which that back and forth cross-town, even if you're in a small town, you know, it can add up to if it's just 15 minutes one way, 15 minutes another way, or 10 minutes one way like that's 20 minutes each time, half an hour each time. If it's longer across town, that can add up to hours in a given week, which gets spread across the month. So something that's really easy to do. There's a great example there. Let's say that you don't have small humans. Well, what about if you have lawn mowing, meal prep, all of those types of things, cooking, planning out meal for the week, all of those types of things can be outsourced. And in some cases, automated. Lawn mowing is a great example. And you might think some of this stuff is actually really expensive to pay someone else to do. It doesn't have to be. We found a neighborhood kid to mow our lawn for $20 each time, and he would have done it for less. But $80 a month and never ever have to think about the lawn again. I don't have to think about it. Occasionally, I talk to him and say "Hey, can you mow it a little bit longer? But that takes all of 15 seconds." But I've taken this a step further too. We have a guy from our church who's a teacher who comes to fertilize our lawn four times a year, the house is sprayed for bugs four times a year as far as outdoors go, I don't enjoy mowing the lawn, I don't enjoy spraying for bugs, and I don't want to spend my time that way. And it's taken away from the things that I can be doing that are more valuable for me to spend my time. In this case, it's my work, or it is spending time with my kids or family or traveling, or other things like that too. In your case, it might be freeing up that extra time in order to allow you to focus on changing jobs and taking advantage of the increases that have a tendency to come along with that too. All right. So here's another thing too, I find that so many people have not taken the steps to set up everything on direct withdrawal, or auto pay or created an automated finance system. This is something that if you haven't done, taking the time to do it once now may take you a total of five hours, but then for the entire rest of your life, it just becomes small tweaks. And you never have to do that, again. Never have to write another check again. You never have to, and yes, there might be exceptions, yes, I know I'm gonna get some emails where it's like, "I'm still gonna have to write a check about dadada-" save the email instead. Let's focus on the bigger picture. And then that instead, you end up freeing up many, many, many hours over the course of month, year, and future years, as well. So that's another area that you can get into too. And by the way, if you want to get really good at outsourcing things that you don't have to do, you can go take this up to three five notches here, you can hire an assistant. And I have learned that some people have real hang-ups and mental barriers about hiring an assistant. Some of these are around time worth, some of these around having other people do tasks that you've grown accustomed to doing yourself, and some of these are other types of hangups too. But I've personally done this, even by hiring a virtual assistant when I was in HR leadership. And we were down some team members at the time, and I even had this person help out with the non-essential tasks or tasks that didn't require passing along sensitive information from the company, which are way more than what most people realize. And at the time, I even did this with my boss's blessing, and the company paid for it. It gave me back about seven hours per week, which was pretty cool. But you can do the same thing for you as well, personally, it doesn't necessarily have to be paid by your company. But you can get back this time too. And people often wonder what can assistant do for you. Well, they can take all of the little things off your hands that you don't even realize they're taking up your time, like, calling and scheduling appointments and putting them on your calendar and calling and sitting on hold for customer service departments or ordering items. I can't tell you how much time prior to having an assistant that either myself or Alyssa would spend ordering items or researching items or trying to determine what is the perfect item. And then a lot of times, now, I can have an assistant actually do all that research, send me the options, I can look at that, and then they can do the ordering. Booking travel is another one. Finding and calling the repair guy to come fix the dishwasher. All of these little tiny things, researching things I need to know about my son's hockey camp, whatever it is, there are likely that you have 20, 30, 40 things that are taking place in your given month that you don't need to do yourself that somebody else could do. So yes, I realized that for some people, this is going to come off extreme. And sometimes people get hung up about the value of their time here. And you might think I pay 250 or 300 dollars a month for a virtual assistant to work part-time 15-20 hours a month because I could just do it myself. And that's the hang-up people get into. And I've been there. I totally understand that, felt the same way myself. But think about what that saying about how you feel about your time if you don't believe that your time is worth more than 15 or 20 bucks an hour, you may have a hard time convincing your next employer that you're really worth the extra money that you're going to be asking for them, right? So it comes back to that mental perspective too in what you believe about your own time that doesn't get considered. And also is, potentially, costing you money as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:48

Okay, so here's another great one that you can do– batching things together. Taking the time to recognize what gets done throughout the week, and can be batched together that takes less time, overall, when you batch it together. So here's an example. Getting the mail. I realized and Alyssa, my wife, realized that we were getting the mail every day. First of all, very few things that were really important actually came to us in the mail, lots of it was junk mail, the vast majority of it, I'd say 90 plus percent of it was junk mail. And the occasional time where we got something that was important or that we did want to see, well, it really didn't matter if it's at an extra couple of days, right? So what we started doing at that particular time is going through it once a week just getting an email once a week and then sorting through it and the tossing everything in the recycle bin or even every two weeks. For most people, nothing life-changing is coming in the mail anymore. And the extra minutes you gain back by not getting the mail and sorting through it every day is much more valuable than knowing three days sooner, that you're pre-approved for yet another Black Label MasterCard. Okay, other things that you can batch together that take less time when you do them all at once. Ordering household goods, or better yet, automate them like we've talked about before setting them up on subscription. Or what about meal planning in a given week, creating a menu ad at the beginning of the week, and even batching together trips for the grocery store. Instead of making multiple trips throughout the week, can you do a better job of planning the meal and allowing yourself, yes, it takes more upfront thought and time and everything like that, but batching it together might save you an extra 2, 3, 4 trips throughout the month to the store. Okay, so there's a few examples of how you can batch things together. Here's what I would encourage you to ask. As you're going through, and as you're doing that time inventory or you're thinking about your time start to recognize what are those areas where I'm spending my time on that pop up more than once throughout the week. Or more than once throughout the month? Is there opportunity, and likely there is, to be able to batch them together in some way? Or as we talked about earlier, can we automate them? Or can we outsource them in one way or another? Okay, I want to give you another area here too. Eliminating the small things that take time on your to-do list. Completely removing this from your life. I love doing this by the way. It appeals to my maximizer and strategic strengths if you're using the StrengthsFinder verbiage, both of those are something that I love. It also appeals to my nerdiness about how I can enjoy just four more seconds today than yesterday. A recent example of this was we realized that our once really nice cooking pans had a lot of use over the years. And now every single time we use them it takes so much longer to clean by hand. And we might use these three or four times a week and although it only takes a couple of minutes to clean the pan, neither Alyssa or myself like doing it. So it was extra time that could have spent spent elsewhere. And time that we certainly weren't enjoying, or what would happen a lot of times is we simply wouldn't do it that night. And then it would sit in the sink for the next 24 hours and become an irritation, which ended up taking away our mental bandwidth. And we'll talk more about that here in just a minute. So instead, we realize that it would be actually less than $75 to replace the pans. Why? Well, because we don't need the whole huge set of pans that we had, and instead just got two pans that are the type that we use most often, and that clean up in seconds. And over the week, this gives us back about 10 to 12 minutes each week. And I know I know, I know, I know, 10 to 12 minutes does not sound like a lot, it really doesn't. And it isn't, except that when you realize that you probably have lots of 10 to 20 minutes, or 10 to 12-minute weekly items that are sucking your time away minute by minute. And if you can just find and remove 5 to 10 of these, it starts adding up to hours every single week. Every time we find one of these, we always say the same thing. We always are like, "Ah, I wish we would have done that months ago.", "I wish we would have done that years ago." Okay, now here's something that's really important to know. It's important to note here that the actual time taken by tasks, and that's one category, and then there's a whole nother category of mental bandwidth and stress that impact your ability to function productively with the small amount of time that you have left over. Now, here's an example of this. We constantly have things that we want to donate to Goodwill. And we made a conscious effort over the last couple of years to just try and buy less stuff. Because we kept noticing the same pattern like we'd buy it, a kid would use it, we'd use it for a short period of time, and then nobody would ever use it again. So we just now buy less stuff. And actually, that ends up saving our time over the long run for a variety of different reasons. And in this case, even though we buy less stuff, we still find that there are those toys, the kids no longer play with or clothes that we no longer wear, or it just don't work anymore. And once we decide we no longer want these, what used to happen is we would pull them out, and we'd set them aside in the corner of the room until we would go to Goodwill and drop them off. Now this doesn't sound like a big deal, except that it might be two or three weeks until we were planning on making another trip. So then every single time I would walk past those, and we think, "Wow, that looks messy over there. We've got to take those to Goodwill." And then I'd spend the next 10 minutes irritated that the house always felt messy, whether it actually was messy or not. You know, that's what was happening. And so we realized this was sucking up our mental bandwidth. Simply because we hadn't actually done anything about it. And because it was constantly a present. I might walk by that pile 5 or 10 times a day. And that ends up becoming not just an irritation, which is a lesser quality of life, but also ends up capturing my attention. When my attention and bandwidth could be focused on something that is more enjoyable or more productive. And again, this is getting into the nitty gritty. But by not addressing these things, it feels more stressful. And that's what starts to add up to the, at the end of the day, I don't have any energy to be able to focus on doing something like making a career change, too. So all these little things have a tendency to add up. So in this case, here's what we did, we decided we don't want to look at those anymore. And every single time we're looking at them, it's a bad situation, it takes away that bandwidth. So we created a staging area in our garage. Really, really simple solution. And now every single time we have something that we want to give away, then there's an oversized laundry basket that sits there in that staging area and collects all the donation items until we make the next trip to drop them off. And our kids know that that's where those go, we know that that's where those go, we've got a place to put those it's not in the corner of the room, it's not taking our attention. Now I spend literally zero minutes a year thinking about it or being irritated about it. It's just something that happens on autopilot. And it can been completely removed from my time and attention.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:19

Okay, so you have some of these right now too. Here's what I would encourage you to do in order to find these. As you're going throughout your day, pay attention to those things that irritate you, and write them down. And that's likely where you're going to find those areas that you can do something about that are stealing your actual time and also your energy and bandwidth as well. And then create a solution for the ones that are capturing the most of your attention and check them off one at a time. And what you're going to find is you're going to end up getting actual time back as well as mental bandwidth and energy back too. Both of which are important. Okay, so we've gone through a huge list of examples here. What I would encourage you to do is go through and just choose one or two of these to start with, so that you can create more time in your given week. And then you can read devote that time to be able to make a career change. This has got to be where you first start, this sets the foundation for nearly everything else to happen later.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:35

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:24

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

Speaker 2 36:30

If you don't know where you're going, every path is good for you. And when you have a path that you choose, then you can focus all your strengths and your resources towards that path. That was a feeling that never had failed before and it was amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:46

If you've had a successful career, you may not even realize that you're on autopilot. That is until one day something changes. Maybe it's something in your personal life. Maybe you're part of a round of layoffs, whatever it may be, you realize your career has unfolded around you and you've never really stopped to think, "Is this really the direction I want to be headed? Is this the type of work I want to be doing? Is this how I want to spend my time?" What happens then? Then what? How do you take control of your career when you're already 10, 20, 30 years in?

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:19

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.

Amy Dickerson 00:01

I was stuck in that mindset of, "But I have a degree. I really should be working on my degrees." I thought I couldn't make the connection. So the imposter syndrome kicked in that you don't have the skill set to do it.

Introduction 00:18

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

What happens when everything you thought that you wanted to do for a career isn't? You go to school, you get an education, maybe even a master's degree, and then realize immediately upon graduation that what you got your education in it just isn't going to be your ideal career fit. So then what? Was it all a waste of time? How do we move into a new field? So many questions.

Amy Dickerson 01:10

We all have got that thing that no matter where you drop me, it doesn't matter if I work for this company, that company. If I work in nonprofits, I work in for profit. It doesn't matter if I'm working with my family, or if I'm over here just volunteering. If you give me an opportunity to do that thing, that is my thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31

That's Amy Dickerson. Amy is a coach on our team and someone who made her own career change. She went to school for physical therapy, got her master's degree, never actually worked in that field– that's right. Seven years of schooling, and she never worked as a physical therapist. Why? Well, when she began looking for work after college, she quickly realized that her strengths were pulling her in a completely different direction. She knew that she wanted something different, but that didn't make the change easy. Amy struggled with untangling her identity from being a physical therapist as well as a major impostor syndrome when she was trying to enter this brand new field. Okay, fast forward, and Amy has now been a career coach for many, many years. She's got lots of wonderful experiences. She's actually one of the few people that I know that has been doing coaching since before it was popular. She's an expert in helping people pinpoint their unique strengths and showing them how they've been unknowingly using those same strengths their entire life. As you can guess, she's also pretty amazing at helping people with detaching their identity from their careers and overcoming impostor syndrome. In our conversation, Amy uses her own career journey to explain how, even when you think you have no direction, and you're wondering what's next, your strengths can still help you discover what you're really meant to be doing. So this is the point where we get to jump in. Here's my conversation with Amy. She's taking us back to a pretty pivotal point in her life when she realized she didn't want to be that physical therapist.

Amy Dickerson 03:06

Well, my bachelor's degree is in health sciences. And my master's degree is in physical therapy, actually, which is a very, very competitive program to get into, and an extremely challenging program. At the time that I actually went into school for it, it was only... you only went to the master's degree at that point. That eventually changed it to a doctorate the year after I graduated, which made complete sense because you went to medical school. No one told you that you were going to go full-on medical school. But as a physical therapist, you literally have to know everything that the doctors know. You have to be able to read X-rays, read MRIs, PET scans, all of that, because you have to do a separate evaluation than what the doctor does to confirm that what they believe they're seeing is what you see as well. So yeah, I had no idea I was going to go full-on medical school. But if you think about it, so therapy is a form of coaching. So I've always had that coaching thing in me and it's ironic how I ended up coming right back around the coaching, I call it my story to Nineveh. If there's anyone out there who's ever read any biblical stories, one of those stories people tend to read is the story of Jonah and the great fish, or the whale as some people refer to it, but it's the great fish. So in that story, you know, God tells Jonah, "Hey, I want you to go to Tarshish and speak to the people and this and that." And Jonah was like, "I'm gonna find going to Nineveh." So he went on over to Nineveh, did what he wants to do, ended up being swallowed by this fish, you know, praying to God, "Get me out of the situation." Gets spit out, gets some stuff together, and then finally, he's like, "Okay, I guess I'll go to Tarshish now." So as I grew up as a child, and you probably had a bit of this growing up too where, even as a kid, people will always come to you for advice. And as a child, you're just growing up. You're a kid. You're not thinking about what you're doing, and all that, whatever. But I always had a keen awareness of problem-solving, trying to find solutions to problems, because I always wanted to see people be happy about living life. I always, you know, had an appreciation for the spiritual side of things, and for the fact that if we made it here, then hey, there's got to be a reason why we're here. So early in my life, I would have these philosophical problem-solving conversations. I mean, I'm nine years old having conversations with adults. I was like, "Wait, what's going on here." But it continued, of course, as I grew. But one thing I didn't recognize about myself that I actually just learned about myself in the last two to three years, is that impact. So, therefore, people's emotions, energies, all those things, they impact me. And I always knew that as a kid, but I didn't know it had an actual name. So I thought I was crazy. So I would never talk about the fact that I could move through a crowd. And I would literally feel energy change emotions. So because of that, when you're having conversations with people about life and things, whatever, for me being the impact, therefore, I took on a lot of the emotions that they had. So for me, I emotionally invested sometimes more than the person themselves did. And because of that, over the years, it became heaviness. Heaviness. Heaviness. So by the time I graduated high school, I was like, "I don't want to do anything that has to do with any form of counseling. I don't want to have toxic. I don't want." So I completely just push it away, push it away, push it away. And slowly over years, I really had already started doing it. So I had decided years before that, "I liked the idea of teaching, and I kind of liked the idea of being in the health space." And I had discovered physical therapy. So I decided, "Oh, this seems like a really good fit. I think I'm gonna go for physical therapy." So that's what I did. Once I went to college, started University of Michigan– go blue, that's right, go blue out there. And got a scholarship, but they didn't have my full major there. They didn't have physical therapy in Ann Arbor. So I had a plan to switch. I was going to use as much as my scholarship as possible, and then switch to another school that had the program. And I ended up at Oakley University and that's where I got my degrees. So the year I graduated, actually, was the first year we had ever experienced a hiring freeze. Yeah. That had never happened before. And they have been kind of moving across the country at the time. So right at the time we graduated, it was hitting Michigan. So when you graduate, of course, you don't graduate as a full therapist or full doctor where, you know, you always have to go take your exams, get your license, all that. So when I first graduated, I was trying to do things with my student license, but nobody was really hiring. And I just wasn't as well connected, healthcare-wise, with people in my community. I just wasn't connected like that to be able to find someone who can help me make that kind of move. My sister, ironically, which I didn't even know when I chose physical therapy, my sister who's 20 years older than me, she was an occupational therapist. I didn't even realize it. So she tried to help, whatever, but it was just a tough time. So basically, at a certain point, I was just kind of like I'm exhausted from school. I'm exhausted from looking, I'm just exhausted. I'm gonna just step back, take a break, and I'm just gonna do a little temporary work, and then come back around. So I went to the temporary field and just kind of worked here and there. And I ended up at the, what was at the time, the leader in outplacement services, the company that actually began the outplacement industry. And for those who don't know outplacement is, when people get laid off from their jobs, they end up getting connected to a company that will help to coach them and counsel them through that process to help them get their resume together, interviewing skills, networking skills, negotiating all of that to help you move to your next position. So I ended up doing a temp stint there and I really enjoyed it, connected really well with the staff, but I did my few weeks and then I was off. So in a few months later, I decided to just reach out to the company just because I really enjoyed the people that I worked with. So I just sent an email, "Hey, how are you guys doing? Blah, blah, blah." I got an email back that said, "Oh, my gosh, we have been looking for you. Where are you? We have an open position and we want you. Get back here." So at that time, I was no longer working with the temporary agency. So I was like, "Oh, wow, this is amazing." So that's how I ended up getting connected into the world of outplacement which then led me into career coaching of those, again, in the beginning with that I really didn't want to go into coaching, or at that time it was called consulting.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:37

Tell me about that. What was it? Do you remember what was in your mind back then where you're like, "Yeah, I don't know, I don't really want anything to do with this."

Amy Dickerson 10:45

Yes, we actually have a name for it now. It's called impostor syndrome. We didn't have those words, then. So here I, again, I am someone with a master's degree. And I just really loved the work that was being done. And so although I knew I had this degree, I just was drawn. So I didn't really care what I was doing there. So I came in, in the admin position initially, but my boss saw early on how I worked with the clients, and how I helped them to really pinpoint what it is that their strengths were, and what they really brought to the table for the company. And the way that I helped them to focus on those things, it really craved a shift in them a little bit more quickly than they had been seeing with people, and giving them that confidence to be able to get back out there and to work that job search process. Because as you and I know, and probably some of the listeners know, looking for a job is a job. So you have to really get out there and be prepared for. So after observing me, he came to me one day and said, "Hey, yeah, so I'm going to be sending you to consulting training." And I just jumped back, "What? No."

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:11

Absolutely not.

Amy Dickerson 12:12

"Absolutely not. No, I don't want to be a consultant. No, no, no." And he said, "Oh, yeah, you're going." And it was kind of like the way he said it was like, oh, wow, there's no arguing here. He's gonna make me go. And he did. And I did complete the training. But like you said, that first reaction, I think because I looked at the other actual consultants, and these were people who have been working in corporate America for 10-15, sometimes 20 years, these were people who had held certain levels of executive positions, they may have been people who have worked in HR. And so looking at that, and then comparing my background, although I have this amazing degree that was extremely difficult to get, and it's highly respected, it wasn't this particular field per se. And so for me, I didn't initially connect the coaching aspect, the teaching aspect, the training aspect that I had developed, the observation skills that I had developed in physical therapy, I didn't exactly initially translate that to what was being done with career consulting, which is ironic because that's one of my very key traits. When I help people, it's one of the things that I'm able to do, I'm able to see those kind of hidden ties between where they are and where they want to be. So it's so crazy that I couldn't do it for myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:50

So let me ask you about that. Do you think that if we go back before, for a little bit, I fully understand what you're saying that, "Hey, I couldn't see this for myself. I couldn't pull this together for myself", which I absolutely understand. We, almost all of us, have that blind spot for ourselves until we can connect it together externally, or we have somebody else that's helped to connect it for us in one way or another. So I get that part. What I'm curious about though, is at the time, do you think that person who sent you to the training and everything, do you think they saw that, and that part of the reason why they chose to do that?

Amy Dickerson 14:32

100%. He told me 100% that he could see that my ability to be able to do those things and see that and other people and also just my natural... I just always had a natural propensity to ask the questions once people told me, "I really would like to do this. I really would like to change this." I really... I would just, always in my life, even when I was younger, I just started asking questions. Well, what is it exactly that you want to do? Well, what do you have now that you think connects with that? Why is it that you want to go in that direction? What do you feel like is moving you and so on and so forth. So I was doing this because it was just my natural talent. But I didn't know, I didn't recognize it as a talent. ,

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:25

Yeah, this is actually a thing that other people don't normally do.

Amy Dickerson 15:30

I had no clue. I had no clue. And so because I didn't see those things, again, I wasn't able to see how I connected. So therefore, like, I was just mentioning that whole imposter syndrome. You know, I couldn't look at my natural skill set. I was thinking of things in terms only of education. Now, I'm Gen X. I don't know about you, but I'm Gen X. So Gen X were the generation that is the transitional generation. We saw how things used to be, we lived through certain transitions, and we saw where things were going. And so there were a lot of things told to us about, "if you did this, then this will happen." It was like computers before computers that if then statement, they go to. If you see this, go to that, you know that. So growing up in that, there was a certain expectation, and part of that was you go to college. So during that time period, it was really pushed for us to go get higher education. And so because of that, I was stuck in that mind frame that mindset of, "but I have a degree, I really should be working on my degrees." And so I couldn't make the connection. So the imposter syndrome kicked in that, "You don't have the skill set to do this. You don't have the capabilities. Yeah, you've been talking to people. But in the end, you're able to look at these resumes, and yes, you've helped several people get jobs. But no, you don't have the skills."

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:05

This is one of my favorites. And also, I think still to this day is one of the most fascinating things. I know you've seen this too, not just for yourself, but for other people that you've worked with, the idea that the skill sets or the potential or whatever else it is is there. But the only difference is that we can't see it in one way or another. And I think that for a lot of our listeners and clients shows up in the questions that we get over and over again, where it's like, "How do I take my existing experience and then convince other people to be able to, like, yeah, accept this experience in a new industry or new whatever else?" And what I find is, in some ways, although it's a very different line of thinking, and it comes from sometimes this imposter syndrome type of thing that we can't necessarily see about ourselves, it's actually, in some ways, like the wrong question. I think the better question is like, "How do you go forward even though it's uncomfortable? And even though you can't see necessarily everything for yourself, or see how it relates, how do you just uncover the pieces that relate so that you can get to where you want to go in one way or another?" Just curious of your thoughts on that set of ideas.

Amy Dickerson 18:30

Well, let me just say, to me, that's one of the hallmark reasons why the expression, "everyone needs a coach" is so real. Everyone needs a coach in some form or fashion. Because part of it is the environment built around you. You're so used to moving in that space, and you've invested so much time, effort, belief, faith in these things that it's not so easy to begin to pivot, and to look at things in another way, in a different direction, and believe that you can head in a different direction. You know, there's so much of a big deal made about how much money you spent to go to school to get that skill. There's so much made about when you work at the corporation, and you've worked there for 15 years, and if you just hang in there another 15 years...

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:34

Just another 15 years, just most of the lifetime.

Amy Dickerson 19:38

That's what it used to be, right? You retire with the gold watch and the plaque and this and that. And anyway, the point is that we have a lot of other voices that are telling us how we should think about our situation. But what we don't realize sometimes is that those other voices that they're speaking those things because they actually are admiring the way that you're thinking. But they're scared just like you have a little fear. They're a little scared too. And so if they care about you, then they want the best for you. So they think in terms of safety, and security. And because of lived life experiences, there's automatically the thought of, "Do it this way, do it this way, and do it this way. Don't do it this way. Don't do it that." But part of what people are leaving out about this is that we're built as individuals will certain things that are in us from the beginning. It's just built in us. And I believe in the way I talk about it is that we all have a function in life. We all have got that thing that no matter where you drop me, it doesn't matter if I work for this company, that company. If I work in nonprofits, I work in for profit. It doesn't matter if I'm working with my family, or if I'm over here just volunteering. If you give me an opportunity to do that thing, that is my thing. The thing that no matter where I go, no matter what I do, somehow another, I always find myself heading in this direction, always into volunteering, if there's an opportunity. I always end up, you know, someone asking me to use my skill. That thing, I call it your function. So no matter where you drop the person, at some point, they're going to start moving in their function. So if we start focusing on that, that thing that's within us, we're automatically, again, going to get pulled and drawn toward the things that align with that. You know, it's like when we look at a magazine, we pick up a magazine, and we're flipping through pages, we always stop on some page because it's interesting to us. There's something on that page that draws us that we want more of, we want to read more about, we want to know more about. So it's like that, we're going to get drawn to it. So I think that there's a lot of just fear, and trepidation with this. And so that's why having a coach is so helpful because the coach has no, they have no investment in how you turn out besides being successful– achieving the goal that you set out to do. You know, they're not your mother or your father where they need you to look a certain way so that they feel a little bit of success. They're not your friends who need you to work in a certain field so that you can make a certain level of money so you can do all the things that they want to do too, and you can be on our level. We don't have as coaches that other thing that we need you to go a certain way. Where do you want to go? What do you feel is drawing you? What do you feel like is moving you, pushing you, calling you? That's what we're going to help you to uncover and get there. And that's all that makes a difference for us.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:05

I think that is a rarity in many people's lives to have that, let's call it unbiased. That's not quite the word I'm looking for. But an unbiased person who is really just there to amplify your goals and your wants and your desires and all the things whether it's career or otherwise. And I'll say that, and you and I have had this conversation before, this part of the conversation before, but I use that as a strategy for every area of my life. So I have a therapist, I have a trainer, I have a set of coaches for various different areas that are coordinated with every single one of my goals. So they're not all coaches necessarily, but they are people that are there to help amplify what it is that I'm trying to accomplish in the world. And it is, oh my goodness, in some cases, it literally makes whatever it is that I'm trying to accomplish in any given time or any given year possible. In other cases, it just makes it far, far easier, or allows me to see the things that I can't see or never would even imagine for myself, especially in the area for, like, I don't know, health as an example.

Amy Dickerson 24:19

Yes. The thing that I would have never imagined for myself. You know, and that's where it makes the difference is that sometimes people can't even see, imagine, feel, but they just don't really believe it's realistic. And the environment around them sometimes doesn't support that either. So what you just discussed about, "I have a coach for this and a coach for that", and maybe it's not a formal "coach" but that's the role of that person.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:53

I have a person. I have a team. I have someone that is actively helping me propel this foreword in every single way.

Amy Dickerson 25:02

Propel. That is like the secret that people are not. It's the secret that somehow getting past us in our lives because we start off with coaches in our lives– our parents are our first coaches, our family members, teachers, of course, obviously, if you play sports, you have actually a titled coach. But we have these people in our lives all along. And then somehow another we get to adulthood. And then it's like, the world is like, "Okay, let all that concept go. You get out there and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:40

"You know everything, you do everything by yourself, you just somehow like..." Yes, agreed. It's this really odd dichotomy in many different ways. It doesn't make any sense when we talk about it like that, however, it is how we functionally operate sometimes in society. But I want to go back and ask you about something here because, you know, speaking of the word functionally, you had talked about, like, the function and often will refer to that, and I hear on the podcast is the truest sense of you, or what we often will call signature strengths. And I wanted to ask you about some of yours that have showed up. Because definitely, you know, you're talking about when you were a kid, and you're having philosophical discussions with other people, that's not normal. And that's wonderful. Like, I, as a kid, I remember, as a weird kid, but I remember different points in time just like crying because I was like, seven or eight years old and it's like, "there's only so much time left in the world." And like, who does that? It's like a seven or eight-year-old kid, right? Yeah. So I think that what's really fascinating is looking for those significant differences that even show up so young sometimes. And for you, let's talk about a couple of those examples. How did... Let's take empathy and being an empath and being able to really sense and respond at a different level to other people's emotions, feelings, and emotional needs. And I think that what I heard you say earlier is that like, there was a point in time where like, "that was a thing that was happening. I couldn't control. I didn't even recognize that this was a thing that I could do. And it just felt like this massive burden." And often we'll call that the shadow side, or the dark side, or sometimes even anti-strengths, but the shadow side of your strengths. So I'm curious, what happened along the way for you to recognize that, "Nope, this actually a strength. This is actually a wonderful thing about me that allows me to live out without my function", as you call it.

Amy Dickerson 27:52

Yes. Well, I will say, I always knew, even as a child, I always knew that it was a strength. However, because no one else talked about this kind of thing. I thought something was wrong with me. But as you said, I had no control over it. It just was what it was, it was who I am. And, again, like you said, because I'm getting into these conversations and things. And I saw people get results from the conversations we would have. I knew that it wasn't a bad thing. I knew that was a positive thing. I felt like it was definitely a God-given thing. Because again, I had no control over it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:42

Do you remember one of those times? I'm curious, like, where you had one of those conversations and then it's like, "oh, this is real, like they're getting something out of this." What's the first time you remember that?

Amy Dickerson 28:53

Well, I will say one thing that comes to my mind is something that will happen commonly as a teenager. You know, as a teenager, trying to get along sometimes with your parents, not so easy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:06

As it turns out.

Amy Dickerson 29:07

As it turns out. And so I will have friends, of course, a weakened to these conversations, somehow another, I can always see past the teenager view of things. And somehow I could see the parent more as an individual person than just playing this parent role. And so because of that, there was always an awareness for me that sometimes when someone was dealing with a difficult parent or difficult situations because the parents maybe had difficult situations that they've been dealing with either actively right now in this moment, or as they grew up or something, and it has impacted how they respond to situations, to words, I was always very aware of words, and how you had to be careful sometimes. And the specific word you would choose with someone. You can still get the message across. But some words would inflame people, it will set them off, we call them now trigger words. You know, somehow had a sense of that. So I will try to talk to my friends sometimes in the sense to help them kind of see that your parents could just be reacting because of other things that are going on. And being at home, it's just easier to blow up at home and survive that than to blow up on the job. And so that was the idea that I had. So it helps my friends sometimes be able to calm down when things what happened. And I will even share with my own situation with that. So my mother and she's been gone for nine years now. But my mother coming up, she wasn't necessarily a lovey-dovey mother, she wasn't the hug you, kiss you, all that kind of tack, whatever, which, of course, now I have become the fourth one. But she, I was very aware that she cared and she was here to make sure that I was taking care of them, the last of seven children, my parents had seven children. So you know, she just wasn't that kind of person. And sometimes I've looked around and other kids, and I'd see that in their parents and their relationships. And they used to be like, "Wow, I wonder why doesn't she kind of feel that way?" And something within me always knew that, "Well, it's not my fault." Because you know, sometimes as a kid, you'll take that on. And you'll think, "What did I do? What did I this, what did I?" But somehow another I had a sense of, "It's not my fault. Not sure why, not sure what happened, but it's not my fault." And she didn't talk a lot about her past and growing up or whatever. But there were some things that when she would say something that gave me the idea that there were definitely some challenges and some things that even tragedies. So anyway, when I got to the U of M, I remember one particular time going home, and just a little bit of the... there was just something there where she seemed almost upset with me that I'm getting this opportunity, I don't know, it was just something. And when I get back to campus, I will spend some time thinking about it. And something that came to me was, you know, just that, "You know, maybe she didn't get all the love that she needed to get as she grew up. And so, therefore, she doesn't know what she was never taught. If she wasn't taught it, she doesn't know how to give that out in that way." So I decided at that point that I was going to let go of whatever anger and whatever I had against her. And instead, I was gonna give her all the love that she should have received that she did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:06

I love that.

Amy Dickerson 33:06

So when I start going back home, I will start hugging her, I will start kissing her on the cheek, I will start teasing her, I will do things, like, sitting her lap, lay all back on her, whatever, she would just start laughing like, "Oh my gosh, if you don't get all of this off of me." But so from there, and over the years, as we, you know, as I continued to grow up, and we both continued to grow, eventually, our relationship changed. And we ended up having a really, really great relationship. And my mother passed, she was 82. And about a year before she passed, she said to me one day I was at the house, she didn't go through illness for a couple of years at that point, and she said to me, "You know, just that, I really thank God for you. I really, truly don't know what I would do without you." And I was so shocked and taken aback, I did not say, and she just said, "I mean it. I mean, I really don't know what I would do if I hadn't had you." And I just couldn't respond, you know, even now it's like, "Okay, keep it together, and you're on the podcast. Don't melt." But you know, it definitely was kind of like, "Oh, thank God that I made that change. And I had that awareness." So again, things like that I would do over the years and help people with but, again, I didn't really see it as a skill or as a special talent or gift. It was just something that was just me and that I would share.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:41

I love that. Let me ask you this with our about 60 seconds or so left here. What advice would you have for other people that want to find that special talent or, again, what will often call signature strengths and really want to begin to transition to using that in, not just more of your life, but particularly your career?

Amy Dickerson 35:02

Yes. Well, knowing your signature strengths then helps you to be able to understand where those strengths would be valued. So that's the first thing I would say is to begin to, hey, of course, reach out to a career coach. But reach out and do a little research, read it online, take some assessments and just see where do we typically see where those strengths are really a positive and help to move business, help to move people, help to move situations forward because of that skill set. And when you kind of connect to that, that will begin to open up your mindset and your world, your options on what you do that you really bring that someone somewhere would benefit for– a person, a company, whatever. So I would say, look further into that and really see how you can, you know, we use the expression lean in, but yeah, what professionals will allow you to lean into that and utilize that. And as you get a chance to do more and more of it, you will begin to grow and grow and flower out with those strengths. And then you'll begin to see how your very strengths, whatever you consider your "weaknesses", you'll actually begin to see how your strengths can help bolster those and support you to continue to grow because that's what it's all about, in our time here, it's about growth and continued growth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:38

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 37:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:37

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:23

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

Right now, as I'm recording this, it's April. What that means to us internally is that people who are contacting us right now to make a career change will likely be starting their new job, not three months from now, not four months from now, but in the first quarter of next year. That comes as a shock to many people. The average timeline of an intentional career change, well, it's often a big surprise. So we decided to put all the information into one bonus episode and break down the anatomy of an intentional career change over a 12-month period. But first, let's talk about what I mean when I say intentional career change. And this type of career change is where we're optimizing for life fulfillment, inclusive of work. This is not just finding out what's wrong with our current situation, and then honing in on that one thing, and then finding a new job that has that problem. And here's what I mean by that. This is the way that most people think about career change. Most people think I just need to go figure out the right type of job or occupation, or, you know, my boss isn't great so I need a place with better leadership, and that's gonna solve all the problems. Or it's just the organization. This organization is not a new fit. So I just need to find a new company and do the same job. Or maybe I just need to find more knowledge on this and so I will enjoy my job more. Let me go get some training on this. And then, of course, I'll be happier. If you've listened to more than one episode of Happen To Your Career, you might already know that this, as it turns out, is the furthest thing from the truth. When we're talking about intentional career change, it's never just one thing. One thing different is never the answer. The tricky thing is here, we're wired as humans to think that one thing is going to be the answer. And if you try all of the one thing, eventually you'll get to the right answer. We're very good as human beings at diagnosing simple problems. We're pretty terrible at diagnosing what are called complex problems, where there are many, many variables, and many, many things that need to be different. And career change, especially intentional career change, solving for that, that's a complex problem. You have to isolate many different variables and make decisions about how each and every one of them are going to impact you. Okay, so this can be quite challenging, as you might imagine, especially where most people are thinking about, like, "Oh my goodness! How on earth am I going to narrow down this anyway?" Even when we're thinking about just the one thing that's different. So this means it requires a much different, much better way to approach career change that is not identify the occupation and the transition to that occupation, and then do all the job searching stuff, instead, a far better way to approach it is recognizing there are all of these different variables and the really wonderful thing is that all of these pieces that we need to figure out, well, it turns out that we actually have pretty great data and research for, not all, but many of these. 50 years ago, 100 years ago, not really the case. But now, in today's day and age, we actually have a lot of the research to support what it is that creates more fulfilling work more frequently.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:52

Now, here's another thing that people don't think about. Even when we figure out all those pieces, even when we write it down on paper on purpose, we're likely going to get pieces of it wrong, the first time around. Our best guess is still not going to be entirely accurate. So we actually need to build that into the process. What we found is that every single person who makes an intentional career change successfully goes through the same milestones. They do it in different ways. There's different tactics. There's different approaches. But everybody actually still walks through the same milestones over and over again. Four milestones in particular that relate to intentional career change, and then what we call milestones five, and six, well, those help people continue to refine and pivot what work and intentional work looks like for the rest of their life. Today, we're going to cover each of those milestones with a particular focus on the first four that relate to this intentional career change. And by the way, if you've already read Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, we do actually cover these milestones in there. So be sure to check that out if you want to learn even more about these. But the thing that we don't cover in the book, and the reason these milestones are so important is that career change is a very nonlinear process. And we don't necessarily cover the timelines that are associated with this very squiggly line, two steps forward, one step back set of events that happens. The milestones turn this process, the squiggly line process into something that feels a bit more linear. It gives us the ability to understand more about what's likely to happen along the way. And we can get behind it as humans because it aligns more with how our brains actually work. So you're probably thinking, okay, we're talking about timelines, "How long will an intentional career change actually take for me?" The reality is there's no source out there that we have been able to find that fully represents how long an intentional career change takes for the average person. My observations are that most people in this world never make, like, they just don't ever make an intentional career change. They don't take control of their lives, they move forward from what comes to them, and they get a job offer, they say, "Should I take this or not?" Instead of the other way around, saying, "Hey, here's the life that I went to live, and the life that I want to build. Here's the work that supports that life. And instead, I want to figure out how I can do that in the real world." Most humans on the planet will never accomplish this. And the ones that do, my personal observation and experience is that it often takes years. For me personally, it took actually seven years. What we're going to do in this episode is we're going to use a different set of data. I want to help you understand what we see, which we do actually have a lot of wonderful data from the last 10-11 years or so, about our clients and how they move through these milestones. So I'll help give you frames of reference. But I want you to recognize that if you don't have help, and you're trying to go this alone, what we've seen is often that it takes years. If you do have help, then it can take it down to a number of months. And we're going to talk about what a transition looks like over a specifically a year or timeframe. So our clients are people who are set on making that intentional career change that we mentioned earlier. And it's important enough to get some type of help, to invest in living more intentionally. Just assume that if you don't have help with this, it's probably gonna take longer than all these timeframes that we talked about here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:43

So let's really quickly outline the milestones in the process. Milestone one is setting the stage for your career change, we'll come back to this here in just a moment. Milestone two, is where you begin profiling your ideal career– reading a hypothesis of what or an educated guess of what you believe ideal looks like for you. Milestone three is experimentation, where we validate and get some road signs that we're heading in the right direction. Milestone four is where you take everything that you've learned, and we build a plan in order to make it happen. A lot of people would refer to this as the job search stage. And that's where many people are most familiar. They're less familiar with the first three that actually allow you to make an intentional career change and intentional choices once you get to that job search or more tactical type of stage. Okay, milestone five, I mentioned that this usually comes after intentional career change. Well, milestone five is learning to thrive and work that fits. Milestone six is evolving in your ideal career. Now, a lot of the time, this becomes a cycle as you pivot, evolve, and learn what creates a great fit for you. So we're going to go over each one of these in a little bit more detail. And I'm going to help you understand what it takes to move through each of these milestones on average for what we see for our particular clients over and over and over and over again.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:13

Okay, remember I mentioned milestone one. Milestone one usually takes around one month on average, give or take. So Milestone One is all about setting yourself up for success or setting the stage for your intentional career change. During this milestone, you identify your purpose for change, you set your life and circumstances up to make your career change a priority. You begin doing things like building your support team or creating extra time and bandwidth to be able to focus on this thing that temporarily in your life is more important in order to make everything else possible. It also involves identifying the obstacles proactively that might slow you down and creating a plan to address those obstacles. I want to give you an idea, here's a few of the actions that we have our clients take during that first milestone. For us, when we're working with them, we onboard them into this process to think about career change differently and spend a small amount of time upfront in doing the work that allows everything else to happen. So they're going through, and they are doing everything since they have our help, they're choosing their coach, they're completing a coaching session call, they're having a kickoff session with their coach, they're doing that kickoff conversation, their coach is clarifying on paper on purpose what specifically the goal is so that we have a great understanding and even better understanding of what we're heading towards, and what are the elements that we need to consider beforehand. So another example of that is we're going through and we're building a plan for inevitable success, or what we call a plan for when it gets hard. And we're thinking through in advance, "How are we going to handle it when it goes wrong? What do we need to change now?" For example, like what do we need to change in terms of our life and expectations from other people, temporarily, so that we can for a short time focus on making this life change. So this milestone really is all about setting up your life so that you're able to commit to this life altering journey that you're about to embark on. I mentioned it takes one month on average. So for example, if you started today, then you'd be working through milestone one, one month from now, you'd finish working through it approximately one month from now. I'm recording this in April, so that would mean in May.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:46

Okay, Milestone two. I mentioned this is profiling your ideal career, or what we call creating a hypothesis of what you believe your version of extraordinary could look like. We often separate this into what we call minimums, what you must have, or ideals. Ideals are what you really want, and what would create your own personal version of extraordinary. This milestone also tends to take between one to two months. For some people, it's more than that. But what we see is, on average, it's approximately between 1-2 months. So usually people are moving through this milestone during end of month one and going into month two, and working through month two as a whole, sometimes, into month three. That said, if you're starting today, and since I'm recording in April, I'd say that you would be working through this milestone during the month of June and potentially into July. This is where you really start digging into your strengths, you're setting your minimums, your must-haves for what we call the seven elements of meaningful work, which are all of those pieces that tend to matter most as relates to higher level of fulfillment, higher level of meaning that relates to your work. And then using all of that knowledge to create a relatively large list of the decisions you've made that matter more than anything else so that you can create a profile or picture of what your ideal career is, and your personal version of ideal. So during this time, you know, a lot of our clients they're going through a number of exercises in order to figure out and get to the bottom of what are those individual pieces. A lot of times, you can't go straight there, right? In Milestone Two, it doesn't work if we say, "Okay, you tell us what you want." And you just sit down and start listing things. That's not how it works for almost anybody. So instead, we use a series of exercises and questions that we adapt to each individual. And then through that series of exercises and questions, that exposes what people really need in each area of the seven elements of fulfilling work. For example, you know, one element has to do with what do you need as relates to flexibility and autonomy in your life because although we all need some level of autonomy, that doesn't mean it's the same for each individual person. And it's also true of what you value most. You know, people talk about your values, which sounds really ambiguous. But as it relates to careers, then if you understand what you value most in your life, that gives you the ability to then say, "Okay, where can I and how can I use these in my work setting? Ranging from what organizations and the people are those organizations, how do we have shared values? Or how am I not get into a situation that conflicts with those values because that feels terrible?" In all of those cases, this is where we're making those micro-decisions to clarify on paper on purpose in the form of that ideal career profile.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:05

Okay, Milestone three, experimentation. This involves validating your new direction before you do the work. This usually takes place in months, three to five, you know, if we're looking at a year timeline here, not to your timeline to transition, but your timeline in terms of like what happens over the course of a year for somebody that we're working with, well, then months three to five are often where we're taking that hypothesis, that ideal career profile, and then we're saying "Do we actually have the right version of where we want to go?" And what almost always happens through that process is, as you start testing those parts and pieces in the real world, you get feedback and learnings that cause you to reiterate, and continue to iterate on your hypothesis, or ICP, that ideal credit profile. Okay, so then, what we see is that when you intentionally design what we call career experiments, it allows you to get encouragement about whether or not you're heading in the right direction. For some people, for example, you know, we have somebody working with us right now. And she's testing several different industries that she suspected could be a good fit, could allow her to make the right type of impact that she wants to make in the world. And as she's going through it, she's recognizing that, "you know what, it actually might be less about the industry and more about the individual organization itself." So that's causing her to hone in on a different area in a different way than what she would have when she started the experimentation process. This means instead, that we're now directing her to focus on finding organizations that align with the type of impact that she wants to make and what she values the most. And then once we have that list, which she's building a list initially of 20 organizations, then that allows us to go to the next step, that allows us to identify and meet people in those organizations, so that we can say, "Yeah, you know what? This truly does align" or, "You know what, I thought this organization was a great fit. Turns out, it's not. Now I can cross them off the list. And that's okay." To some people, this experimentation, when you look at it from the outside, can seem like or feel like you're taking steps backwards. Because this industry that in this client's case, she thought she wanted to move into, it turns out, she doesn't. But that's actually great news, it's wonderful because then she gets to stop wasting time thinking about it, and instead move on to what is actually going to be a great fit. So the career experiment milestone ends to take a minimum of two or three months. This is one of the areas that, for some people, can take shorter, and some people can take far longer. Now, these experiments, which we have an entirely different episode, you can actually go to Episode 261, or search designing career experiments in your podcast player, or on Google, and it'll pop up, you can listen to it, it'll give you an idea of a variety of different types of career experiments. Or you can get the Happen To Your Career book and it gives you a variety of examples and stories that go along with it too. In any case, these career experiments can involve building targeted relationships and getting to meet people that are actually in certain roles or certain organizations. Or it can involve being able to test certain types of work by actually going and doing small portions of the work itself. Or it can be any number of other things. We have some types of experiments that are more common than others that we found just work for certain people in certain situations. However, the possibilities are literally endless.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:59

Okay, Milestone four. For many people, this begins in month six, sometimes month five, and often will continue until you accept your offer or opportunity and make a shift in one way or another. Milestone four is where you take everything you've learned about what creates an ideal situation and everything you've learned through experimentation. And then you get to apply it and focus on what is the most strategically useful way to get to where you want to go. So this is the most tactical milestone. This is where things like interviewing and negotiation and possibly even resumes, although it doesn't always require resumes, enter into the process. The benefit of doing all the work upfront is that when you know exactly where you want to go, it's a lot easier to go and ask for it. Because for some people in milestone three, experimentation, they've now been able to go through and get to know an organization and they've now validated that this organization could be a great fit, and they already have relationships, and it becomes so much easier to be able to go and talk to some of those people and say, "Hey, look, I'm actually really interested in this organization. Now that I've met a bunch of people here, and I know what you all stand for. And I would love to work here. How might we make that happen in the future? What could that look like? What advice would you give me?" It puts you in a completely different situation to pursue work in a very, very different way, a much more organic way, I would say, a much better-fit way, not just for you, but also for the organization that you may be serving in the future, too. Is it harder? Yeah, absolutely. Does it create a better fit more frequently? Yeah, absolutely. So that's just one example of how that might work. In other cases, it could be more traditional interviewing, and in going through a more traditional process for applications, but not always. The benefit here is that when you know where you want to go, so much easier to chart a plan to be able to get there. And it's so much easier to be strategic about it and effective about it. Our clients, usually, as I mentioned earlier, arrive at this milestone in month five, month six, or someplace around there. Since we're in April now, that would typically be like October-ish. And you'd be working through the "job search" or tactical portion of the process for a few months, and then on average, accepting an offer in December, and starting at the beginning of the year. So if you're listening to this, and it's not April right now or beginning of May, then you can just add eight to nine months from where you're at currently. And then that'll take you approximately what we see on average for our clients to accept their offer, and begin to make their transition. And in fact, what we see is that we have a huge number of folks that ended up accepting their offer between month eight and month ten. Actually month, like 7.85, or something on average, I forget exactly what it is, but someplace around there too, you know, month ten.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:18

All that's good information. But what I want you to take from that is two things. Number one: to make an intentional career change, it's very different than when you're just searching for a job. Most people, like if we're helping get a job, just any kind of job, then like that's a two to three-month deal. That's really easy compared to what we're talking about. The other thing I think to point out is that once you have arrived in your role, once you've accepted an offer, moved into a new role, new organization, whatever it is, made a career change, it's not over. Just because you have the right situation, doesn't mean that you can operate well in it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:00

Milestone five is where we're at now. That is what often happens in months 10 to 12. So now you've entered the world of fulfilling work, you're in much, much better alignment. Milestone five is learning to thrive in work that actually fits you. And this usually rounds out your year of career change. A lot of times, we continue working with people after they found their role after they have accepted the offer after they have a start date, a lot of times we'll continue working with people in order to onboard and go into the new organization in a far different way than what they may have in the past. What that might look like is, let's just say you started your new job in January, over the following few months, you'll be educating and training the people that you're working with to honor your boundaries, to help them understand how to work with you best, and often to get over the first initial learning curve of behaving differently in work that fits. And it is a behavior change. And that's what most people underestimate or don't anticipate along the way. So that first 90 days is especially critical because that sets the tone for upcoming years in that organization. It also sets your earnings rate as well because a lot of times there's opportunities to go into that new organization or even in negotiation to be able to pre-negotiate how your earnings may transpire over the course of the upcoming four, or five, six months or even you know, a couple of years beyond that. And most people sort of just are like, "I'm going to get an offer and I'm going to accept the offer and I'm going to move along the way" and they miss the opportunity to be able to do things very, very differently in order to cultivate a situation that continues to improve and continues to become more ideal for them and continues to fit them. Okay, so let's say that you, it's January, you're into that work this time next year, you're in a new job, you have confirmed that this role is truly ideal for you. And by the way, think about that for a second. One year from now, your life could be completely different, you could be entering a new role, entering a new situation, and literally training your co-workers on how to best operate with you and around you in a way that's good for them and the way that's good for you very, very different way to think about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:36

So I would be remiss if I didn't mention Milestone Six, final milestone. It's about evolving your ideal career, continuing to iterate on what ideal looks like for you. That is a continuous cycle. A lot of times, people don't necessarily do the entire thing over again, but that evolution continues to happen. They're in a stage of refinement now, at this point. But here's what happens when people hear about these milestones, they often think, and sometimes they say to us, "Ah, Scott, I already have so much on my plate. I have kids, my kids have activities, I already have friends I don't want to lose touch with. My job is taking 40, 50, 75 hours a week. What on earth am I going to fit this work in that you're telling me is required for intentional career change?" And that starts to feel a little bit hopeless in one way or another. So let me help you understand some options. I think option one, this is always an option, you can hear all that and you could say, "You know, I'm just gonna continue settling for the rest of my life. I know this should be a priority for me, but I'm just actually not going to do anything about it. And I'm just never going to do it. And it doesn't sound like the greatest thing for me, or it's not worth it." And if that's good for you, then, that's your choice. It is still a choice. You could do what I did. I did it by myself. I painstakingly moved through figuring out how to make an intentional set of career changes. It took me approximately seven, almost eight years to figure this out. You could probably do it in less time. Maybe it takes you, you know, instead of seven years, maybe it takes you, I don't know, four years or five years, something like that, whatever. That's a possibility. You could do it alone. You can get help with it. Obviously, that's what we do as an organization. That's one of the reasons that we produce podcasts in order to provide that help in a variety of different ways and provide how to think differently about these sorts of things. Part of getting help would reduce down that time. What we see is that when you get help, these numbers are what we just talked about in this episode, on average, does it fluctuate? Is it different for each individual? Yeah, absolutely. But that 8 to 10-month period of time is what we see for our clients who are getting help and going through the process of identifying, on paper on purpose, what an intentional career change could look like and making that happen in the real world. Those are the average timeframes. What I don't want you to do is I don't want you to lock yourself into that. I do think it's important to recognize what the averages are. But for some people that can be longer, and for some people that can be shorter. I think the important part out of it is there's not one magical situation where one day you're gonna be able to all of a sudden fit all of this work that you perceive in, it is a lot of work, you've heard that on the podcast, in order to do anything intentionally. That's why most of the world is on autopilot as it relates to their career and just accepting what is coming in front of them. But also, everybody has different challenges. Everybody's challenges are different. And the reality is that we all have different challenges around bandwidth, and time, and other things. So you just have to make the decision to move forward imperfectly. And however long it takes, how long it takes, if it only takes you four months or five months, that's great. But if it takes you a year or even two years, so far, we haven't encountered anybody that's like, "Oh, yeah, I wish I didn't take two years on it. I wish that I didn't ever, you know, proceed forward." Instead, what people often say to real people, you've heard them on our podcast, they say, "You know what, this was way harder. It took longer than what I thought. And also, it was totally worth it. My only regret is that I didn't actually start sooner or that I didn't, you know, encounter this more intentional way of living until later in life."

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:35

So that's the thing I want to leave you with. If you're considering a career change, and you want to have an accepted offer before the end of the year or early next year, that means you need to start right now. Imperfectly, even when you don't have the perfect amount of time, even when you don't have it all worked out, making progress is way more important than getting it all figured out. The last thing I'd leave you with is if you want help in this, you know, there's variety of ways that we can help, certainly some of the podcast episodes that I mentioned here and the resources that I mentioned here, definitely, you can go to the show notes and take a look at those, and click on the past episodes. And certainly, you can listen to those. If you want help making this change, we actually only have 18 spots left for the month of May, and 22 for June. These tend to fill up pretty quickly with people wanting to make a change before the end of the year. So if that's something you believe that you're interested in, I would say reach out to us sooner rather than later. You can email me directly Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and put 'Conversation' in the subject line and we'll figure out the very best way that we can support you, or you can go click the link in the show notes that is happentoyourcareer.com/schedule. Any other way we can help, don't hesitate to email and ask. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I am out. Adios.

Bob Kalish 00:01

When you look at a timeline of your career, let alone your life, but let's just say your career, you know, as I'm reaching my 50s now, what did I want to do with the last 10 years?

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

Why is it that so many career changes don't work out? You make the decision to move from one role to another, but a few weeks or months go by, and you find yourself just as unsatisfied as you were in your last job. No good, right? Over and over again, we've heard from people who made unsuccessful career changes before reaching out to us. And it turns out, that when we break down what caused that lack of success is that they didn't necessarily experiment, or put in the time to experiment before jumping into a new role, a new company, a new industry, or something else. They just took a job at face value and expected it to be better than the last without a lot of evidence that it would fit them. This is why we recommend designing career experiments. Not only do they allow you to figure out what you really want without having to commit years to staying with another company or another role that potentially is not a fit. But this process, as it turns out, is far different from just showing up to a new role and expecting it to be rainbows and butterflies.

Bob Kalish 01:50

So as you're going through this experimental phase, you're going to see a lot of that transparency if you keep your eyes open, and say, "You know what, I wouldn't fit in that organization. I'm going to probably move on and glad to know them" respectful of their time, but it's just not what gonna serve me right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:10

That's Bob Kalish. Bob had been a concept chef. And he'd been in the same organization for 24 years, but he had begun to feel unfulfilled. And like, he just wanted to do something different. But he wasn't sure what that was. We got to work with Bob, and he did a lot of self-development work. He began learning about himself, what he really wanted, while simultaneously, learning about what could be next for his career by designing career experiments. In just a moment, you're gonna get to hear my conversation with Bob about some of the experimentation he's done. And I want you to know that there are infinite possibilities for what types of experiments to conduct or how to conduct different experiments. Also, we've observed that there are four types of experiments that we recommend most commonly because they're highly effective for more people. We dig into these four particular types in our book: Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work. But in this conversation with Bob, you're mostly going to hear about two specific types of these experiments. First, the social goldilocks. This type of experiment works similar to when Goldilocks tried all the chairs and all the beds and tasted all the porridge and all the balls. You're going to hear how Bob had a ton of different conversations with different people in different organizations in different roles, so he could learn about those organizations, and quickly find what's too hot, too cold, and just write for him for that next chapter of his career. He's also in the process of conducting what we would call a paid research experiment– where he's testing out a role on a temporary basis and getting compensated, well-compensated, for his work. So here's my conversation with Bob. He's telling me a little bit about his initial decision to make a career change.

Bob Kalish 04:01

When I remember when I had the conversation about, you know, I was going to step away from my job. And I was like, "I'm not really sure, but it might affect our work, our quality of life a little bit", and he was like, "Go for it. You're not happy. Go for it." He didn't care. He just wanted me to be happy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:18

That's amazing. That was your son?

Bob Kalish 04:21

That was my son.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:23

So tell me about that. Because it seems like your son was a pretty large part of some of the catalysts in one way or another if I understood correctly.

Bob Kalish 04:34

Absolutely. In different ways on I got into thinking about a career change, I was thinking about how I could influence him, maybe in saying that it's okay to change jobs around, you know, through your career. And it turns out that he was happier for me that I was making the move because I was coming out of a job or leaving a job that I had for 24 years invested in. So after 24 years to make a change, and people be happy about it was encouraging.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:09

That's amazing. Prior to you realizing that he and other people would be happy about you making that change, what did that feel like for you?

Bob Kalish 05:21

Well, I think there's a duality, right? And as far as my personality type goes, there's always going to be devil's advocate, right? So it's just me, that's how I prove things out. But I could have easily said, "I'm gonna just keep going. It's a steady-state thing." But there's something inside of you that you can't ignore. And when it's time, you either act or you don't act. I chose to act and see what's behind the other door.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:53

So that's really interesting. Let me ask you about that. Because I have seen it so many times, and I have, in some cases, been the person who doesn't act or maybe ignores it too long before I act, might be more accurate. So what do you feel like when you got to that point where you realize that you needed to change? What do you feel like caused you to act or allowed you to be able to do something about it?

Bob Kalish 06:20

I would say there's a couple of different things at work. It was the steady decline of fulfillment, okay, alongside the desire to be a better employee, to be a better father, to be a better husband, be a better person, I just felt like I was ready to grow as a person. And I couldn't really do that without changing that piece of my life. Now, the reality is, I also discovered, you discover a lot along this process, and I also discovered... I wasn't a very good communicator. I didn't tell people what I needed to be successful at work, in particular. And so how would they know? So I really learned so many things from the company that I worked with for 24 years. But at the end, things change. And I realized, not at the time, I needed you and your company to point this out as to why I was unhappy. I could not figure it out. And eventually, it just came to I wasn't working with any of my strengths. And the StrengthFinder kind of was a big point, a turning point for me. Not the biggest, though, but one of the biggest.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:43

Well, you had worked in the restaurant industry for, as you said, 24 years, right?

Bob Kalish 07:49

Well, 24 years at one company.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:51

Oh, 24 years at the same organization.

Bob Kalish 07:54

Yes. And we went through the private-public, private equity, private... like, well, just through the wringer over the years. It was a national brand. And at my last responsibility with that, I was a corporate chef/concept chef. And so I had stores from Boston to California.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:17

So I've been really fortunate to, over my career, get the opportunity to work with a few concept chefs. But what does a concept chef do for people who might not be familiar?

Bob Kalish 08:28

Wow, that's a big question. Yeah, I know. It's not what you might think if you're not familiar with how restaurants run, but I wasn't in the kitchen cooking every day. Let's just say that. You know, as you look at different responsibilities, food quality, food safety, purchasing, marketing, it's really cross-functional, working with facilities, developing menus, developing people, opening new stores, making sure you're hitting financial budgets, motivating people, you know, it goes on and on and on. And I was like, wait a minute, at one point I was just, not so long ago, 24 years ago, I was a sous chef, and you work your way up through and it's a wonderful thing to work through. Because you get to learn all the way through, right? And until you're in a position where you realize the people in the organization, the guests in the building and the business are all a balance that you have to, kind of like, juggling on a unicycle.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:34

Juggling on a unicycle. I love that. That is a perfect mental image of that. Well, let me ask you this, then. Once you realized that you needed to make a change, and you started acting, you had mentioned just a minute ago that one of the biggest keys was strengths, however, you also said it was not the biggest key. So tell me about that.

Bob Kalish 10:05

Well, I guess, when you're looking at things, I don't know, I don't want to get too deep on here, you know, with you right here, but every second counts, right? And if you pause for a second, guess what? That counted, right? And, you know, it's a combination of that. And when you look at a timeline of your career, let alone your life, but let's just say your career, what do you want to do with, you know, as I'm reaching my, into my 50s now, what did I want to do, right? With the last 10 years. Because I've already did that been there, right? What do I want to do next? What's going to fulfill me? And it just kind of keeps building momentum. Building momentum. I'm not looking for my legacy part of my career. But that's what I find myself in, not about me, but can I leave it better than what I got, right? And for the most part, I would say, we're going to try and hopefully we can influence one or two people. And I think that would be a win– one or two people. If everybody could influence one or two people in a way to make it better, you're winning.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:22

You know what's strange about that, I find that if you really set out to strongly influence one or two people, then most of the time, if you do a great job at that, it tends to influence so many more, which is strange how that works. It's very counterintuitive. But something else that you said just a minute ago really struck me too. You talked about how, in some ways, every second counts, and I can resonate with that. I mean, I was a weird little kid. So I remember when I was seven or eight years old, basically, in tears because we only have so many years left. I know that's a strange little kid. But that's how I thought about it in many different ways. It's still how I think about it to this day. And I think that what strikes me when you're talking about that is, it seems like the questions that you were trying to figure out were about, "How do you want to spend your time, in many ways, for the upcoming years?" Is that how you thought about it? Or tell me more about all this.

Bob Kalish 12:24

Absolutely. And one of my biggest influence in my life is my wife. And I remember her saying to me at one point, and this was when we were in our 40s. She said, "Hey, let's think about where we want to retire to." And I was tired. And you know, that's so far away, right? And I was... So the response I gave, "I don't know. What do you think? In the mountains, the beach?" And she goes, "No, what country?" And I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna have to think about this." You know, she's that person in my life that makes me think of the bigger picture. So I've always looked at my life as kind of a timeline that you don't know when it ends, right? So you've got to, you know, I know at some point I want to retire. When I first came on, my goal was simple, Scott, when I first came on and signed on, I wanted to just get that last patch of my career to retirement. If I had to drag it across the line on my back, that's what I was gonna do. And one of your coaches changed my mindset so quick. And she said, "Well, what if you were doing the things you love to do with the people you love doing it with, why would you want to retire?" And I was like, oh boy, much like my wife thing, "What country?" I felt like, you know what, I probably wouldn't want to retire if I was having fun with the people I wanted to have fun with doing the things I wanted to do. So all of a sudden, my mind started opening up again.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:59

That's a great takeaway. That's a wonderful takeaway. And I think that leads us down the road of something I wanted to talk to you about. It seems like part of that takeaway happens through the process of experimentation. And I know that's something that before we started recording, we said, "Hey, we want to get deep into sharing what you've done from a career design and career experimentation standpoint", because I think you've done a really nice job. So I'm curious, would you be willing to share a bit about how you started thinking about experiments and then what you did initially, and then what that has led to now?

Bob Kalish 14:37

Yeah, absolutely. Originally, I thought this was weird.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:42

You're not the only one.

Bob Kalish 14:43

This is awkward. Not because I didn't like to talk to people or what, you know, it's not traditional, right? Nobody does that. It's something you have to learn to feel comfortable with for sure. And then you cannot forget it. You know, then it's just part of your DNA and speaking with people and experimenting. I spoke with a lot of different people in organizations through and I think my BS detector is really high. And as I spoke with people I could really figure out quickly whether I wanted to be part of an organization or not. I could really quickly determine whether they're "cultural on the wall", match their culture in the building. And I think, I don't know, the ratio was probably, I don't know, 20:1, 30:1, I don't know, before you got, "Whoa, this is really interesting." But through that, you're learning what you don't want to be so that you can learn what you do want to be. You don't know what that is, or good is until you see what that is, right? Getting out there and filtering through and seeing how people are happy or not happy, you know, reading people. And so as you're going through this experimental phase, you're going to see a lot of that, that transparency, if you keep your eyes open, and say, "You know what, I wouldn't fit in that organization. I'm going to probably move on and glad to know them, respectful of their time, but it's just not what gonna serve me right now."

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:26

There's so much buried in there. I want to just unpack that for just a minute. First of all, for a little bit of context, it sounds like you're referring to probably one of the most popular types of experiments that we'll often run, we call it the "Social Goldilocks", where you get to have lots of conversations relatively quickly with different people, different organizations in order to glean everything that you can and make some decisions about, "Is it the right organization for me? Is it the right set of people for me? Is this the right type of role for me? Etc." And I think something that stood out to me and just how you're talking about that is, you're saying, "Hey, it's not just about what their answers are, it's about how they answer. Am I getting the sense that they're actually happy? Am I getting the sense that they're feeding me a line of BS?"

Bob Kalish 17:17

I guess the best thing about the experimenting phase is there's really nothing to lose. And once I figured that out, it put me in the driver's seat, and I was going to be myself. I wasn't going to, I could have gone through the interview just fine. I go to interviews or conversations or an answer to any way they would have liked to hear. I chose not to. I chose to be myself and tell them the things that I was up to and what I had planned because it's a partnership. And I wouldn't want to go into any relationship with falsehoods, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:58

Yeah. What advice would you give to someone who wants to be able to bring more of themselves and have more of themselves show up in those conversations? Because we all know that's important, right? Like, if I ended up getting an opportunity, if I've chosen to not be myself, then ultimately, I get hired for being somebody else, which doesn't help any, right?

Bob Kalish 18:20

Yeah, I think there's two things: identifying what is true to you, what is important, and showing discipline through the conversation. It's about weaving yourself into the conversation. It's not about going in there and demanding or telling them what you're going to be or what you're going to do. It's more of the conversation and how you weave it into the conversation. It should be natural. If you're talking to the right people, then they're asking the right questions. And that conversation isn't just, I don't know, I guess checking off boxes for them. That might be an indicator, right? I got that feeling from a few people that they immediately thought I was looking for work with them. And I was just experimenting and talking with them. And they were like, almost trying to press an interview. And I wasn't ready. And frankly, I didn't want to. After a short conversation, there's some people, you know, you don't want to waste their time, but you cut it off as soon as you can because you don't want to waste their time and you don't want to waste your time. But you leave it friendly, of course. And you're glad to meet them. It's just not a fit for you right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:38

Do you remember any of those conversations that stood out? That went particularly well where you feel like you did a great job of showing what was true to you and then showing some of that discipline in the conversation to be able to, insert it where it is organic, as opposed to just telling them, hey, I don't know, whatever the opposite would be, I guess. But tell me about one of those conversations and what you remember about it and how you did that.

Bob Kalish 20:06

I guess to come to mind: one was a very large company, and I was speaking with somebody in the organization. And I spoke about some of my passions. And they said, which really surprised me, like, wow, we never really thought about that. That might be something that you could cultivate through. And this is the coaching part. I was talking about, "I'd love to be a coach at some point, you know", and they said, "Well, we have a lot of chefs. And that might be something that's really interesting to us down the road. But, you know, we don't really have that position right now." You heard that before, right? We don't have that position. And like, that's great, but maybe down the road. And knowing that I had some work to do before I was their coaching. And it's one of the things that I'm actually moving toward is, you know, how do I get myself in a coaching position? Is that teaching? Is it actual executive chef coaching? Is it that position of helping that one person, like, we spoke about earlier, how do we do that? And how do we build a business model from that? Something you would probably be one of my connectors for, right? It's not easy. A lot of work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:23

It is. Yes. It is a many year project for sure. So that's interesting, too, even just that one conversation that you're describing to where you are... I heard you say that you presented your passion or something that you were excited about rather, and in this case, someday doing coaching for chefs, or for that industry. And I think what's kind of cool that you described is that they responded to that, sounds like, emotionally, like, "Oh, wow. There could be something there." And then that's a level of feedback for you. Well, at the same time, it sounds like you also took away from that conversation, too, "Hey, I'm gonna need to collect some more experiences in order to do this in the way that I want." Both are really valuable pieces of feedback even though it sounds like for that organization, like nothing panned out beyond just exploring, right? One of the things that I wanted to ask you about too, is, you have done a really nice job, not just with some of the, what we might call "initial level experiments", like the social Goldilocks, what we just talked about as an idea of being able to connect with lots of people for short periods of time, and then be able to gather lots of information to make decisions about "Is this organization right for me? Is this role right for me?" That's a really common one that we do. And it's really valuable for many people. But it's not the only one. And I think that you've done a really nice job also doing other types of experiments where you're going into a role, what we might call "paid research" in one way or another if you're not completely sure this is something you want to do for a very long period of time. Can you tell us a little bit about what led up to these other types of experiments for you, and how they worked? And how you got to them?

Bob Kalish 23:14

Sure. Well, as you go through the process, you just start trying to think of everything possible that you could possibly do, and then scratch them off the list, right? And consulting came up. And I was like, "You know, that might be a great opportunity for me to look at things in a different light." I think what I liked about it was not being emotionally attached to one thing for too long. And, you know, go in there, get the job done, move on to the next thing, there's a certain freedom about that in my mind that I enjoyed. I thought if, while I was consulting, I could make a positive influence in the dynamics in the kitchen, if I could get the conversation going, if I could remove frustrations from the team, then maybe that might be something that would actually fulfill me– one case at a time, one job at a time. And so I kicked around the idea quite a bit. And yeah, I spoke with a larger company about consulting and just didn't get a great feel for it. Like, probably a little bit too much desk kind of stuff and not enough people. I spoke with a very successful consulting chef out of Texas, and, you know, very generous with his time. I was respectful and it was one of them five minute conversations that ended up being 35-40 minutes. Those are super, super helpful. And it got me a little closer to home and said, "Okay, that's something that interests me. But maybe not enough coaching yet." So that's kind of how I ended up where I am now in the experiment.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:08

That's so interesting. So then what ended up leading to the opportunity that you have now? Because right now you've been experimenting for roughly the last six months in a consulting role, right? How did that happen, Bob?

Bob Kalish 25:23

Yeah. Tight-knit community. I was fortunate enough that I connected with a regional restaurant tour. And I went and talked to him. And he's like, "What's going on?" And I've known him for 20 years. And I'm like, "Hey, well, this is kind of the..." you know, he goes, "Well, that's really interesting." And I was like, "Yeah, you know, it's tough to get started." And he's like, "Well, I started..." He said to me, "I started my career consulting. And we have a nice little portfolio now of restaurants, six concepts." And he said, "Why don't you start consulting for me?" And I was like, "What a wonderful idea to get started." And I mentioned a few other things that I was interested in as well, the transparency that we had talked about earlier. And he was interested in that. And so as I was telling you earlier about weaving things in the conversations, this is the ultimate. I not only was able to speak with somebody, which is always the best thing, just talking to somebody is always great, whether it leads somewhere or not.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:32

It creates that connection, right?

Bob Kalish 26:33

Yeah. But not only did we find a mutual need, an opportunity with each other, he saw a vision that I had, and was willing to even extend a hand and say, "Hey, I can help you with that, with connections. I have a dream about writing a book." And he's like, "Well, I can help you with that as well." So I started putting some connectors together. And all of a sudden, I found myself in a great situation with people I respect, everything that I kind of mapped out and put, I guess, everything's a filter. And all of my super strengths are one of the filters that people have, that organizations have to pass through for me to accept them, right? And we're not, you know, there's the bare minimum stuff that we talked about– the money, the benefits, whatever, you know, whatever the bare minimum is, all that needs to be there, it is important, right? But for me, it's not the entire package. It's just, that's just what needs to happen. And I think most people when they're looking for a new job, and air quotes, they're looking at just that package, and then hoping everything else is going to fall into place, the culture and being a valued employee and working within their strengths. But guess what, chances are, they didn't set themselves up for success. And what are they going to do next time? They're going to look for more money, right? How much is enough, Scott, right? Like, there's a balance act is all I'm trying to say. There doesn't have to be a cap on happiness, and salary or benefits. They're not mutually exclusive but they're all part of a package that you have to get together in your mind.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:25

What did you hope to learn from this particular experiment that you're... and I know, you actually have multiple experiments going on at the same time, which I think is super fun. That's very much how I live my life. Like its continuous experimentation, all the time, and that creates the variety that I need personally. But for you, when you set out in this and said, "Look, I'm going to accept this consulting role with this group. And it really sounds like a great opportunity for me", what did you hope to learn from that?

Bob Kalish 28:53

I wanted to, first of all, I wanted to see how I could influence an organization that consultants generally aren't like. They're coming in and they're telling everybody what they did wrong, right? And that's the perception. The reality is for myself. I want to come in and help. And I want to... I've been in their shoes before, and I want to relate to them. By the way, one of my signature strengths is relators.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:25

I am not surprised at all, Bob.

Bob Kalish 29:28

Yeah, I want to build their trust. And I want them to feel the victory. It's not my victory. I want them to feel victory. And I wanted to, part of the experiment was, to see if I could accomplish that. And the return on investment, frankly, that was super important to me early on in the experiment. I feel like I've covered that return on investment over time and over again. So that's not as much of a pressure for me right now. Even though I'm looking for opportunities to help the business in monetary ways, I know that what I've brought is enough that it wasn't a mistake bringing me on, let's just say that. And there's plenty of other opportunities for us to work in the future together too. And you can take it off in chunks, as people can handle it. Too much too fast, it's gonna lead to failure. But a steady line of that, of a strong foundation, is what I hope to provide for this group.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:32

That's interesting. So it sounds like part of your goal was to be able to prove to yourself as well, that you could deliver this type of value and do so in the way that you want it to show up. You and I sound like you've met some of the same consultants over the years. These are my expectations, which is amazing. And so what did, you know, now that you're six months into this, what do you feel like you have actually learned compared to what you hoped, or what surprised you?

Bob Kalish 31:04

I think what surprised me was needing to develop the self-discipline not to drive the initiative myself. And trying to create an awareness and a foundation of how you roll something out in a way that's going to last. It's not a quick email to the team and saying, "Hey, we're doing this now." It's the reasons why and what it really takes to have a successful rollout. And to take ownership and accountability to a rollout. That's something that was natural to me, and the follow through. And now I'm whispering in the background to somebody saying, "Hey, you might want to do this." "Hey, follow up with this" and let them take the responsibility and accountability.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:55

That's really interesting to you, for yourself. Part of it is, it sounds like, been developing self-awareness that you need to work differently than what you have in the past. So that's pretty amazing when you think about it because you're actively getting to contribute, while, at the same time, that you're getting these learnings, as well as developing how you want to do this in the future too. You're very much building the airplane as you're flying it, which is kind of wonderful.

Bob Kalish 32:25

That's fair. Yeah, I like it. The second thing I really wanted to get out of it was the interpersonal relationships with coaching people on how to be better bosses, leaders, whether it's suggesting a culture book to them at the appropriate time. I remember one of the chefs saying, "I'm frustrated. I can't seem to get these guys to listen to me right now. It's like, we're scattered" and I was able to suggest the book to them. And hopefully, we're in process of in reading that and what accountability looks like and why people struggle with getting their work done. And just taking another view, and evaluating leadership. One of the things that Megan and I talk about a lot is being a trail guide. It's something I stole from her unapologetically, I think she's stolen from somebody else. But, you know, if we could be a trail guide, I don't really know about mentorship anymore. It's a very long process, mentorship, but if we could be trail guides to each other for short term, for short time, maybe it's a long time, who knows. I think that fits better for what the way I look at things. If I could help trail guide somebody, and by all means, use resources around me to help get the things. I think there's a synergy in the community about that, that I like the way that feels, better than mentorship.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:53

Yeah, I agree. Mentorship is really interesting... It's an interesting word in itself. But I think it brings a lot of connotations for what people think of mentorship, and not all of them are useful is what I found out over the years. So I resonate more with the trail guide mentality as well, even though I've had many very wonderful mentors in a variety of different ways. But yeah, I can totally appreciate that. The one other question that I really wanted to ask you, we've got many people who have listened to this and we'll be listening to this that have made the decision to make a career change. But you and I both know that you don't just necessarily do all the work on paper, and then find some level of fulfillment in your next step. That's a rarity. Often it's where, I don't know, we'll throw in some analogies here. Like it's where the rubber meets the road is going to be the where you get out and get to interact with people and get various different types of experiments going so that you can have inputs coming in and recognize that, "Oh, hey, the type of culture that I thought I wanted isn't exactly what I wanted. I can now refine that. I now have a different level of knowledge and input to be able to do that." So my actual question for you as someone who has really changed a lot of their thinking around experiments is, what advice would you have for other people that really do want to find some level of fulfillment with their work and decide how they spend their time in a way that's good for them? And what can they do through experimentation?

Bob Kalish 35:34

Well, I think what they can do through experimentation is open up their mind to therefore open up doors, right? That's what they can do. That's the biggest thing that will come from it. I think the toughest part, maybe through is, getting yourself ahead of where you really are and saying, "Oh, wow, this might lead to a job", you know, and before you set out everything because that leads to disappointment, right? You have a false sense of building into something. Ultimately, yeah, you want a career that you're going to be happy with. But you can't make that out of something that's not there. And that experiment, getting rid of the "no's", so you can get to the "yes" can be a long process. It could be a short process. The first one might be the one, right? And you hit the fastball. The first pitch fastball, you have to hit it, right? But that chances are, that's not going to happen. And I wouldn't recommend that because you're probably going to miss. The timepiece is important. You can't put a time on it but the timepiece is important because you learn so much overtime– you evolve, your mind changes, at some point, it's going to lock in. And then filters are going to be established, and the process gets quicker, the more times you do it, and it becomes easier. And the first time it's so awkward, it just feels weird. That's all I can tell you– get over it. Just get over it, get to the next one, and that'll feel less weird. And it'll feel less weird after that. And then it'll be natural, and you'll be able to represent yourself in a way. And probably get closer to that, yes, every time you're doing it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:27

Walking. Learning to walk probably felt weird when we were one or two, but we just don't remember it. So every time do something new, worthwhile or not, it's gonna get to feel weird. So I really appreciate that advice.

Bob Kalish 37:42

My sister told me along the way, like, real change is real hard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:48

Yes, as it turns out.

Bob Kalish 37:49

Yeah, there was times that resonated, for sure. But it's so worth it at the end. For me, it unlocked everything. I'm the best version of me I've ever been in my life right now. And I have a ton more to grow, for sure. But just knowing that I'm the best version of me, that's a big win, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:15

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:07

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

Speaker 3 39:13

I was stuck in that mindset of, "But I have a degree. I really should be working in my degrees." I thought I couldn't make the connection. So the imposter syndrome kicked in that you don't have the skill set to do it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:25

What happens when everything you thought that you wanted to do for a career isn't? You go to school, you get an education, maybe even a master's degree, and then realize immediately upon graduation that what you got your education in it just isn't going to be your ideal career fit. So then what? Was it all a waste of time? How do we move into a new field? So many questions.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:52

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

Bobby Grimm 00:01

I think that was one of those moments that I was just realizing that being good at something, though, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be happy at it. Or that is this fulfilling as something else might be.

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44

I think all the time when people find our podcast, they think about, "Well, I must not enjoy my job", or, "This is for people who don't really like their work and want to do something that they actually do like." And actually what we find is that's not always the case. What about if you were changing careers, and you've had a job that actually was something that you really enjoyed, and maybe you've even found that it's impactful, or it's what we might call "meaningful work" or "more fulfilling work", and you're even great at your job because you're using your strengths, and you have a team that you love working with? Okay, so if your current role checks these boxes, you might wonder why you still feel that tug to make a change. Is it possible to justify leaving what many people might consider a great career? The short answer is yes. The grass may actually be greener on the other side.

Bobby Grimm 01:39

I wasn't leaving because of some something had gone awry. I was leaving because something on the other side of the horizon just felt like it was called.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:49

That's Bobby Grimm. Bobby is a career change veteran. He started his career as an attorney and eventually transitioned to the nonprofit sector. After eight years in his nonprofit role, he wasn't necessarily unhappy. But he had gotten to the point where he couldn't stop thinking, "What else is out there?" Bobby did a great job setting boundaries around the fact that he needed to change. I'm actually really excited for you to hear how he took the time to dig in and get very granular on exactly what an ideal career, an ideal next step would look like for him. But first, here's Bobby going way back to the beginning of his career.

Bobby Grimm 02:27

I was finishing up college shortly after 9-11, job market was changing as a result of that tragedy. But from my standpoint, I had always thought about going on for something past College Law School had kind of been on the radar. So I went and really didn't enjoy just about all of law school. But I came out, and my first job was a judicial clerk. So I worked for a judge on the Indiana Court of Appeals. And so I did that for about a year and then went into private practice. And I was primarily a business litigator. So that's kind of the high level, but I did that for, I think I practiced law in total for about eight years or so. And during that time, I had just had kind of an interesting conversation with a friend about, "I'm not sure if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life." And that was just really informal, literally sitting around the pool talking. And maybe a year or so later, she called me up and was like, "Hey, have you ever heard of KIPP?" I said, "No. What's KIPP?" And it was, you know, KIPP is a network of nonprofit charter schools. We got talking because she'd come across a role that she thought I might be interested in if I was truly interested in, like, a non-traditional path after practicing law. So I looked at the role, interviewed for it, the person that interviewed me ended up leaving the organization, so the things just kind of died there. But I was really fascinated with what KIPP was doing. I scheduled like a tour when I visited the local schools in Indianapolis. It was just really taken by what I saw. So I was like, "I got to be involved with this." I started volunteering there for about two years. And then fast forward a couple years, they got a big grant. And that executive director said, "Hey, this might be a shot in the dark, but you clearly care about our organization. I'm creating a new role. And I'm wondering if you would be interested in applying for it." So I started working there. So I wasn't in the charter school world then for about the next seven or eight years, I think it was.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:35

What caused you to decide that you wanted to move on from that role, that situation?

Bobby Grimm 04:43

Yeah. So I felt limited in where I could go. I felt a little bit limited in terms of like, I don't know that I want to be pigeonholed into education to finish my career, and I was already approaching that seven or eight-year mark where it was like, "well, a lot of people would probably view me as pigeonholed", so to speak.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:01

It's that eight-year mark, by the way? Eight years where you spent in attorney land. And then eight years... it's the time period for change.

Bobby Grimm 05:11

I guess so. And honestly, that was part of it too. It's just, I think about like the world we live in, it's so normal for a lot of people to move on after a couple three years, it's pretty rare that people stay in a job for their whole career, let alone, or even just the eight years that I did, but I was ready for a change. And then I think I also just was, I can tell that the way I felt on a day-to-day basis over time was just not feeling fulfilled. I was concerned about coming home and carrying the stress, or the frustrations or the dissatisfaction, the wonder, or the wanderlust of like, what else could be next, and I'm not doing anything about it, and that's affecting the way that I come home and act with my kids or with my wife. So there was a part of that. And honestly, I didn't know what was going to be next. So I just knew that where I had been, or where I was, I had sat on it for long enough to know that nagging feeling of wanting to make a change didn't go away. So I finally just had to do something about it. And I put a stake in the ground. I gave nine months' notice saying, "I'd love to finish out the rest of our fiscal year if you'll have me." And that was done without knowing what was next, I was going to figure that out. But I felt like it was the right thing to do to give my colleagues as much notice as possible so that they could kind of work and I could collaborate with them to find my successor or successors.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:50

I love that. That's actually a technique that I've used many times over, where putting that stake in the ground, as you say, causes it to become a reality, or for, in my case, I think about it causes me to make movements I would not otherwise make or more rapidly than I would make without it. And it sounds like that same thing was true for you. Was that something that was uncomfortable at the time? Or did it really just make sense for you and feel very comfortable? What do you remember feeling as you were doing that, as you were having those conversations with the leadership team, as you were talking to the people at your organization and letting them know, "I'm going to... here's the steak, I'm leaving in nine months" what was that like for you?

Bobby Grimm 07:36

Yeah, it was hard at times. I mean, and it was hard throughout, really, the next... until I found my current job. So I mean, I wrestled with it. And I'd say for a couple of different reasons. You know, when I had the conversation with my boss in October, and gave that nine-month notice, part of his response was, "Help me understand why. Because you're really good at what you do. You're doing work that's impactful, and it matters." And he was saying this with all sincerity. And the third thing was, "You like the people you work with" like that's a pretty good combination. And all of that was true. And my response was like, "Yeah, you're right. I think that was one of those moments that I was just realizing that being good at something, though, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be happy at it, right? Or that it's as fulfilling as something else might be, or something that comes naturally or that best leverages your signature strengths versus, right?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:33

Do you remember what you said at the time to your boss? Do you remember how that conversation went? Or what words you use as you're talking through it?

Bobby Grimm 08:40

Yeah. I think it was similar to... I said, "You're right." I said, "You're 100% right. And I don't know what's next. I just know that I've been kind of thinking about making this change. I've been sitting on it, I've been talking to my wife and friend about it. And literally just trying to figure out if this is like a temporary thing, or if this is... if I'm really ready for that next step. And so, I didn't make this decision lightly. There was a lot of, like, thoughtfulness that went into it." I think I just, going back to the stake in the ground, I think I just said, "I put a lot of thought into it. And that feeling hasn't gone away that I'm just ready for a change. And if I already know now that I'm going to be looking and leaving I'd rather just be as transparent and collaborative with you to help find my successor versus giving you some, you know, two weeks' notice before I leave" and again, there's nothing, like you said, I don't think that it's wrong in a lot of situations to give two weeks notice, but I think for me, I just... I know that if I'm going to be leaving, let's plan for it. And I trusted that they would be right by me in that process, not showing me the door sooner than necessary, and they did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:52

What do you feel like it was that caused you to decide to seek out other help for moving back into a different type of role?

Bobby Grimm 10:04

I just found myself trying to reflect, trying to think about what I enjoyed, and I think I was doing some of the right things. But one day, I just literally got on and Googled– "How to make a career change?" or something like that. And I found Happen To Your Career pops up. And I see that they have this eight-day mini course. I'm like, "Okay, cool. This sounds great and it's free. This is an easy way for me to have some support to guide me through this process." Well, me being super detail-oriented or thorough, and I think I enjoyed the reflective part of the process as well. That eight-day course probably took me more like a month or two. I don't know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:49

I could really see you digging into it for sure.

Bobby Grimm 10:52

Yeah, I mean, I literally would sit down and reflect and journal on those things. And then I just got to the point that I felt like... I had looked maybe at some other opportunities as well. But I felt like, if this is the kind of content that you have and can use for free, I'm gonna give them a call. So I scheduled a call, talked to Phillip, and just from the time that I did the 8-day mini-course to talking to Phillip to meeting you, I kind of, and other people in the organization just felt very authentic, like I said before, it's important to me, your normal people who genuinely care about helping people. It's not just the business and maybe if I think that all the other people are normal that means I'm the crazy one. It just felt right. So yeah, started working with you both, and then after that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:44

Well, I have appreciated the opportunity to work with you. And you and I actually got to do something, I don't think we've ever done quite the same way. You and I got to work together for a couple of sessions– two or three sessions at the very beginning– as you're getting started really defining your strengths and beginning to understand how to utilize those for what you want to do next. And I wanted to ask you about the process. After the initial work on strengths, what did you find to be the most challenging parts of making a career change for you, especially in the way that you wanted to do it?

Bobby Grimm 12:26

Yeah, a couple of things come to mind immediately. One was just that it took longer than expected. And part of that was driven by... maybe the, arguably the uniqueness of the type of opportunity that I was looking for. I was also... it took a little while for me, and part because of that, I think, because of just some fits and starts and some of the changes with like my wife's job, I kind of had to run hard at times, slow down at times, deal with stuff with the family, the kids when they're sick, etc. So the duration really wore on me and it was hard. I would also say along the way, this, I wouldn't say that we met and had a few sessions, and all of a sudden, I knew exactly what I was going to chase. And I never deviated from it going forward. I don't think that that's what listeners should really expect, right? I think you're going to start out in the process, discover some things that are important to you, and the types of environments or people and work that you are attracted to. And then you're going to chase that but probably pivot along the way. And it's going to be this nonlinear path, at least for me it was, right? So along the way, throughout this, I think I would think for a moment that I'm chasing the right thing. And I might be really excited about an opportunity even and maybe... and I had a few situations in which I was, I made it pretty far like to a finalist round of interviews, and then didn't land the job. And while that was hard in the moment, something that I subsequently learned from it was, the next time something came along, I was still getting excited about it. I was still... I was like this is actually better than the one before. And I don't think that's because I'm some eternally optimistic person. I'm pretty realistic and practical. But I think that what helped me understand was, there's not just like one dream job out there, there's not just like one path that I could probably follow and be content, or it's gonna, you know, there were multiple different opportunities, all of which checked a number of really key boxes for me. And so when I got to the point, you know, as this process drove on for me, and I started to realize that, I think both with that realization and then also just the conversations with me and my wife, where we had to, again, put a stake in the ground, like, "Okay, it's time for me to get back to work." We put a stake in the ground on July 1st. I need to either be in that new job or really close like wrapping up the final details of one. And once I had realized that there were a number of different paths that I could follow, and I was okay with just saying "yes" to an opportunity and seeing where the path would lead and what unfolded instead of frankly being as picky as I had been, things just... I got a lot more, I started getting a lot more traction. I had far more interviews in that last month or two than I had leading up to that. And then July 1st came and I was sitting on two or three offers, some that were better than others or better fits. But I ended up actually having this interview on July 1st, I remember it was a Friday. And this is the day that I'm supposed to write, I'm supposed to have all of this wrapped up. And I had this interview scheduled for a job I applied for and I had said, I talked to my wife and to Phillip and I think I had a long walk while I talked with my sister the day before, I was like, "Look, I'm sitting on these couple offers, I gotta make a decision." But my sister asked, "Do you have something... Is there anything else like any other irons in the fire?" I said, "Yeah, I've got this interview tomorrow. But I need to make a decision." Like this is the timeframe that I'm working on. And unless they're ready to move light and quick, and they see something in me immediately, I'm not expecting it to happen. Well, that Friday morning interview, the conversation was like, "Hey, we've actually got this other opportunity. Would you be interested in hearing about it? I think you might be a great fit for it." And long story short, that was the job that I'm now in.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:40

Well, here's what I think is fascinating about your story. It is this really interesting, almost paradoxical set of directions. Because initially, you had to put this very firm stake in the ground to get movement forward that caused you to stop looking for, let's call it the perfect thing. And then start looking for things that really check some of the most important boxes and just moving forward on those in order to see what happened. And then, at some point, that had to shift again, that type of mindset in some ways had to actually shift again, because it sounds like you had two or three offers there. And none of them were quite exactly what you were looking for. And you knew that, and you had to almost say, "Okay, well, in some ways going to be slightly less firm and continue looking", as opposed to saying, "Okay, well, these offers are here, the timelines here. And, okay, I just need to pick one of these and not worry about anything else." So it's almost like, in some ways, you had to bounce back and forth from mindset. But I'm wondering if that's how you felt about it? How did you look at that situation? And what would you advise other people, as they're making career changes, how would you advise them to think about this type of process?

Bobby Grimm 17:58

I would just say, for me, by the tail end of it, when I started to see things really happening, it was... I'm sure part of it was a result of a lot of work and preparation that went into things. And I was finally honing in on more of the right things, and approaching those opportunities in the right way or a more effective way, right? I better understood my strengths, I better understood how to articulate my experiences, I had a better understanding and handle on how to explain what I was looking for, and what was important to me. So all of that was real. But I also think that, as I said, part of it was just having the wreck when I finally recognized that there wasn't going to be just this one ideal job, or at some point in the process, I had actually poured a lot of time and effort into creating my own job description, which wasn't a waste of time. But it's also, at least for me, creating my own job description again, after I did that, I would say, kickstart me in the right direction. But I also didn't land where I thought I would, right? And that's okay. I think I learned additional things that were important. My criteria changed a little bit, so to speak. And so when I fast-forwarded towards that tail end, I had a better understanding that I wasn't looking for just one thing. I was looking for a set of criteria and what was going to be the best fit, and I was just willing to... I was more open-minded about saying "yes" to an opportunity that sounded, like, great. Phillip had to often remind me like, "Don't stress about this one that you're not excited about. You don't have to say yes to it", right? "But when there are other ones that are really good fits, you don't know, you never know until you're in it, whether it's going to be great, or maybe it's great for a while and then things change." So when I started to just go into it more with this open mind of being ready to say yes to a good-to-great opportunity, then all of a sudden, it seemed like I was finding more of those good-to-great opportunities. And yeah, trusting the process, I guess, like praying for things and literally moving towards that July 1st. And then on July 1st, the job that I'm in opened up, and I didn't see it coming from anywhere. To me, it felt like it was meant to be. It felt right. It felt, I kind of felt like God had said, "Yeah, here's what you've been working towards." That may not be the way everybody else feels, or you know, and I certainly didn't feel that way every day of the rest of the process, but that's kind of how it all came together. Really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:41

It's so fascinating to me how you put it, and I say you, but really, this is true of many of the people that we've been able to help guide through career changes in one way or another. Where you put in all of this work, and it's this process of tweaking and evolution and learning and being open to new things, and then changing your mindset and replacing these learnings with new and better learnings and all the things that you mentioned. But then only after that does this crazy serendipitous seemingly almost, like well serendipitous, or, like God put it there, or this was meant to be, or this... those things happen way too frequently to be able to ignore. And in fact, anybody who's listened to this podcast for more than 10 episodes has probably heard that on one or two of those episodes in one way or another. So it's this really interesting observation that I've seen again and again and again, where almost luck or external forces meet preparation. And I think that that is so fun to see. And I think that that's a big element that is hard to pin down for people, and hard to, certainly, it's hard to trust. It's even harder to trust for me. But we keep seeing it happen over and over again. And it's so fun that that's a part of your story.

Bobby Grimm 21:58

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:59

If you think back to any of those moments where you realize that, "You know what, this is no longer as good as it was. This is no longer what I want anymore." And you're thinking about being right on the edge of that precipice where like, "Should I do this?" "Should I not do this?" "Is it time to create change?" What advice would you give to people who are in that moment and they're trying to decide what's right for them for the next step in the future?

Bobby Grimm 22:25

Yeah, I have thought about this. And I think for me, what it probably boils down to, I mean, I think you kind of nailed it, in some sense. Like, there are jobs that I've had that I was in love with for a while, right, I felt like I had made the right step. It's okay for people to first recognize that things change over time, right? So that one's really fulfilling job, it's not an indictment on the organization, the people you work with, or anything that's wrong with you to decide that you're ready for a change at some point. You might have outgrown that job, it was once the stretch opportunity you are looking for, and now you have conquered it and you're ready for the next thing. But that next thing is just not there in your current organization, whatever it may be. But for me, I think, and I've heard this many times on the podcast, right, people, myself included, will often sit on the decision to make a change for longer than maybe then they should. I think paying attention to how you feel, as you're deciding, though, is part of the process. Like for me, it was, I think I touched on this when I told my boss, leaving my last organization like I had been sitting on it for a long time. And what it ultimately came down to was the idea of something new and different, even if I didn't know what it was, continued to be more exciting than staying where I was. So even though I was more like afraid of, I don't know what I'm going to do, I didn't have any answer for my boss when I left about what was next, I didn't have anything really negative to say about, like, my experience really, like I wasn't leaving because of something had gone awry. I was leaving because something, on the other side of the horizon, just felt like it was calling, right? And that remained true through the ups and downs after I had put in my notice, right? I had opportunities to stay where I was and decided to not chase the career change idea. But again, like what I often found myself, where I found myself landing was, the idea of staying feels more tiring or exhausting or just less exciting than making a change and chasing that, right? And I would say I've seen that in conversations with like, even just with some of my close friends or brother-in-laws, when I've described the change that I did make, some of them are doing great in their careers and they've been there for a while, but part of the response I got was how that sounds really fun and exciting and almost like energizing to just go and do something different. And so paying attention to that, if you feel like that itch that you've been sitting with just isn't going away, then it's probably time to explore it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:23

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 26:15

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

Speaker 3 26:20

When you look at a timeline of your career, not on your own life, but let's just say your career. You know, as I'm reaching my 50s now, what did I want to do with the last 10 years?

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:35

Why is it that so many career changes don't work out? You make the decision to move from one role to another, but a few weeks or months go by, and you find yourself just as unsatisfied as you were in your last job. No good, right? Over and over again, we've heard from people who made unsuccessful career changes before reaching out to us. And it turns out, that when we break down what caused that lack of success is that they didn't necessarily experiment, or put in the time to experiment before jumping into a new role, a new company, a new industry, or something else. They just took a job at face value and expected it to be better than the last without a lot of evidence that it would fit them. This is why we recommend designing career experiments. Not only do they allow you to figure out what you really want without having to commit years to staying with another company or another role that potentially is not a fit. But this process, as it turns out, is far different from just showing up to a new role and expecting it to be rainbows and butterflies.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:42

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.

Jason Bollman 00:01

I had to think through the worst-case scenario and realize that worst case, I would be okay. I would leave the company. I would go figure out something else to do and it'd be fine.

Introduction 00:17

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

Big decisions. You know how these work. Our brains usually fight us and they want us to stay in our comfort zones. Plus, if you're like me, you can turn nearly anything into logic. Yes, I know I'm not loving work and my boss is a little way overbearing, but there could be another opportunity four months from now. Many people find themselves torn when it comes to choice, like, staying in the same place versus making a career change. They know, you might even know, and feel deep down inside that something's not right. But we still struggle with taking a chance to actually make a change. Why on earth do we fight what we know to be true in our core? That's the question we're going to dig into today. We see how others reach their goals and we think we must follow in their footsteps to reach the same success. But the truth is, we don't have to follow them. If you want to take more control of your life, this episode is absolutely for you.

Jason Bollman 01:37

I basically came in and said, "Hey, I'm leaving. But I don't know when yet." And they've kept me around. I think that they know that whenever I come and I say, "Hey, I want to take on this thing." I'm not being selfish. I really see opportunity for improvement. So I think it gave me a little bit of a benefit of the doubt by really coming from that value early on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:56

There's something that gets so often missed. When we're wanting to make a change in our life, of any kind, we're usually focused on what comes next– immediately next, and how do I make that change now, right this second. Here's the reality, though, it's not just the now and the next that is the reason to make a change. Instead, it's actually what comes much later, and what making that initial change has paved the way for that is really the good stuff. And that's why we're bringing Jason back on the podcast, and in a more recent conversation, I had with him two years later, so you can see the impact in his life. And what making that initial change and having those initial awkward conversations with his boss to create a role that fit him, well, you can see what how that turned out, and all the things that opened up for him in the future. So let's go back to where Jason was two years ago.

Jason Bollman 02:58

So as I was making the transition, I was leading a group of consultants at a company. So I was in a management position, I was working on a software solution. So it was still very technical. And I don't know how far back you want to go. But in college, I studied engineering. So the technical piece was really kind of nice. I was working with clients, which also tied into a master's in education that I had. And I was leading a team of 11 people. So I got some management experience that I had always kind of strived for. So on paper, it was exactly the job that I would have crafted for myself. It had all the components that I thought were important to me. But I kind of looked up one day and realized that it doesn't feel right, that this isn't where I want to be, something isn't where it needs to be. And I kind of had gotten to a point where I had spent too much time kind of in my own head and talking with my closest friends and family, and my wife kind of gave me a kick in the pants that I needed to go and work with a business coach. And then working through a coach from Happen To Your Career, identified some things that I needed to change. So I was able to move into a new position within the same company, same department, but instead of leading the consulting team, I took over our offerings of how we were selling the services, and looking over education of the trainings that we do for our clients.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:23

Why did that feel like a better fit to you at the time? What were some of the differences if we're looking back? This is almost two years ago at this point, right?

Jason Bollman 04:32

Yes, yeah, it is. Part of it was personnel as part of moving to this new role. I changed who I reported to, which was a big portion of it. But I also got to really look at, not just delivering on the things that have already been kind of put into a contract and just kind of making sure the machine was still running, I really got to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and help craft some of how are we putting the machine together so to speak. And looking at, you know, the way that we're pricing, "This offering isn't working, let's tweak it. This one's not working anymore, let's just stop selling it. Here's one that we keep hearing complaints of something that we need, let's go ahead and create a new offering." So it's getting a chance to get out of just running the organization and get a chance to kind of craft how it works.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:21

Why was that such a big deal for you that whole idea of crafting how it works, if you will?

Jason Bollman 05:28

Sure. Well, yeah, as part of working through my time with my coach, she kind of helped me identify that I have a bit of an entrepreneurial bug in me. So getting a chance to kind of not just be the frontline manager and get a chance to look at kind of how the mechanics work behind the business was definitely appealing with the idea of eventually branching out and running my own organization. So that definitely was a big piece of it. And I think it also, part goes back to kind of the tie-in with my engineering education background, being able to kind of take things apart and put them back together. So it's really kind of twofold there for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:07

Okay, so that whole entrepreneurial bug, I know we talked a little bit about that briefly when we had you on the first time. But it sounds like you've been able to nurture that a little bit in what was a new role at the time for you. Now, let's get into what's happened since then. Have you been able to nurture that anyplace else?

Jason Bollman 06:27

Yeah, I feel like there's been a lot that's changed in the last few years. And even within the role that I'm in now, it has kind of morphed even further. Over the last few years, our company has acquired over 15 different businesses. So I've gotten involved in some of the merger acquisition pieces, not so much before the deal, right, of due diligence and any of that type of work. But after we bought the company, looking at how do they run their professional services, operations, kind of aligning it with what we do, making sure that they have what they need from a systems perspective. So that's been a really exciting piece that I've been able to work on with many of those 15 acquired companies. And then as a result, so my role has kind of transformed less so much looking at the offerings that we're selling and more looking at the operations of the departments and helping to: one, set the standard and, two, make sure that the new people coming in are working towards that standards. That was something that maybe two years ago, I didn't necessarily know that I wanted. But, as I've been going through, it's something that I definitely enjoy. And I'm glad that I've been able to get that opportunity and my role kind of transforming into this operations.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:42

That is very cool. Where else have you been able to satisfy that entrepreneurial bug?

Jason Bollman 07:48

I did do some kind of testing that kind of played out, being a coach myself with some people that I knew. And it didn't quite fulfill me in the way that I was envisioning. But probably even more so as I did a lot of networking with other like-minded people that are in a job that have entrepreneurial aspirations and got into a mastermind group through a mutual friend. So I've been part of that probably for the last year and a half now. And what's really interesting is, as I was meeting more entrepreneurial-minded people, people that had started their own businesses that were kind of running things, I realized that entrepreneurs are a unique breed that they're very much at... I see everything as an opportunity. They're nonstop full of ideas and things that they want to start and just dive in and take action. And I realized in talking with them that I had some of that, but I'm a lot more analytical and like to think things through, I don't have a million ideas kind of coming to me all the time. And I realized that I'm more of the kind of the integrator working alongside a visionary to help take these, you know, 100 different ideas of what the business could be, and breaking it down into, okay, what are we specifically going to take action on. So not only was my role transforming at work, it was kind of simultaneously as I was self-identifying that I'm probably more of a better number two running kind of operations behind the scenes of a new business, as opposed to kind of just going out and doing it all on my own.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:17

That's super cool. And you mentioned this concept of designing small experiments. But for you, it sounds like that was pretty interesting, but also critical in allowing you arrived to some of those conclusions that, "Hey, maybe I'm not meant to be necessarily the visionary type portion of it." And when you say entrepreneurial, there's some very specific things that you mean and are associated with that now, and it sounds like had you not done a little bit of that experimentation, you wouldn't have had that type of feedback to be able to come to those conclusions. Am I getting that right, first of all? And then I'm curious what else you learn from that?

Jason Bollman 09:59

Yeah. No, I think you're right on with that. And part, right, I had kind of in my head what being an entrepreneurial person meant. And I think as I've been going on this journey, I'm realizing it doesn't necessarily have to be the same for every person. But there are the people that have started numbers of businesses and they're in their lifetime, right, grow and sell or maybe it doesn't work out and they start a new thing, you know, they do have a certain type of characteristic. But that doesn't mean that that's the only type of people that can get into business ownership and can be an entrepreneur. So I'm continuing to learn and see how I fit into that room, even though I'm realizing that I'm more of the operations person, as opposed to kind of a traditional founder that you might, or at least that I thought of up to this point.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:48

Yeah. So with that transition two years ago, where you shifted into a completely different role but still within the same organization, and it sounds like even similar section of the company, what do you feel like was the biggest thing that you learned during that transition?

Jason Bollman 11:04

The biggest thing I learned was just how much things just keep changing. You know, and part where we acquired a lot of companies. But it's, you know, as I went into that role, I really was excited to work on the offerings of how we sell our consulting services. But what I learned as I went through that is that really, it was more the training piece that our senior leadership was looking to really grow. The consulting arm was doing pretty well. And yeah, we could tweak offerings, and there's some new opportunities that are out there. But training had really been something that hadn't been being successful. And so I ended up having to put a lot more of my time towards that than the offering piece. And so, it just kind of goes to show that businesses grow and evolve and change, and the market kind of dictates how things turn out. And so as we were working on improving the trainings, we were finding that a lot of clients really wanted small, quick hits, free trainings that give them just the simple stuff, they weren't looking to buy full day training courses to cover everything A to Z. And so we continually had to keep kind of tweaking what we're putting together to meet what the clients were asking for.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:16

That's interesting. How have you seen that set of learnings then impact both your work and as well as anything you have done outside of that role over the last two years?

Jason Bollman 12:29

It's a good question. I think it's still lessons that I'm learning. As I look branching out on my own and partnering as kind of an operations person that you can't come up with a product offering, kind of in a vacuum, you need to really get a good handle on what people are asking for. And probably even more importantly, is what they're willing to pay for it. Because even if they tell you that, "This is exactly what I want", and you put it together, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna pay you for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:53

This is... I feel like this is the lesson that anybody that's affiliated with any kind of business or marketing or sales or product development, all of those touch this exact area. I, myself, have had to learn this lesson multiple times. So I'm so glad to hear that you're getting to learn it and have been learning it on an ongoing basis over the last two years. What do you think... And totally different question for you. But you know, I was just thinking about your transition. And I think that what you did, and if you want to listen to his past episodes so that you have the context, definitely go back and listen to that because I think you did a really nice job. One, clarifying more about what you wanted. And I know that's part of the reason we got to sit front row is we're working with you on that. But then, you went and had what can be some more difficult conversations for some people in the world to be able to express how you wanted something different, or we're interested in taking on different types of projects, and then that evolved into a new opportunity. One, am I remembering that correctly? It's been a long time since we had that conversation. And then two, my question from that is, as you were doing that, what really helped you to navigate through that? Because it wasn't a one-and-done type process. It was an ongoing thing that kept evolving if I understood correctly.

Jason Bollman 14:25

Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, sitting here now, trying to think back because I feel like I've had numerous kind of similar type of conversations since then, maybe to a lesser degree, but because I had that first conversation, I think it's been easier to bring up "hey, here's where I see I can add a lot of value in kind of the acquisition front" and "hey, I'm certain to realize that I liked separation stuff. Can I, you know, take on more of those types of things?" But you know, I'm remembering back two years ago when I went in and said, "Hey, this role isn't for me. I'm looking to make a change." It was really scary. I was mentally preparing that they were going to, you know, show me to the door. And that was going to be the end of my career at the company. It was very intimidating. And so I think part of it was, I had to think through the worst case scenario and realize that worst case, I would be okay. I would leave the company, I would go figure out something else to do, and it would be fine. It might not be my ideal, but it would be okay. I think the other part of it as I was going in the conversation, is I was thinking about what was best for me, but I was also framing it in value add to the company, as well. You know, I came from a standpoint of I'm trying to be very transparent. I also picked that timing because we were looking at kind of year-end evaluations, and they were determining raises and bonuses. You know, I came in and said that I wanted to make it known that I wasn't leaving immediately. But I probably wasn't going to be here, at least, in this role long term. And if they wanted to reallocate some funds around that, they could do that. And I think coming from a place of value add and looking at the big picture, and what's best for the company, as well as yourself, made that a much easier conversation. And then on the back end, I was just 100% ready that if they showed me the door, that it would be painful, and it'd be hard, but I would be okay.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:14

I'm thinking about that. And I've been in that exact situation, and it is hard. But I think that's something else that we all know to be true is that, you know, when we can come up with those worst-case scenarios, rarely does the worst-case scenario actually happen. I would say that from all of the conversations that I have ever been a part of, or been witness to, or been on the receiving end of, or being been on the opposite end of whatever experience, almost all of them turn out way better than what people imagine they will be as long as they're doing what you said, which is going into it, trying to look at how do we make this a win-win. How can this be, not just good for me, but also good for the company? And how can I approach it in that partnership-type mentality? So one, really nice job doing that. Because it's easy to sit here, you know, two years later on a podcast and say that. It's much more difficult to actually do that in the moment, right? But I'm curious about something that you said, you said, "Hey, since then, since I've had that initial conversation or set of conversations, it's been much easier to bring up the same type of topic." And it sounds like part of what you meant was continuing to structure or create your career path or evolve your position, or you tell me what you meant by that when you were saying it. But also, what's made it easier?

Jason Bollman 17:36

Yeah. I mean, I think it's, as I mentioned, business evolves, you know, I'm learning more about myself and kind of what I envision my career being that I keep seeing little tweaks and little room for improvements and projects that I'd like to get more involved in, or projects that I'm doing but really aren't in my strength zone. And it's all those types of conversations of trying to take on more work that's interesting. And the things that you're doing that aren't exciting that you know, might not be as important. Are there other people or other ways that we can get that done to free up more of your time? So those have been kind of the types of conversations I've been having. I think why it's been easier, I think first because I, myself, went through that first conversation. And it turned out way better than I had expected. So there's a little bit less fear every other time I go in. And I also think right to the organization, since I basically came in and said, "Hey, I'm leaving, but I don't know when yet." And they've kept me around. I think that they know that whenever I come and I say, "Hey, I want to take on this thing." I'm not being selfish. I really see opportunity for improvement. So I think it gave me a little bit of benefit of the doubt by, you know, really coming from that value early on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:51

That's so interesting, especially since anytime, not anytime, but a lot of the times when we talk about these types of difficult conversations that you might have with a boss or your boss's boss, or anybody who has influence and whether maybe you stay or go or has some kind of power or authority, there is that trepidation or is that fear there, and we do jump to those worst case scenarios. But what I'm hearing you say is that from your experience, having that initial conversation has led to a lot of, I would say, far-reaching impacts as well because now, not only is it easier for you, because you've done it, you've gotten the t-shirt, been there practiced and you feel more confident about it, it sounds like. But then two, something else that it sounds like maybe you didn't anticipate is they consider when you come and have a conversation. It sounds like your words carry more weight now as well because they know what is behind them. And I'm guessing probably a higher level of credibility too.

Jason Bollman 20:00

Yeah, definitely. It's funny as you're saying that I realized that it does happen. And I don't know that it's necessarily that I think that I'm smarter or better than anyone else, it's just, you know, I keep showing up and trying to figure out what's best for the business. And I think that's what then takes what I say with, you know, seems to have a little bit more clout.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:20

I love that. So, I'll give you some context for why I love that so much. Actually, there's a lot of different reasons, way more than we have time for within this conversation. But Jason, I get emails, I would say, almost every day, from people that are in a situation where they feel like they have bosses or companies that are taking advantage of them in one way or another. And well, that is true, more than I would like to think about, that does happen from time to time. But when I start digging in with these people, or as my team has conversations with them, a lot of times we realize that there are behaviors there where they're allowing people to take advantage of them, basically, because they're saying, "Hey, it's okay to treat me this way." And you know, whether that is simply continually working past business hours, many, many, many, many, many, many days in a row, maybe they haven't actually told them differently, or anything else. But the reason that I love the conversations that you've had so much is because part of what you did, whether you meant to or not, is you began drawing boundaries there, and declaring what you actually wanted and needed in a way that was good for you and the organization. And that is something that really is difficult to do for all the reasons that we've talked about. But it paves the way to being able to continue to do so again, and again, and again and again. And this is the world's longest compliment ever. But really nice job. So...

Jason Bollman 21:54

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:54

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious since you've been there done that, what advice would you give to people that might find themselves in that situation where they want to take more control of their career path? Or they want to have some of these more difficult conversations with their boss or boss's boss or whoever might have a vested interest there?

Jason Bollman 22:15

Yeah, I would recommend starting small, right? My example is, I came in and said, "You know, this role entirely is not for me, and I'm going to make some sort of change, whether it's right a different role in the company, or whether I leave the company entirely." But if you can pick a specific area, right, where it's, you know, maybe you want to work from home one day a week because there's a lot of distractions in the office, and how can you frame if I work from home, in afternoon, here's the results of where I got more work done. I was interrupted less, you know, I didn't have as many people stopping by and I was able to get the really important things done, right? Start with something small like that, or whatever is your biggest pain point. And then just focus on on that little ask where it's not this big, massive thing that you're going to have to change in your role, it's just one thing where maybe one day a week or one day a month, you don't have to fight with traffic, you can get a little bit more done, and you kind of buy yourself a little bit of room where you don't feel like the company is taking advantage of you, and then go back and show that by doing that you were able to produce more, and it's really helping the company out as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:24

I really liked that idea of starting small, then it's not so intimidating too, like, you were talking about, hey, I was super fearful about what was going to happen and imagining the worst case scenario as you went in and have that big conversation. But if that had happened over time, and had already built up that credibility and relationship by asking for smaller things, then maybe who knows, maybe it wouldn't have been so intimidating that way. So I love that advice. What do you feel like has been in your life, career or otherwise, over the last two years, the biggest place that you have learned to control or influence it in a way that you didn't before?

Jason Bollman 24:06

It's an interesting question. I think similarly to what I was saying before, it's obviously still learning, right? I hadn't been in a management role, right? So I had people that reported directly to me. And in some ways, that's almost kind of easier to influence because you can say, "Hey, this is what we need to do. Let's make this the priority over that other thing." And people that work for you will go ahead and do it. When you have your peers or even right, your boss or your boss's boss, that you need to get action taken care of for a project to be done, it's a lot harder to influence. And so I think it's really what I've learned so far, is framing out what you're trying to accomplish, how it's going to be a value add and trying to be as specific as you can of, "this is what I need and this is when I need it by", and then when they don't deliver, you know, because they're busy people, great following up and not in a negative way, but "how can I help? Is there anything I can do? Do you need additional information? Is there anyone else that can also help with this?" That has been somewhat helpful, although it is still challenging to get busy people to get things done. So I'm still learning and growing in that area for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:13

Amazing. Anything else that you want people to know?

Jason Bollman 25:18

Yeah, I don't know if so much to know. But I mentioned right, the entrepreneurial piece, one thing that hasn't kind of come up yet. So a mastermind that I was a part of, the guy that runs it was looking to kind of expand his business. And I've had the opportunity to partner with him and launch online membership platform. It's a pretty small group. But could we get together, it's other people that are identifying a business they might want to launch or just getting a business off the ground, or have recently gotten off the ground and kind of want to make sure that they keep it moving. And so I think maybe the lesson there is, right, there's probably a lot of people in your current network that you're already interacting with that can help you get to that next stage, that can partner with you, whether that's in your job, whether that's people you know outside of your business, whatever the case may be, I think there's more untapped potential in our lives than what we realize. And I think if you really get clear on what you want, and you tell people what you're looking to do, there will be things like the partnership that I was able to form out of the mastermind to go and start working on the side and building up a membership platform that we then hope to kind of keep growing and turn into a full business.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:34

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 27:26

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

Speaker 3 27:32

I think that was one of those moments that I was just realizing that being good at something, though, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be happy at it. Or that is this fulfilling as something else might be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:46

I think all the time when people find our podcast, they think about, "Well, I must not enjoy my job", or, "This is for people who don't really like their work and want to do something that they actually do like." And actually what we find is that's not always the case. What about if you were changing careers, and you've had a job that actually was something that you really enjoy, and maybe you've even found that it's impactful, or it's what we might call "meaningful work" or "more fulfilling work", and you're even great at your job because you're using your strengths, and you have a team that you love working with? Okay, so if your current role checks these boxes, you might wonder why you still feel that tug to make a change. Is it possible to justify leaving what many people might consider a great career? The short answer is yes. The grass may actually be greener on the other side.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:42

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.

Karen Guttentag 00:01

I bought into the model of career ascension, you know. You go from better to better to better, and that's the direction things are supposed to go– more responsibility, better title, more money.

Introduction 00:21

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

Why is our culture so obsessed with job titles and job status? Just think about how often we ask and are asked by others, "So what do you do?" This inflated importance of career causes people to believe they have to find all of their fulfillment and everything they could possibly need within the constraints of their career, which can very easily lead to work consuming your entire life. And when, not if, when that all-consuming job begins conflicting with your priorities, like, health, family, whatever it may be, something will have to give. So then the question becomes, what is the life that you want to build? And where does work fit into that?

Karen Guttentag 01:30

You know, I used to joke for years about "Oh, look, it's five o'clock, I think I'll close down my computer and leave it here and come back the next day and not think about work. Ha ha ha." You know, as though that were a fever dream. And now, that's my life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:45

That's Karen Guttentag. Karen worked with the Peace Corps, was an associate dean of Middlebury College for 18 years, and then became the Dean of Students for a private boarding school. When the pandemic hit at the same time as multiple family emergencies, Karen realized her work was keeping her from her true priorities. This caused her to begin asking some pretty big questions about what she really wanted her life to look like. And ultimately, she took a career break from everything to figure that out. Karen challenged herself to deconstruct her belief around what work should be and realize that the roles that aligned with the life she wanted to live, well, they weren't as high status as her previous all-consuming roles have been. Now, if we fast forward to the end, Karen landed a new role that she loves, that gives her all the components she was looking for in a career as well as the time and space to be with her daughter and do other things she enjoys. But I just skipped a whole bunch of pretty important details, including a lot of challenges Karen overcame. So let's get into that conversation.

Karen Guttentag 02:50

I was an English major at a school in Minnesota, English and African-American Studies. And I remember sort of thinking, "I guess this is kind of an important summer. This summer, before I graduate, I should do something with it." So I went into the summer, feeling like I really didn't know what I wanted to do. But I had this idea, "You know, I'm an English major in African-American studies, I should try publishing." And so of course, this is speaking of age back at the time of the phone book, and I, you know, living in Massachusetts, and I had no idea of how to find a job in publishing. So I actually opened up the phonebook, literally, and called every publishing company in the state of Massachusetts, of which there were many, I must say, more than you might imagine, probably at least 30, and did my chippie little liberal arts graduate, you know, our liberal arts college student thing and said, "Hi, you know, I'm an English major, and I'm interested in learning more about publishing. And would you be willing to create an internship for me this summer, so I can work in your office and learn more about publishing?" And I finally got a job with Zoland Books, the last publishing company listed in the phonebook.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:59

You went A to Z, all the way through.

Karen Guttentag 04:02

Yeah. And it ended up being great. And my next job, I sort of went about the same way in a new location. So it was kind of a tacky little operation. But I think it instilled within me this idea that I can create opportunities for myself. And that was pretty empowering. And that's exactly what I did after I graduated from college. I still didn't know what I wanted to do, but a friend and I decided we wanted to live in Portland, Maine. So that's where we went. And I called up all the publishing companies there and lo and behold, I got a job with Intercultural Press, which was this publishing company that did all kinds of materials on multicultural, cross-cultural, international, intercultural topics. So, topically, it was fantastic. The experience was completely demoralizing. And I probably shouldn't have said the name it doesn't actually exist anymore. I think they went out of business, which is kind of shocking because they had like a niche market at that time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:04

Interesting.

Karen Guttentag 05:04

Nobody else was doing this kind of stuff. But I was miserable. I was behind a computer the entire time, I was an editorial assistant and Assistant to the President, I was making $8 an hour, which was tough going. And it was my first job after college. And I really had this sense of like, oh, this is going to tell me who I am as a professional. And my boss was really quite abusive. She was very unpredictable. And she really had me believing that it was a huge favor, that she was even paying me a salary because I just had nothing to offer the world. So it was really crushing to me in terms of my sense of myself as a professional. But during that time, I was so miserable, I again, sort of decided, "Alright, I'm gonna research this. I'm going to figure out. I'm gonna do the self-assessments. I'm gonna go to the library. I'm gonna do the tests and figure out what I want to do. I'm gonna start informational interviewing with people", which was very helpful. And started to put together my list of criteria, which started with everything opposite from what I was currently experiencing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:13

That's always where it starts, right?

Karen Guttentag 06:14

It was. Yes. And I was really lucky because I didn't know that it always happens this way. And it didn't really happen to me this time. But I have the experience of, you know, through a series of conversations and interviews and continuing to sort of zig and zag, and hone and refine, I hit on the job. And I knew exactly what it was. And it was like the three cherries on the slot machine and checked off all of my boxes, which was college admissions. And I had all my different criteria that events planning and doing something that felt meaningful and being in a beautiful environment and having variety and having... And one of the things was I wanted work that had a sense of completion at the end. And you know, I found that when I was working on editorial stuff, we always had like seven or eight things going on at once. And there was no point at which you sort of said, "We did it! You know, and now we're moving on to something else, we're growing something, we're changing." You know, it just felt like it was sort of an endless cycle. So all of these different components, so I was in Portland, Maine, and not far from Bowdoin College. And I had gone to a small liberal arts college. And so I reached out to the Director of Admissions who I did not know being in admissions, and asked him to go to coffee with me and did my little proposal and said, "If I quit my job, and I know I want to do admissions, I have no experience whatsoever. But it's what I really want to do. And if I quit my job and come volunteer for you, can you give me enough experience so that I can be a viable job candidate in the spring?" And he said, "Yes." And it was no dummy free labor. And so I ended up just doing this volunteering for three months. And I was right. It was everything that I wanted to do. And lo and behold, I was a viable job candidate. And there weren't any openings at Bowdoin that year. But there was an opening at Lafayette College, and I got it. And then as soon as there was an opening at Bowdoin the next year, I came back and worked there for another four years. And I loved it. I was absolutely right about all the things that I would love. What I had not anticipated and what had not particularly been on my list of things that I was looking for, was working with college students. I hadn't realized that that was any sort of component of the job. And it's not a huge component of the job. But I directed the tour guide program. So I worked with all of the student tour guides, and then I ultimately took on international admissions, and there was no white person at that time for international students. So I kind of became the de facto Dean for international students. And all of the students that I got to know during the admissions process I felt some sort of connection to and responsibility for. And we tended to do expanded programs for minoritized student populations. So I spent more time with them in the admissions process. So I had a strong connection with them. So I was doing all of this deaning, which was not really my job, but I just loved working with these students. And I think for them, I was a person who they felt had kind of seen them through the process and knew where they came from and created some sense of affirmation and continuity for them. And people kept sort of saying, "You should be a Dean. This is, like, why aren't you doing this?" And part of me said, "Yep, this is what I love. This is what I want to do." But I had two qualms, one of which was that if I followed that path at that point in my life, and went and got a graduate degree, and then got a job as a Dean at a place like Carleton or Bowdoin, that my whole life would be in these ivory towers, and I was 28 at the time, and I wasn't quite comfortable with that choice. And the other was that most of the students I was working with, as I said, were sort of the minoritized population or international students, or in some way, marginalized, and working with them was raising a lot of social justice issues that they were experiencing, about inclusion, about community, about access, and structural issues. And I wasn't totally sure if what I loved about working with them was the working with students part or all of the social justice issues and community problem solving and access issues. So I decided to punt and I took in the Peace Corps.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:45

That is the left turn that I did not see coming in the story. I think I knew that was in there someplace, I didn't know that was it.

Karen Guttentag 10:52

That's where it was. And a big part of that was because I was working so closely with the international students. And I was just so inspired by their courage and the transformation and the challenges that they were experiencing going around the world to put themselves in these new environments. And I felt like I wanted to have that growth experience too. The Peace Corps conversation could take a really long time. So I'm not going to get into the details of the story in great depth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:18

I'm curious also, what else took place that led up to you making this most recent career change?

Karen Guttentag 11:26

The most recent career change, it was sort of a two-part change. So I was in the Peace Corps, and then we were evacuated, and then I worked for a nonprofit, and then I was ready to become a Dean and went to graduate school and became a Dean and was at Middlebury College for 18 years. And that position ultimately unfolded in a way over a period of time that it was no longer meeting my needs, it was no longer pleasurable, I had sort of taken on a lot of work that nobody else really wanted to do that I actually happen to be quite passionate about, and that was the nine-five work. But between that and doing Student Conduct work, both of which I cared about a great deal. But I found that the positions really compromised my ability to have the kind of relationships with students that I wanted. I was able to enact the structural changes that felt important to me and meaningful and felt like I was doing the right thing by students in building these programs and deepening them. But in the community itself, I felt increasingly isolated. Because when you are associated with, wherever you are associated with, you know, with Student Conduct work, you just don't have the same kinds of relationships with students. And in some ways, it wasn't appropriate for me to have those kinds of relationships with students. And in college administration, the higher you get, the less you're actually working with students, the more you're doing either crisis management or budget, or politics or policy, and I felt like okay, well, I like some of that, I like doing the structural change, I like thinking about systemic, and cultural issues and all of that. But I don't want to sacrifice my ability to actually be working in the weeds with students. So it seemed like a good idea to take the Dean of Students position that I think, at the college level would have had me more isolated, and translate it to a high school level where I understood that I could do both, that the administrative machinery was not so deep that I couldn't both work really closely with students and also have some big picture responsibilities. And so it seemed like it was going to be a really great combination. And I also felt like I had the idea of the opportunity to kind of be in charge of a community in this way, with all of the things that I had learned about student needs. And students that I had seen show up in college, really in need of certain skills and experiences and knowledge that they weren't getting in high school, I felt like let me have this, like, this is awesome, I'm gonna get to really create something special and build on a community and help them really to develop in ways that both will create a really meaningful experience for students at the high school level and set them up for success beyond. And I found a progressive school that really aligned with my value system. And I thought that I had just nailed it. And so as you do in a new job, you say, "Okay, well, let me just take some time to get the lay of the land first and then figure out how I can help and make sense and get a better sense of what the community's needs are and start to figure things out." So I took my first few months to do that. And then the pandemic hit. And then it all bets were off and it just became two and a half years of reaction of reactive work of trying to help an institution navigate at a very human level, at an institution level, a global crisis. And from a position of responsibility in a community that I was really only beginning to understand, and everything that I knew about it was about to be changed. So it was a very, very challenging period of time. And I was also... I'm a single mom and had a fourth grader who needed pretty full attention at the time when my job was requiring me to be literally all hands on deck all the time, living on campus and trying to parent her and help her to get through this experience in a way that was going to be best for her, while I was also responsible for 227 other students, and the experience of the entire staff and faculty, you know, with a pretty small administrative team, kind of doing all the decision making was really quite impossible. And had a number of personal challenges occur along the way, it was a really unfortunate period of time where the first of September, my best friend died.

Karen Guttentag 16:27

And next fall, my mom got breast cancer. That winter, my dad died. That spring, my dog got... Just like I just couldn't kind of get out of it. So by the middle of the third year, I had really wanted to stay for at least four years, I wanted to sort of see it through the crisis and help to rebuild, but I just was depleted on every level, and was roadkill.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:27

Oh, wow.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:58

I think at some point, you have no more left to give too. So I understand the thought of being able to stay and finish it out. And I think that comes from a good place. Also, at the same time, it sounds like the state you were in, at that point in time, you had given much of what you had been able to give and already served in that way. So what happened from there?

Karen Guttentag 17:22

Well, and I think for me, it also came down to I just felt like I was an absentee parent. I felt like I was really, really, like, my child was number 227 that I was responsible for and that just was not okay. So I think my initial plan was, as I said, do what I've done before, you know, figure out what do I want more of, what do I want less of, what does that look like, and how do I get that job. But at that point, my whole landscape was just so different. It wasn't just, I need a new job. It was, I don't even have the vision to figure out what that should be. I'm scrapping the whole plan. It's not about what I need more of and what I need less of. I just need this to stop. And I didn't have a vision for what was going to come next, which was different for me. Normally, I had been able to kind of rely on that calculation to help me figure out with, not with ease, but with success.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:27

Yes.

Karen Guttentag 18:28

What was going to serve me better? And in this stage in my life, I just, I was so exhausted that I couldn't even get there. And trying to do that, while I was also in the middle of this chaos, and still actually needing to show up as the Dean of Students. And while I was trying to ask these big life questions about where and what and how my life was gonna look like I didn't have the bandwidth to do it all. And several people had to tell me the same thing before it finally sunk in that I just needed to put that off and say, "You know what, get through the rest of this year. And then take a break." And you can't catch the next trapeze because you can't catch anything, right? You need to drop in the net right now. And my mother was thankful enough to say, move back home, as I've said we'd lost my dad, and take as much time as you need to just regroup, figure things out, take your time so that you can make a really good decision. So that was a pretty important decision for me to give up the idea of, you know, to get comfortable with the idea of being unemployed for a while. And psychologically, it was pretty uncomfortable.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:50

What was the most uncomfortable part for you?

Karen Guttentag 19:53

Not having a great new shiny title to be able to say, "I gave up this and now I'm doing this", you know, I think you sort of buy... I bought into the model of career ascension– you go from better, to better, to better, and that's the direction things are supposed to go. More responsibility, better title, more money. And so going from being a Dean of Students to being unemployed, and kind of losing that work identity for a significant period of time was hard for me and not so hard that I wasn't willing to do it but uncomfortable nonetheless, and something I kind of had to make peace with.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:37

What helped you? Because I think that that is a huge challenge we experience for many people that we get the opportunity to work with. And when we see that firsthand, a lot of times people expect it not to be as uncomfortable as it can be, that identity challenge, that I can't now represent or I don't know, hide behind whatever way you want to look at it. But what specifically worked for you as you were maneuvering through that challenge?

Karen Guttentag 21:10

Well, it hit me at different points. I mean, I guess I would say it was kind of a two-part experience. Part one was being unemployed. And part two was ultimately taking a position that on an org chart was a significant step down from my previous position, and they were two different but related challenges. And I would say, probably the, what did help me to get through it. I mean, what helped me, one thing was, I did not have a choice, you know, I could not take a job right at the time I was leaving my previous job, I just was so exhausted, I was really roadkill, and so I sort of had to. And I think what helped me was being able to articulate, being able to feel like I was still being productive like I was on a journey, I wasn't just sort of hanging out, you know, I was actively trying to figure things out, I was actively working to explore possibilities and talk with people and reflect and read and research, and that was my full-time job. So I guess I always felt like there was motion. It wasn't just I was sitting on the couch watching TV waiting for something to fall into my lap, I was actively engaged in a process. And it was not always a clear process. I didn't have the cherries on the slot machine experience. Earlier of being like, "I know what I want, and I know how to get it." And that was really hard too. So I would say for that stage of it, you know, the unemployment stage, it was getting comfortable with my elevator speech, I guess being able to say, "I left a job, and I'm really not sure where I'm going next. So I'm taking the time to, you know, I'm really lucky to have the time to be able to really figure it out and do some thoughtful research before I make my next move." And that's where I'm at right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:10

Yeah. Let's talk about the process of career change this time around. So specifically, you mentioned that in the past, you sort of knew what to do, and had certainly some experiences that had caused you to build confidence and how to make past changes. This time around, the season of life was very, very different. And one of the things you and I chatted very briefly about before we started recording was the idea of it being too late. And I think that this is part of why many people feel like it is too late in some ways to make another significant change in one way or another in your, not just career, but life. And so I guess what I'm curious about for you is, what caused you to feel like this was a must for you? And what was so different in this season of life for you compared to previous?

Karen Guttentag 24:15

I think in my previous job exploration moments and job shifts, my primary questions had been, "What do I most want to be doing now? What job is going to be the closest to the optimal reflection of work that matters to me that I think is important, that allows me to use all of the skills that I love the most, and a community that's going to be a great environment to work in with a salary that's going to allow me a certain lifestyle that I want?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:53

Sure.

Karen Guttentag 24:54

And I am really lucky that I've been able to have positions like that. And this time around, I realized that that could not be... I think I wanted it, I think when I first started the job search, that's what I was aiming for. And I realized that that calculation was just not reflective of what my needs were at this stage in my life, that I really needed to take into account, my health, my emotional health, my physical health, my child, and the level of availability that I wanted and needed to have for her after school and in the evening and on weekends, both sort of temporal availability and emotional availability. And that if I were solely going for the job based on that initial goal of me and most fulfilling to me and the work that's going to be perfectly hitting my challenge level, and you know, the right level of responsibility and all of that, that in all of my past experiences, that's not nine to five work. That is high stress, high responsibility, often evenings, often weekends, and often emotionally entangling kind of work that was really incompatible with the kind of availability and focus that I knew I really needed to offer to my child at this stage in life, and having to sort of realize that I was not going to be able to thread that needle was a really big aha moment for me and a little bit of a sad one, but a really important one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:44

What made it sad for you? Was that back to the, how you viewed in your identity, or was it something else?

Karen Guttentag 26:50

I think a couple of things. Logistically, I realized that what that meant was that in order to live independently, I was going to need to get a job that paid that much, and that involved that much responsibility. And that the idea of taking on that big a job in order to live independently was going to mean, I wasn't going to be able to be the kind of parent I want it to be as a single mom, that I couldn't do all of those things, that if she and I were still aiming for independent living, I was going to need an all-absorbing job. And that the trade-off was therefore going to be the parenting that was a primary motivation for making the change. And I couldn't figure out how to check all those boxes. Again, it felt like I was trying to thread a needle, a job with all of these great qualities and meeting all of my professional needs that was also going to let me leave at five and have plenty of flexibility on the afternoons where I needed to, you know, drive around or whatever and not take homework on the weekend, I don't think it exists. Or if it does exist in a way that would appeal to me, I couldn't find it. And so I realized that I was going to have to make some trade-offs. And that if I really wanted to prioritize my child and my own health and well-being, I needed to decide that I wasn't going to be able to live independently, that we were going to stay living with my mom, at least for the next five years for her to get through high school in ways that would allow me to take a lower paying lower stress job in order to prioritize the availability for her and my parenting and my health. And it's interesting, that concept came to me right before Phillip actually recommended a book to me that kind of crystallized that idea, a lot of what I had been thinking and experiencing, which was the good enough job, you know, which is not rocket science, but he pulls together the themes very effectively of the perils of all of the reasons why we have developed in this culture and in many cultures in ways that center our work as the primary focus of our identity. And everything else sort of revolves around our work identity, and we look to work to meet so many of our needs around our sense of efficacy and our social agendas and our political agendas and our professional growth and our sense of purpose. And when we put all of those eggs in one basket and the basket falls, then all of these different dimensions of your life are implicated, which was exactly what I had experienced in the last 20 years of my career, both in my job at the college and my job at the boarding school, was everything focused on my work life. And I mean in the boarding school I was literally living at work. You know, work-life separation was not a possibility.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:05

It was not a thing.

Karen Guttentag 30:08

Right. And so, from this book, you know, what he talks about is really the importance of rethinking what role do you want work to play in your life. And how can you ensure that all of the other dimensions of your life are rich and meaningful and areas that you can develop independent of whatever it is that allows you to earn money, and not look to your work to be all of those things? And making that shift was what allowed me to say, "Okay, I'm going to find a job that I think will be enjoyable, that will allow me to go back to for me, what was the core of why I got into higher ed in the first place, and that was working with students and come in at a level of responsibility that is not going to overwhelm the rest of my life, that's going to allow me to really prioritize these other areas." In a million years, I did not see myself living with my mother, in my childhood home in the suburbs of Massachusetts. But also coming to recognize that for my daughter, being in this period of limbo, was really having a poor effect on her that she was in this prolonged state of, in a new community. And I wish she just started a brand new middle school in seventh grade coming from a school in which she was, you know, one of 12 6th graders to being in a 900-person middle school. And this experience of not knowing when she was going to leave, and if she was going to leave and where she was going to go and what was coming next, and how long she was going to stay was making it very hard for her to actually put down roots in this community and plug into her school experience and plug into her social experiences and her friendships. And I really saw that, and that she really needed the stability of knowing where she was going to be for the next few years. And that I had to make a career decision that was going to meet, not just my needs, but her needs, which I'd never really had to make before. Other than that, most of my career decisions were meeting her needs to the extent that it was allowing me to live independently, that's what it meant and not travel. And this time, it meant staying where we were in a good school system and a financial situation that would allow me to take a job that would let me be available to her. And that's been... It's not what I thought this stage of life would look like. And yet, I have to remind myself of all, you know, there are trade-offs, for sure. But this is actually the healthiest that I have ever been. I mean, you know, I used to joke for years about "Oh, look, it's five o'clock, I think I'll close down my computer and leave it here and come back the next day and not think about work. Hahaha" You know, as though that were a fever dream, and now that's my life. I have taken a smaller job, and a more flexible job, I'm able to show up for her in ways that really matter right now. And at this, it is and at the same time I find that I still have some old tapes playing that there are times at work where you know, my work is fun and simple most of the time. I work directly with students and I'm a sort of coach advisor, I support a great population of international students. And my job is to help them figure out what they need and how to get it and what they want and personal growth and development. So it is pretty easy. And if I get sick, or if I need to change a meeting because I've got to pick up my kid or whatever that may be, it is flexible. It is super flexible. I get to work from home two days a week, which was not even on my dance card.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:27

Amazing.

Karen Guttentag 34:27

But that's pretty amazing. And there are times when I sort of forget what it is that I'm looking for from this job and I think, "But is it fulfilling enough? And how will I grow and how will I make these, you know, these sets of contributions?" And I have to remind myself almost manually shift the gears and say, "That's not why you took this job. You took this job to meet different needs." And if you are feeling like you need a sense of fulfillment in your life, you need to look, you need to create that for yourself outside of your job. And so that's kind of the process that I'm more actively engaged in right now, even as I sometimes forget that I didn't take this job to fill all this space that my previous jobs used to fill.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:17

What advice would you give to someone who's in that situation where they're trying to figure out what does the next stage of life looks like?

Karen Guttentag 35:25

I think it's being willing to really radically reexamine the role that you want work to play in your life, what your needs are way beyond what your work needs. You know, and really recognize how many of your life needs have you assumed were going to be met through your work. Maybe because they have been, or maybe because you always wanted them to be, and not make premature assumptions that they have to be met in your work position. And I think also just really debunking this idea that for everyone at every stage of your life, in every circumstance, that perfect job is out there that could meet all of your personal and professional and emotional and political and financial needs. And it doesn't mean that all of those needs might not be met, but they might not all be met through your job, and not feel like you're compromising. If you take a position that is allowing you to meet the needs that are your top priorities, and recognizing that there are trade-offs. And that you want to be thoughtful about your trade-offs, and make sure that your trade-offs that you are making the decisions and compromises that are going to allow you to meet your priorities. And that sometimes that's not every single dimension of your life happening all at once at this particular moment.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:03

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 37:55

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

Speaker 3 38:00

I had to think through the worst-case scenario and realize that worst case, I would be okay. I would leave the company. I would go figure out something else to do and it'd be fine.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:12

Big decisions. You know how these work. Our brains usually fight us and they want us to stay in our comfort zones. Plus, if you're like me, you can turn nearly anything into logic. Yes, I know I'm not loving work and my boss is a little way overbearing, but there could be another opportunity four months from now. Many people find themselves torn when it comes to choices like staying in the same place versus making a career change. They know, you might even know, and feel deep down inside that something's not right. But we still struggle with taking a chance to actually make a change. Why on earth do we fight what we know to be true in our core? That's the question we're going to dig into today. We see how others reach their goals and we think we must follow in their footsteps to reach the same success. But the truth is, we don't have to follow them. If you want to take more control of your life, this episode is absolutely for you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:11

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.

Eric 00:01

Career change isn't just about a title or about tasks. It's really understanding you and yourself and what you want and what you are enjoying, and what you want to be part of.

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

You might not know this about the HTYC podcast. But before I hit the record button with our clients to share their story of how they changed their career, I almost always share the same thing. I tell them, I don't want to misrepresent what career change is. It can be wonderful. Also, sometimes when we get a snapshot in time in the form of a 35-minute-long podcast episode, you don't always get the full picture. So I ask our clients to share, not just the great parts of their career change, but also what was hardest about it, what were their challenges, and what was different than what they thought.

Eric 01:19

The challenge is that when things are bad, you don't expand that further into organizations that don't quite fit that but sound like it could be okay. Or maybe that's a role, like, you start to creep a little bit outside of it because things are going tough, and it's hard. But if you can maintain that uber-focus, you'll get to the place that you want to be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:43

Things are great for Eric now with his new role at Tonal, but his career change was far more challenging than what he thought it would be. Eric had been working in management consulting for years and loved, well, parts of it. Sales, as it turns out, was not one of those parts. Eventually, he realized that if he was continuing down the same path, sales was going to become a larger part of his life, not a smaller part. And well, that's great for some people. It wasn't what Eric wanted. He finally realized that he had to make a change. During this career change process, Eric began to identify what he really wanted in his life and his career. After helping thousands of people with their career changes, we've seen that when you're making this kind of change, it often takes more than three months, sometimes even more than six months. For Eric, it took an entire year to find the right role. Along the way, he had to learn how to ask the hard questions and say no to many good, but not great opportunities.

Eric 02:43

My background was mostly in management consulting, and I really sort of found my way into that. And after my various degrees, just because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, I enjoyed the aspect of being able to work on challenging problems and being able to do them with a variety of clients in a variety of industries. And so the consulting industry allowed me to do that. And I always thought it would be a way to figure out what I wanted to do. Looking back, it turned into just me staying in that, and just doing that. Until I got to the point where I realized it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable because the only way in that industry to grow, in terms of level in stature, was through sale. And that's just not what I am natural at from a professional sales, I would say. I am the type of person where I can talk to people about products and things of that, and I might sell it. But I can't walk into an office and sell a multibillion-dollar ERP project. It just doesn't sound natural from me. And that was really what was holding me back. It was holding me back subvertly. And then at one point, it held me back overtly. And it realized that that just wasn't a sustainable long-term career growth for me. And so I wanted to find something that allowed me to take what I liked about it but put me in a position to feel successful, completely successful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:05

When you had that realization that sales was probably the path that you would need to take to stay where you were at, but that didn't really align with what you wanted, was that how you knew it was time to leave that area or leave consulting? Or was there something else that occurred along the way that caused you to realize, "Hey, it's time to leave."?

Eric 04:29

I think there were some other things as well. I think there was, you know, moving around to different companies to try to find a place that felt more natural and more at home. Once I realized that I was continually moving, I started to think, "Was it because the companies that I were at and I wanted to move? Or was there something bigger going on here that I needed to reflect on some more?" And then also as I started to do more work in my later parts of consulting career, the types of work that I was doing, and the types of problems we were asked to solve, and the relationship we had with the clients started to change some that it wasn't the same as it was earlier, it seemed to be less valued and more commoditized. And it's not that I didn't want to feel like I was a commodity, but it started to feel like it was more commoditized. And it was just something to do and check off versus taking in some of that information and expertise and bringing it into the organization. And that didn't leave me feeling very good as well. And so I think those other things were going on. But I realized that if there was a path forward where I could get into leadership, and maybe start to change some of those relationships that have made it work, but then that's when I realized it's sales that are going to do that. And that's just, I was never going to make it there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:53

When you were recognizing that you had that experience where it was, you called it, felt more commoditized. Do you remember any instance in particular where you had that realization? Or led that to that realization? Or what was the first time that you really felt that in the back of your mind? Take me there, if you remember any of those moments.

Eric 06:14

I think... Someone projects were either through leadership or through the client themselves where they were just looking for things to be done. So it was just send me a checklist, or just give me a timeline, or just put together a list of tasks. And it was less about understanding why they wanted to do that or understanding what the impacts would be or getting some more into information. It was more about, just give me those answers and don't worry about anything else. And that's when it became that thing that you can almost Google, you can almost figure out how to do that yourself, you don't need me to tell you what a timeline looks like, or a task looks like for me to help you understand why you're doing it, and what are the consequences of doing it, and are these things that you should be doing. Or are you asking the right questions? Are you thinking about this the right way before you get into the action part of it? And so those types of things started to happen when then I was just asked to not think that way and not ask those questions and not do those things, just give what was asked of you. And that doesn't always work well for me. I'm not a person that you just kind of say, "Don't think. Just do." Because I'm always thinking. And so it's hard for me to turn that part off.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:25

That's what I've always found fascinating. That situation that you experienced right there, where you are doing the things that come much more naturally to you. And quite frankly, as I've gotten to know you a little bit, I think you really enjoy that. When you say problem-solving earlier, I think that rolls up for you into one of the ways that you solve problems where you're asking questions, and you're thinking about it, and then using that information to be able to help someone and add value in that particular way. Like I see you doing that actively. And I don't think people could pay you enough to really stop doing that. Like, you'd have to really suppress it. And I think that's such a sign, like, when you get to that point, and you realize that to be able to be successful in this environment, this situation, this role, this organization, whatever it is that you're having to suppress a part of yourself, like, then it was definitely time to move on. So how long do you think it took you once you started recognizing that there was parts and pieces that you're like, "Yep, that's just not me. You're not gonna be able to ask me to do this." What took place from there? How long did it take?

Eric 08:26

Well, it took a long time. And looking back, an uncomfortably long time because I tried to find other ways to solve it besides attacking the problem, right? So for me, it was about, well, maybe this other company would do it better. And then no, it didn't. Well, that's twice, well, maybe a third time, maybe there's other companies going to do it better. And you get into that where it's easier to find, try to find something analogous to what you're doing. And maybe hope the environment in which you do it in will help solve some of the things for it, as opposed to taking a hard look and realizing that it's not necessarily just the environment, it's the actual types of tasks that you're being asked to doing, which aren't changing that much, depending on the company. And that took a long time for me to realize because that I think is the scariest part of it. Right? You get to a point where I was, I mean, I suppose isn't just post-college and this was postgraduate degree to, like, you start on this path and you start to you wake up one day, and you look around and you're like, you know, it's scary to say, well, maybe I made a wrong turn. Maybe I made the wrong... and I continued and I doubled down on that path and I'm way far away from where I should be. That doesn't make it right to ignore that and it doesn't mean it's wrong to be scared of it. The challenge is to then realize, "Do you want to do something about it or not?" And I think I was lucky enough to have an out– a way in which that I could be scared of that but still find a way to softly make the correction instead of making a hard turn or an exit. And I was able to do that. And that, I found myself also wanting to give back in a way and using that, that you talked about, like really thinking about things and helping solve challenges. I wanted to solve some of the challenges. And this is gonna sound very high in the sky, but I wanted to solve some of the challenges I felt society was facing. And we were going down a path. And I wanted to find a way to give back and I didn't want to just write a check, or build a house, or pack a lunch, and those things are all critical and vital. People need food, and people need shelter. And there's great organizations that do that. But that wasn't what I wanted to do and what I meant. And I found a fellowship which were looking for people like me who wanted to serve a year in city government and work on strategic challenges that government is facing around racial and social equity, providing innovation, and providing thought and providing counsel. So for me, it was a way of saying I can do some of the good things that I liked about consulting and marry it to making an impact, and then find a way to use that time to realize what is it that I wanted to do and be. So it was more of a softer turn than just saying, "I'm done with consulting. What am I going to do?" I was able to morph into this pseudo consulting type role and use that time to just say, "What is it that I want to be now?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:21

I think that is fantastic for so many different reasons. You've heard me talk about designing experiments. And I think that for you, this was such a great opportunity to be able to really conduct an experiment that was completely outside of your, what I would call normal, you know, some of those past organizations. It really sounds like we're changing the names and the faces, but the same type of situation overall in many, many variables. So I think there's a really fantastic way for you to be able to get outside that environment, shake it up, and be able to do so in a way that mattered to you well, being able to pay attention at the same time. So kudos to you for experimenting in that way. That's a courageous decision in the first place. What caused you to feel like that was the right decision for you at the time?

Eric 12:12

Well, at that time, I had been let go by the consulting firm that I was with. And I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And it was very easy looking back, you know, would have been very easy for me to say, "Okay, what other consulting firms are looking for people? Consulting firms are always looking for people." And so always do that, right? I can go back and say, "Okay, well, you know, XYZ firm you do consulting, this is what I do. Is there a way that we can work together? Or are you looking to grow this party practice?" But something inside me just realized that that wouldn't have been as exciting for me. And it just happened to be a chance encounter that I got a LinkedIn message from this nonprofit that wanted to at least see if I was interested in talking about this opportunity about helping and that had been going through my head anyway. So it just was a good opportunity for me to do things, as I said, software, right? It wasn't completely being unemployed and figuring out what I wanted to do. It was giving help in a structured way that was set for a year, it had set goals, there was a small stipend, so at least I felt like I was still "employed". But I was going to then use that time as doing two things– as helping society in the way that I wanted to, and then taking a moment for me and saying, "Who am I and what do I want to be?" I didn't pretend to think that government is where I wanted to work. I was open to it but it wasn't the reason to take it. It was more of, it would give me the opportunity to use the skills that I had in a new way and find the time to figure out who I want to be so that when I then look for what's next for me, I'm doing it from a place of, I'm not just looking for the next consulting job because that's easy, I'm looking for the next career move for me so that I could have a more structured career longevity in the career that I'm putting myself on the right path. It was almost like a moment in time where I could say, "I'm stopping on this road. I don't know what road I'm going to be on next. But I know it's going to be another road. And let me look at all the maps that I can find and figure out what road do I want to be on next, and put myself onto that road."

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:23

I vaguely remember the first conversation you and I had. I told you I've loved some of the analogies that you're coming up with. And you know, I think this is a great one because, honestly, this is the equivalent to instead of just like keeping on driving anywhere and just like feeling like you're making momentum, but really you're not, this is the harder thing to do in so many different ways, like, pulling over to the side of the road and saying, "Okay, hold on. Let's pull up the map. Where do we actually want to get to here? Okay, what's the best way to get here?" And it's a courageous decision, quite frankly, I don't think that that's always acknowledged versus just keep on the same path. Keep driving. So, really nice job. I'm also curious about, looking back on that experience after you went through the fellowship, what do you feel, like, were some of your biggest takeaways about what you wanted in your next step and beyond?

Eric 15:13

I think it reinforced that there were aspects of working on strategic initiatives and challenges that are done outside of being a consultant that there are ways to do that and there are opportunities to do that. And those are the tests that still got me excited and still had me want to go to work every day and want to do those types of tasks. I still was able to understand more about how I am as a person in terms of building relationships, right? Like, you think you're good at that. And in consulting, you're artificially put in that way where you're building relationships because you're working at the same client, and you're doing something together. And I always thought I was very good at that. This allowed me to come into an industry like government and do the same thing, but not from the same starting point. And I was able to reinforce that that is something that I'm very good at. And being with people and working with people and bringing people along on the journey, and pulling insights and thoughts from people are all things that I do get excited about and want to do. So it reinforced a lot of what I thought about myself, but it also gave me the opportunity to spend time, as I mentioned, like really thinking about what does that mean, you know, what are the other things? What don't I know about myself that I could use this time to find? And then, who can help me and just spend the time to do that sort of stuff?

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:36

So let's fast forward for just a second here. You ended up with Tonal which I believe is a pretty amazing organization. I think they're doing a nice job with, not just one thing, but a lot of different things. And that said, how do you tell people about what you do now? What's your position called and just give me a couple of tidbits about what you're doing, what you're spending your time on now at the moment.

Eric 16:57

Sure. So I'm currently a senior software and content program manager. And so what I do is for large strategic initiatives that the company is looking to investigate prototype build out for the offering, I lead the cross-functional work. So thinking about bringing teams together to solve whatever is the problem that we're asked to do. So usually, it's all stuff that isn't released yet. So we're working on new sort of ideas, we're kind of building them out. And my expertise would be ones that involve some sort of content creation for it with software support. So I don't really work on the hardware side, I'm not about building anything on the hardware side, it's all about the associated content and software.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:46

You know, I think is super fun about that is that we started this conversation by you saying, "Hey, I really learned through all my consulting experiences that I absolutely love, the working together in teams, and that type of collaboration, and that type of cross-functional collaboration", like, that's really fun for you. And then thinking about how the strategy of how the different things fit together. And now fast forward to the end, you get to do a whole bunch of that in your new role. And that is really wonderful. I think that's reinforcement that you made a wonderful step for yourself. Also, at the same time, you and I had a conversation before we hit the record button here that it was not always easy along the way, there was a pretty substantial amount of time for you. Was it about 12 months in between the fellowship? And then where you accepted this opportunity?

Eric 18:35

Yeah, my fellowship ended and then it took me a full calendar year to then accept an opportunity to join Tonal.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:42

So what was that like? First of all, I asked you, you know, "What did you plan on? Or did you plan for it to be that long?" You're like "No, not at all. My intent was to get a role that was right for me as soon as possible." But in doing so, what was that like for you? What were the hard parts? And what caused you to continue to keep moving forward?

Eric 19:05

I think there's a few things that I think and looking back on is that, one, you can only control what you can control. And there are far more things that you can't control than you realize. You can think about there are certain things that you can't control, but there are significantly more. And of the things that you either can control or not, the ones that you can control are going to give you the most heartache, the most consternation throughout it. And it's so much easier for me to say now, looking back, and reflecting on it than it was during that time because, at that time, every setback was felt catastrophic. It just did. And it's just because of the state you're in when you're going through this process and I don't minimize it in any way. It is very difficult. And I think what kept me going is the fact that through the fellowship, at least, and looking back the times in consulting, but especially through the fellowship, I realize I could do good things, not anything and I don't mean to toot my horn or anything like this, but I just realized that I am capable of doing good thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:11

To do ways.

Eric 20:15

So my real realization is that I have to keep going because whatever it is that I get to do next, it's going to be doing something good. And I should be in control of where I do that. And it may take a long time, but it's going to be worth it at the end. Because at the end of the day, if I follow the path, and I stay true to what I want to do and who I want to be, then I am going to do good things for a good company and feel good about myself. I'm just not going to feel good about myself during the process. And that's just the way it is. And I think there's things that you can do to help it get better, right? But from time to time, having that big picture of pulling yourself up from the weeds, and realizing that you're going to get somewhere, you just will, it's going to take a various amount of time, it's either gonna be quick or short, or long, you don't know, but you're gonna get somewhere and at the end of the day, you're going to be where you want to be. And that's a very powerful place to be. So taking time, looking up, and saying, "Okay, I'm gonna get there. I just don't know when that time is." Gives you a little perspective of just slowing down and it's going to be okay, and then you dive back in. I would... and you didn't ask this specifically. But some of the things that I would do besides taking that big holistic picture is I would spend time actually actively not looking for my next opportunity. Doing something else– it could be daily, or it could be weekly, but doing something else. Whether it's, you know, we talked about before, like, I play ice hockey, so whether it was playing ice hockey, or whether it was working out, or whether it was just going to get a coffee physically out of the house, going for a walk, a skateboard, or something, just doing something else to clear your brain. But making sure that you do that, it does do wonders, it does change your mood, it does give you something else to do and focus on. Because if you continue to focus on what is negatively happening, it reinforces it, and it puts you in a downward spiral. And I do say that you don't always control the downward spiral. There's lots of things that help you get there. But you can control when you get out of it by changing your mental state a little bit by just doing something else. And it can be something simple. It doesn't have to be something complex, which is doing something else. And it'll break up the days, it'll break up the weeks, it'll break up the months, and it will make you feel a lot happier in certain moments and celebrate those moments.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:46

That is fantastic. And I appreciate you sharing what worked for you as well. Because it's one thing to go through that and say, "Well, you just need to hang with it. And eventually, you're going to get there." But it's another thing for how do you actually do that and what might work for someone. So I really appreciate you sharing what worked for you. And also when you think back over the last, now it's been about 15 months or so, but when you think back over that 12 month period, what do you feel, like, was much more difficult than you would have anticipated?

Eric 23:18

I think the biggest challenge really was the networking piece. It wasn't really the conversations, it was getting the traction, it was getting the conversations. I think... And this goes back to, what you can control and what you can't control. You can control what industries you want to pursue, what companies you want to pursue, what people you want to target. What you can't control is their reaction, and their willingness, and their ability to meet you where you want to be. And I mean that in a simple way of, you want to have a conversation just to explore what they do or explore the companies for the industry. You can't control how receptive they are to it. And that's the challenging part. And I had a lot of moments where I would use a lot of the learnings that I got from you and about how best to reach out, and how best to structure your reach out, and plan your meetings, blah, blah, blah. And I would make headway in terms of getting connections and people that would want to meet. And then all of a sudden, things probably decided they didn't want to do that anymore and never heard back or never heard from them, or had a meeting and then didn't show up and then never heard back right? That's so frustrating. And that puts you into some of that downward spiral from before, right? And that goes back to you can't control that because you've done everything right. And it's hard. That was the hardest part is then you... It's not meant to be personal. It's not that someone is saying, "I don't want to talk to you at all", but it feels that way because you're the only one that asked and you're the one that set up meetings, so it feels that that's what they're doing. But, you know, people have different motivations, and people use tools for different things. And so if you find yourself in a way that you're getting people to say yes to connecting you on LinkedIn, and then never hearing from them again, or saying responding to one message in a positive way, and then never hearing from them again, it's hard. But it's one of the things that happens and understanding that people's motivations are different. And you can only control asking. And then you can control the environment in which you have the conversation. But there's very little else that you can control about that. And finding a way to have comfort in that. The positive was that person did say yes, at one point in time, that's a positive thing, celebrate that, and realize that if that gets replicated that next person, maybe then will follow through and have the conversation with you. So trying to look back and find the positives, and what happened in a very negative situation is helpful. But that was the most challenging part of the whole thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:54

I can definitely see. And I have felt where that challenge can happen. And you said something that is really very interesting there that I think changes the game for people. I think so many people when they think about making a career change as an example, I think people equate that with, I needed to make a company change, or environment change, or industry change, or something like that. However, I think it's far more than that. In some ways, it's also behavioral changes along the way, and you've referenced some of those. But then the other thing that often people don't think about is how do you actually produce a desirable situation that is a really positive outcome on the other end. And what I heard you say earlier, is that you're focused on those people or organizations or industries or companies or whatever that you actually are interested in, or that you do want to spend your time around. And if you're putting your efforts in a teeny, tiny, you know, a smaller portion of those places that you actually want to be, eventually, as long as you are continuing to move down that path, and this is what I saw you do really, really well, you continue to find ways to keep moving down the path, looking at that larger purpose of, "Hey, I know that I can do good work someplace. And I know that when I get there, I'm going to be able to contribute in a different way." And it almost sounded like you felt obligated to continue on down that path. But focusing on that element, and then focusing on identifying and only going after those places that you actually are legitimately interested in, that's kind of the not-so-secret sauce to how you end up in a place that you actually want to be. So I just wanted to unpack that for a few seconds here because it's easy to listen to a story like yours, Eric, where you've had a really positive outcome on the other end, and sometimes gets lost about how that actually got there. And in this case, I know you did a great job continuing to show up and continuing to focus on those places you want to be. So what I'm also curious about is Tonal. What caused you to believe "Yeah, this is absolutely an organization that is right for me."?

Eric 27:59

Yeah. Specifically about Tonal, I knew coming out of my fellowship that we talked about, it reinforced the types of tasks and things that I liked to do. But what it also instilled in me is that I also knew that I wanted to make an impact on people's lives and find a way to do that. And there's many ways to make an impact on people's lives. And I wanted to find an organization that I felt in which the work that I did would impact people. And for me, Tonal does that and I don't mean it in a physical way of just changing people's physiques or changing their, whether they're losing weight or getting stronger, muscles, or things of that nature. It certainly does that. But what it does for me, is it reimagines and reinvents and reinforces their relationship with health and fitness that is also impacts more parts of their lives. So it was an organization that I knew that I wanted to be part of. And there were other organizations too that do things similarly, but in other industries, but I knew specifically that I wanted to target companies that would allow me to do the work that I like, and good at and impact people. And so it was one of those things that I knew that I needed to narrow what that was and be uber-focused on what that was so that I could facilitate the right conversations and do the right research. And one of the things that you said earlier about related to what I'm just saying is that, that's incredibly hard to do, and I don't mean was hard for me, it's a hard thing for people to do. It takes a lot of the work that you alluded to, which isn't just career change, isn't just about a title or about tasks. It's really understanding you and yourself and what you want and what you enjoy and what you want to be part of. And when you do that, and you find the industries and the companies, you can continue to focus like you said, and you'll get to a good spot. The challenge is that when things are bad, you don't expand that further into organizations that don't quite fit that, but sounds like it could be okay. Or maybe that's a role, like, you start to creep a little bit outside of it because things are going tough, and it's hard. But if you can maintain that uber-focus, you'll get to the place that you want to be. But I do recognize and again, don't want to minimize, it's hard to do that when things are not going well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:29

Yeah, especially, I mean, 12 months in when... I don't know how you experienced specifically long periods of time in between where you're focused on something, but the result hasn't come through yet. But I know for me, it very much felt like, should I consider accepting something else? Like, am I really doing the right thing here? Like, am I doing the right thing for my family? Like, all it causes me to question my intense over and over again. And I'll ask you directly, what was that like for you? What were those hard elements that people might not be thinking about from the emotional side?

Eric 31:04

It does. It certainly makes you question, did you define things the correct way because it feels so narrow. And that's when relying on the work that you did is you have to trust that because you did it from an honest place, and it truly reflects who you are and what you want if you put in the work upfront to do that. It's having faith in that and having faith in yourself. Again, it's not easy, you know, it's not easy to do. But if you put in the work at the beginning to do that, then you're only cheating yourself if you ignore that later on when it's hard. It's easy to do that, it's easy to ignore it. And it's easy to open up and say, "Well, this role sounds sort of..." Maybe it's, you know, and maybe I'll be able to fix it, maybe I'll be able to fix the role once I'm there, maybe I'll be able to fix the company once I'm there. It's easy to talk yourself into those types of things, especially if they're the ones that you get conversations with, and they're the ones that you start talking to. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do because you did something earlier for a reason. So I don't really have a magic bullet to say how you break out of it. I think changing your perspective from time to time, not in terms of the details, not in terms of whether your answers are correct, but your perspective of take a break for yourself, read a book, go for a walk, go talk to someone you haven't talked to in a long time, just find some other way to change your mindset. When you then go back to it, you'll feel a stronger connection to the work that you did earlier because your minds a little clearer, and you'll realize, "Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. It is exactly what I'm looking for. And then I'll give you a little bit more of adrenaline rush to keep going.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:45

You did a really nice job, even staying true to yourself, at the very, very end when it got to you had an offer, you were in the negotiation process. It's feeling like you need to accept the offer and not sure how much give there is and everything else along those lines. And you did a really nice job of coming out on the other side with even more than what some of the minimums were that you had defined for yourself, not just accepting the "minimums". I will tell you from working with literally thousands of people on that, that it's a hard thing to do much like some of the other pieces that we've talked about here. And since you did such a great job through that process, what did you learn? And what would you share with everyone else about what you learned as you're going into a negotiation to be able to stay true to yourself and what you actually want?

Eric 33:30

I think a couple of things and thank you for those. I appreciate the kind words. I think a couple of things. The first thing is having support and having support from people, right, to bounce ideas off, to get information that I didn't know, to ask the question of, "Am I crazy here? Or should I ask this? Or is this out of bounds? Or is this how do you think? How do you think this is going to be responded to? Or what about this type of word? And how would you react to that." So having that support there is important/. And then going back to the understanding of you, understanding what is important to you. If a certain title or dollar amount or total package is critical to you then knowing that's what you need to find. I think in my particular case, I had a sense of what I felt my worth was. I don't have any true empirical evidence of my particular worth to the world, but I had a sense of what I think it would be. And so I knew that it would be something that was worth asking for knowing that if it got to a certain point that was a little lower or whatever it was, like, where my line in the stand was, where I would say, "I could love the company and I can love the opportunity but this particular package salary bonus or whatever it is, is not going to make me feel valued and put me in a negative spot", then unfortunately, that's just not a good position to put myself in instead myself up for failure. So I kind of had an idea of where my lowest spine would be. And just knowing that I would make these decisions if I had to as long as you have the support, and you know what's important to you, I think that the negotiation part isn't just asking questions and not being afraid to, there's no harm in asking and realize there's also no harm in being told no.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:27

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 36:20

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

Speaker 3 36:25

I bought into the model of career ascension, you know. You go from better to better to better, and that's the direction things are supposed to go. And it's always heading up and it's always heading bigger and more responsibility, better title, more money.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:44

Why is our culture so obsessed with job titles and job status? Just think about how often we ask and are asked by others, "So what do you do?" This inflated importance of career causes people to believe they have to find all of their fulfillment and everything they could possibly need within the constraints of their career, which can very easily lead to work consuming your entire life. And when, not if, when that all-consuming job begins conflicting with your priorities, like, health, family, whatever it may be, something will have to give. So then the question becomes, what is the life that you want to build? And where does work fit into that?

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:29

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.

Caroline 00:01

There was a part of me that definitely recognized that I had strengths, and I had value to offer an organization. But I didn't know how to navigate the next steps, or work out how I could communicate what my skill sets and values were.

Introduction 00:27

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:52

Let's say that you took a break from your career. Many people do. I've personally done it. Whether it was for your children, your health, travel, whatever. When it comes time to return to the workforce, it's common to not want to go back to the same work that you were doing before your break. However, if you've only worked in one industry, or done one type of role, or worked for one organization, it can feel, well, a little challenging. It can be really hard to figure out how to translate the experiences you've had to a new industry or new role or new opportunity. So the question becomes how do you do that? How do you translate all these experiences in a way that becomes useful to other people?

Caroline 01:36

There was this fear about what I could do outside of EY. And how I could translate what I did inside EY to another company. Given that my role and responsibilities couldn't really be packaged up neatly into a box.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:00

That's Caroline. When she contacted us, she'd experienced a huge upheaval in her life. She'd hit burnout at a job she'd been at for 17 years, resigned, moved countries, bought a fixer-upper, and decided to stay at home with her children for two years. She took that time at home to really establish what was important to her. And when we later got to help her she knew she was ready to return to the workforce. But she wanted this chapter of her career to be a better experience. And she was feeling extremely lost, very lost on how to do that. She climbed the corporate ladder at her previous company, she'd done really well for herself. But she'd been so focused on growing in that company specifically than now. She was having trouble translating all these skills, all these strengths, all these experiences, all of these things to what was going to be useful for other organizations. You're going to hear in my conversation with Caroline how she did an amazing job figuring out what she wanted, and what she needed out of her career. And she learned to communicate that in her job search. She was so sure about what she wanted and needed that when her new role first came along, she actually turned it down because that offer wasn't ideal. Guess what? Spoiler alert, the company ended up modifying the role to fit her. So let's jump into the conversation. Here's Caroline talking about her first role in account management.

Caroline 03:25

My career began working for Datamonitor PLC as an account manager within their professional services function. And my role there was to basically manage and sort of cross-sell a portfolio of research and consulting services to those clients. One of those clients was Ernst and Young. And my client at Ernst and Young suggested that I apply for a role as an account manager at EY. So that's where it all began. And so I interviewed for a role at Ernst and Young back in 2004 and joined as an account manager in their consumer products division in London.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:14

Circa 2004. So I'm curious when you took those couple opportunities, was that always the plan to end up with those types of organizations initially?

Caroline 04:30

So when I was at university, I always expected and thought that I would become either a management consultant or an IT consultant.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:40

Really?

Caroline 04:42

I did a degree in... a combined degree in, it's called information management. So becoming a hybrid manager, one that can understand the IT and understand the business and therefore be able to communicate and hopefully get to a solution that is more aligned with what the business needs. So my degree was focused on Computer Science Information Studies and Management. And I don't know, just from what I saw externally, what I'd heard, I thought that might be an interesting thing to try. When I graduated, it was 2000. So dotcom crashed, and all of the big companies suspended their graduate hiring. So I thought I would take some time, I would just take a role, and then apply the following year. And that role sort of what I didn't really... I enjoyed the work that I was doing but I felt that it wasn't, I kind of let myself down by not necessarily pursuing the dream. But at the same time, once I was working, and living life, there was very little time to focus on graduate applications. And so I think when the opportunity came up to join EY, I thought it was my way of sort of crossing over to that kind of big corporate organization and working my way up the ladder to the corner office with the amazing views.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:22

I can understand that. I can appreciate that. So here's my question for you, as you made that transition into that new company, new role, what happened next?

Caroline 06:34

I really enjoyed my first role at EY. I was working on some really, really big new clients. I was working with a great team that was progressive, fun to work with. And also, we were kind of leading the way in best practices that we were sharing across other accountings. I did the role in two years. And at that point, I was beginning to think what's next. So at that time, it wasn't possible to move from being an account manager to a business development director. And I knew that I wanted more responsibility, promotion, and the ability to earn more money. So at this point, I started exploring a couple of different options. One was moving into consulting and becoming a chargeable consultant. And I spoke to who was the global business development operations director at the time. And she mentioned that there was a big investment in China firm and that they were looking for somebody to go out and basically recruit, train, and manage a group of account coordinators in China. And that they had interviewed a few people and they hadn't found anyone suitable. So I put up my hand and said, "Well, could I go?" Never having recruited, trained or managed before, but at the same time, I was a good account manager. And at that point, I had the bravado and the confidence to just put my hand up, and then figure it out afterwards. And that resulted in very quickly a series of interviews and me being offered a position to move to the China firm. So based in Hong Kong, and the next, I guess, Korea chapter for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:43

You said at that point, "I had the bravado and the confidence." First of all, that's awesome. And I'm curious, at that point, there's something more behind that statement.

Caroline 08:55

I think when I first started my career, I don't know the world is your oyster. And I had a vision of what I wanted to achieve. I had no idea how to achieve it. But I also had no view on what my strengths were, what my weaknesses were, and what the road ahead looked like. So I think it was just, "Okay, I want to get to the moon. Let's just start driving." And I think over the years, you hit more and more bumps along that road, and potentially it probably made me a little bit too cautious to the point, I think, by the time I left EY that I didn't believe there was a road ahead.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:53

Let's talk about that. What led up to the point where you became, you called it overly cautious, or what led up to the point where you decided to leave?

Caroline 10:05

I think a number of setbacks– not getting the promotion opportunities, or roles being changed and no longer qualifying for promotion opportunities. People, so by this, I mean, challenging characters, and having to navigate, you know, not just the stakeholders, but your teammates, your colleagues, and everyone's individual agendas, you know, the typical corporate system asks you to collaborate and work as a team. But at the same time, you're benchmarked against each other. And ultimately, it's a triangle. So you start off with a lot of people at the base, and there's only a few people that can move through. So regardless of people's personalities, and what they may want, it kind of forces people to compete, versus competing openly, it just sometimes becomes a series of, you know, toxic behaviors and like a minefield that you have to navigate through.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:27

Why is that for you?

Caroline 11:29

I think I'm an individual that leads from the heart goes with kindness like simplicity is open and honest. And, you know, what I enjoy is just coming together with a group of people and getting a really good result. And all the mess in the middle, I think I now realize that it's unnecessary. And it kind of impacts everyone that's involved in those situations. So actually, if we all just took a step back and challenged ourselves and our behaviors into like, "Okay, what is the best way for us all to move forwards?" It would be so much easier. But as I said, the system in most organizations doesn't support that behavior. So for me, it was a series of setbacks around promotion, it was working with individuals that I found personally quite toxic. And I think my... Although I'd had a phenomenal career and opportunity after opportunity, I hit the hurdle that happens to a lot of people, you sort of end up in a role that isn't set up to succeed for various reasons. And so I think I had, you know, I'd been riding the wave, and I'd been lucky. And, at times, I had probably made the choice to compromise on what I wanted in my career as I started to have a family because balance became most important thing. And then when I accepted the final role, I found myself in a situation that I couldn't deliver results in. And so that kind of impacted me in two ways. I was someone that had always delivered results, and all of a sudden, I couldn't. And as much as I had senior partner sponsorship and understanding, and was being asked to just hold, they knew that the role wasn't working, and it would be looked at, at the same time, there was middle management constantly pushing for results, asking me what I was going to deliver, and when. And that ultimately, combined with working global hours, which sometimes started at 6am, with calls at 6am in the morning, calls finishing at midnight, just ultimately led to burnout. And also took out my self-confidence because I then started internalizing that it was me that was failing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:39

What did that feel like at that point in time? So obviously, this is even now thinking back about this, this is hard for you. And I recognize that. And I'm curious at that point in time, what did that feel like for you?

Caroline 14:57

Ultimately, at the end, I woke up one day and I thought, "I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore." But at the same time, I have a family, I have financial responsibilities. And I just knew I had a big choice to make. And I actually saw... I decided to speak to someone. And I had a couple of sessions with a therapist to finally accept that I wanted to resign and that I could resign.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:41

I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough on this show, or any place in the world, is the idea that it is okay to leave in one way, or if it's not serving you, it's okay to leave. So I'm curious for you, looking back, what do you think made it so difficult? And then what helped to allow you to decide, "Yeah, this is actually what I want."?

Caroline 16:10

The piece that made it difficult was the financial responsibility. We were a two-income household. And Hong Kong is and has been the number one most expensive city for many years. And I felt this sense of responsibility and guilt. I felt selfish. Because the choices that I might make will impact my broader family. So leaving the company wasn't hard, it was the impact of that choice that was difficult. I also recognized that underlying that there was this fear about what I could do outside of the EY, and how I could translate what I did inside EY to another company. Given that my role and responsibilities couldn't really be packaged up neatly into a box that fits automatically into kind of a different company, like I wasn't doing a finance role, or I wasn't a qualified project manager, I was an IT consultant. What I had sort of built was sort of 18 years of experience, simplifying complexity, and taking problems and opportunities, developing strategies, and getting buy-in, and executing to deliver results. And so I was really struggling to see how I could go out into the market and say, "I do stuff. Just trust the magic, and I will deliver results." Because essentially, that is how I felt that's what I did. And you know, that is not how you communicate in the professional world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:26

Turns out, just showing up and be like, "Oh, yeah, I totally do stuff" is not that helpful to other people. Even though, like, you get stuff done, like, nobody's business, I don't think anybody can argue with that. But it's more difficult to your point to communicate that and translate it into a way that becomes useful to other people. So let's talk about that for a little bit, then. I think that's an important part of your transition. I think that's also a problem that many people face, like, "Hey, how do I... I have been in this industry. I've been in this combination of roles. I've been in this situation, whatever it is, how do I translate that into something that becomes useful for other organizations?" How did you work through that? What worked for you?

Caroline 19:12

So if I stepped back, I hit burnout. I had low self-confidence. I resigned from a company that I had worked with for 17 years. I moved countries. Additionally, I had always been a city dweller. And I made the decision to move to the countryside, buy a house that needed huge renovation. And at the same time at the back of my mind, I knew that I wanted to and I needed to go back to work. And I didn't know how to do that. There was a part of me that definitely recognized that I had strengths, I had value to offer an organization. But I didn't know how to navigate the next steps, work out how I could communicate what my skill sets and values were, or find a role that would fit my new life in the UK. It's really scary to leave a role and not know what's next. And on top of that, the career change process feels incredibly intimidating when you've got so many sources of information coming at you, in terms of how you should present yourself, how you should format your CV, how you should interview, and it's a lot, and it feels like a lot of work. And you're not quite sure what will actually help. So it's not that you're afraid of the hard work, but you're like, which piece of advice do I listen to and what do I do? And at the same time, it's quite a lonely journey because you can have really, really supportive family, friends, and colleagues, but there's only one person that can do the work. And that's you. So for me, there was a lot of fear of the unknown, fear of not knowing how to navigate. And as I mentioned, I felt that you needed to own every single process. And having a coach was such a game-changer. Because you've got somebody that kind of points you in the right direction, helps you along the journey, helps you overcome your blockages, and gives you accountability. But also, if you find the right person, you've also got an ally and a friend and a safe space to have a conversation. And so this is the point where I recognized that I needed some help. And I reached out to Happen To Your Career team and sort of started on the bootcamp and coaching journey.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:35

As you went on that journey, what do you feel like was the most difficult part for you between now and that point where you decided, "Hey, I definitely want to go back to work."?

Caroline 22:51

Self-confidence. How I communicate my values.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:57

You talked about, "how I communicate my value." And at that same time, you were feeling low confidence, which doesn't take a rocket scientist to add those two together and say, "I'm trying to communicate my value, but I'm feeling self-confidence." And we already know that you wear your heart on your sleeve in many different ways. So that combination of things makes it especially challenging. What did you find worked for you? Or what did you do specifically to communicate your value or get better at communicating your value?

Caroline 23:30

The Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment was probably the most important tool for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:38

Really? In what way?

Caroline 23:40

So taking the output from the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment helped me do two things. One, understand why my previous role and environment were not the right place for me. The two gave me platforms language that I could use to communicate my strengths to the market.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:08

What's an example of that now? Like, how would you describe one of your strengths or one of the things that are your talents?

Caroline 24:17

So one of my strengths was relator. So I can articulate that in, obviously, I focus on building relationships, that I'm able to connect with different stakeholders and team members, understand them and get to know them, how to work with them, bring the best out of them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:44

How do you get to do that? Let's fast forward to this for a second, just now, and how do you get to do that now? How do you get to use that natural ability to relate and connect and how does that show up in your current situation?

Caroline 25:01

Being a relator is just helped me able to kind of navigate a new company, new stakeholders, new teammates really, really quickly, and move from meeting people from the first time to kind of productive relationships quite quickly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:23

How does your newest opportunity? When do you start?

Caroline 25:31

Mid-September.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:32

Okay, so you've been in mid-September. What feels different to you, compared to previous situations?

Caroline 25:40

It's a fresh start. I have chosen to work in a very, very different environment and culture with leaders who prioritize their people, as much as they are focused on growth. It's an entrepreneurial space with a flat hierarchy. And it is very different from what I have experienced in the past. And so there is a little bit of sort of excitement. And at the same time, there's a little bit of nervousness in terms of navigating in such a different space.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:27

Yet the learning curve of going into a new environment, even if more pieces of that environment are a fit, I think that's something a lot of people don't anticipate when they sort of get to the thing. They feel like, everything's going to be, I don't know, rainbows, butterflies, whatever else. But within every new stage, there's new pieces. And honestly, I think it'd be boring if there weren't. But I think that's what I hear you saying is that there's that learning curve in addition to the pieces that you were looking for, like, having a different style of leadership, for example.

Caroline 27:04

Yes, absolutely. And I think for me, taking a two-year career break, I had mentally prepared for going back to work by organizing the juggle. So how do I manage childcare? How do I feed my kids healthy food? You know, work with the nanny. How do I get myself to the office? And I started work, and then all of a sudden I say, "Hold on, this is really, really different. Who do I report to? I don't seem to have clear reporting lines. Right. Clear reporting lines aren't really a thing. What am I roles and responsibilities? Oh, okay, this is a new role. So I am..." it's almost like a bit of a science experiment. And we're going to build the role as we go. Or there's different stakeholders that one have completely different priorities. And all of these things I hadn't really thought about for two years. And so I wasn't prepared for them. But at the same time, all of that experience is there and it's sort of coming back quite quickly. And at the same time, I really do see this as an opportunity to grow. It's uncomfortable, though, at times.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:36

Growth, as it turns out, it's not really growth if there's not some degree of outside your comfort zone. So I can fully appreciate that. As you look at this opportunity as a whole, what were you looking for in this next role and then how much of it lines up with that? What are the pieces that line up with, "Hey, I was looking for these types of things, this type of environment, these type of abilities, my strength" this type of whatever else your ideal career profile, essentially, and what are the pieces that you now have that do in fact line up with that?

Caroline 29:17

So I was really looking for an environment that aligned with my values– leadership that was authentic, colleagues who want to collaborate to deliver results, and an environment where I was able to use my skill sets, as well as develop new ones. And then, from a practical point of view, I was looking for a company that was open to flexible working, reduced hours, and working from home as well. So, and I'll be honest, I didn't know if I could find that. It seems like one of those, I don't know, magic moments. And that's where the Happen To Your Career coaching process sort of really kicked in. And I've really understood the value of leveraging your network and just having open and honest conversations, and actually just seeing where this can take you. So what do I have? Now? I have a role in a midsize entrepreneurial company. I work three days a week, 24 hours split across four days, and one of those days I go into the office. So from a practical perspective, I have ticked all of the boxes that I needed to be able to manage my home life and my work life, and my personal preferences.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:08

Most people would say that's impossible.

Caroline 31:11

No, I know. And I think I'm still one of the... I'm still pinching myself. And I'm not quite sure how it happened. Because when I received... when I first received the offer for this role, it didn't align with my ideal career profile, and in a few different ways, and it was more around the flexibility and the money. And that morning, I had seen a quote on Instagram that said, "You must do the one thing you think you cannot do." I don't know how, but that gave me the courage to turn down the position.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:57

What did you say when you turned down the position? Do you remember?

Caroline 32:00

I thanked them for the opportunity but said that I couldn't compromise on the salary and the flexibility to that level at this point in time. I focused on the value and the experience that I was bringing, and I left it there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:28

A long before they came back and said, "We still want you here."

Caroline 32:32

Two weeks. But I will say that there was no change in the salary but what we negotiated was around the flexibility. And that was the most important thing to me. As I mentioned to you before, it's something that I knew I wanted but, you know, and I'd heard maybe on the podcast or, you know, Instagram or reading articles, you come across individuals that might have it but they're on the minority, not majority.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:05

Yes, yeah. Well, so I think what is... I don't want to undermine at all the work that you had to do because it's easy to listen to this, and get a snapshot and say, "Well, that's probably possible for Caroline. You know, she's the one person who got that unicorn role." But in reality, and we know that if you're understanding exactly what you want, and then you're actively looking for and trying to solve the problem of finding what you want in the real world, then that's the only way to get where you want. Because if you don't try if you either don't know what you want, or you don't try, then it is going to be impossible. However, it's strange how many times it, as you said, magically works out. It's not magic. It's a lot of work. But it's strange how often it works out when you have those two things. So nice work, by the way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:00

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.

Caroline 34:00

Thank you. And I think along the coaching process, I kept having to say to myself, "Trust the process. Trust the process." And for the first time, I completed most of the templates that are available via the coaching bootcamp, and I followed the structured process step-by-step with interventions from my coach. And it's funny how having clarity on what your strengths and transferable skill sets are, and being able to communicate those, followed by working out what's really important to you, puts you in a position to just have an open and honest conversation with people. And I think if I was... The biggest lesson for me is, I will always default to assume that it's not possible and that I'm asking for too much. And if there is one takeaway from this process, it's the end, a top tip that I would give to anyone. It's just let people know what you're looking for and let them decide if you're asking for too much, or it's impossible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:30

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

Speaker 3 36:36

Career change isn't just about a title or about tasks. It's really understanding you and yourself and what you want and what you are enjoying, and what you want to be part of.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:49

You might not know this about the HTYC podcast. But before I hit the record button with our clients to share their story of how they changed their career, I almost always share the same thing. I tell them, I don't want to misrepresent what career change is. It can be wonderful. Also, sometimes when we get a snapshot in time in the form of a 35-minute-long podcast episode, you don't always get the full picture. So I ask our clients to share, not just the great parts of their career change, but also what was hardest about it, what were their challenges, and what was different than what they thought.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:25

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:00

Job search today is very different than it was 20 years ago. Recruiters and hiring managers are absolutely drowning in potential candidates today. So how do you convince them to give you a chance? A chance for an interview, a job, or even just the time of day? Well, it turns out, it's actually not about convincing the hiring manager or recruiter that your absolute best perfect fit for this job. That's not it. There's not just one secret Jedi mind trick that's going to make them choose you. So what is it then? What matters most when it comes to your job search? That evasive answer is what we break down in this episode of the Happen To Your Career podcast.

Introduction 00:48

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:13

If you've ever been in an emergency situation, you know how chaotic it can feel. When you're in an emergency situation, when there is chaos, when there are other things going on, a distractions, etc., you have to be specific. People are panicking. And it turns out if you scream, "Help! Help! We need help." it doesn't actually cause anybody to come and help you many times. Instead, what you learn, and there have been many studies to show that this is absolutely the case in emergencies. What you learn, what they teach in these emergency trainings is that you need to give clear, specific instructions, "You in the pink shirt, I need you to call 911 right away." "You in the corner, bring me a towel", or you know, whatever it is that you need. You have to be extremely clear about what it is that you want, and what you need for that situation. These studies have also shown that it carries beyond emergency situations. Knowing what you want, and being extremely clear about what you want is the very best way to get what you want in most situations. It's all about getting really specific, and that allows you to be able to communicate very differently. And you may have heard me say this on the podcast in the past, but when you know what you want, it becomes easier to ask for what you want. And when you ask for what you want, strangely, you get what you want more often, right? You may have guessed it by now. But the strategy of knowing what you want, and being able to clearly communicate it is the most effective method for job searching today. It sounds so simple. And yet so few people do this. Part of the reason is that knowing what you want can seem abstract. And it's a step that many people will skip right over or think that they can do on a good enough level. But when you get really concrete about what you want, and what you need out of your career, then it allows you to get different results. You can do this by defining first what we call your must-haves. Now we dedicate a large portion of career change, at least the process behind the scenes when we're helping other people, we dedicate a large portion of that process to defining these must-haves. And we use a tool that we call the Ideal Career Profile. It's a very simple tool, think about it as a large checklist of everything that you want or the most important things about what you want and what you need, that creates and adds up to fulfilling work that becomes truly meaningful to you. Now, if we oversimplify the Ideal Career Profile for just a moment, then it's in two parts, the must-haves or the deal breakers, the things that you absolutely have to have for the seven key elements that define meaningful work, and then the ideals. The ideals are aspirationally what we're working towards. You need both of these to be really be clear about what it is that you want. Now if you want to learn more about the Ideal Career Profile, and the seven elements of meaningful work, we'll include links in the show notes and description, to past episodes where we've discussed this and also we go over this in detail in the Happen To Your Career book. However, I want to say all of that to then explain that knowing what you want is not innate. It's not. It's not just a job title. It's not one singular element, like a job where I can work from home, it's really complex. And once you figure it out, it changes everything for you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:06

Okay, so we already acknowledged that most people haven't done the work to get clear on what it is that they want, and what they need out of their career. So they don't really know what it is that they're looking for, even if they think that they do, even if they think that "Well, I'm looking for something that has more growth and a mission-driven company." Okay. All right, let's start. And then they wonder why they're not able to find that, let alone when they think that they do find that why they're not getting those opportunities in a way that's useful for them and the organization. The very common job searching scenario is going on Indeed.com or LinkedIn, and then you find an open role, and then you try to get that job to fit you, right? You look at this, and you're like, "Well, I think this could work, maybe, I guess." And then that's how we lead to long times of depression and wondering why there's no good jobs out there that are actually sound wonderful or the ones that do sound wonderful require 347 years of experience, and also 10 certifications on top of that, either way, it's not a great recipe for mental health. So when you're applying for jobs that just don't fit, the other thing that a lot of people don't think about is your communications, your application, even though when you're interacting with people, let's say that you get pushed through to the interview, even when you're interacting with other people, when you don't know exactly what you want, you don't know how this comes off is generic. You don't realize that it does. Until you've seen it from the other side over and over again. And I've been really fortunate to be involved in a lot of hiring processes, there's literally thousands of them over the last 25 years. And those overwhelmed hiring managers that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, well, the generic applications, generic people coming in, this is what they get bombarded with constantly, is actually not that helpful to anybody, including the people applying. So when you know what you want, this allows you to be able to communicate more specifically, I think we've covered that right? But the part we haven't covered is it comes off as more useful, more interesting, more relevant, and more genuine, which is something that we all are looking for. This is what makes you actually stand out from the rest in a really useful way, and organic way too. Okay, I want to give you a couple examples here, the example and the difference of communication from two specific applicants. And we pulled some of this verbiage kind of a combination together from different types of applications that have seen over the years. And the first is what we normally see when someone's applying to roles or interested. The second is someone who obviously knows what they're looking for, and can truly see themselves in that role. Let's see if you can tell the difference.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:08

Example one, "I am a highly motivated professional with distinctive talents and skills that enable me to effectively educate and communicate the value of products/services, fostering trust with clients/customers. I firmly believe in the pivotal role of hard work, dedication, self discipline, in achieving success for both myself and the company that I represent." I'm not even sure I can get through the rest. It goes on to say, "The values upheld by your organization resonate with me and I'm eager to join your team blah, blah, blah, contributing to the collective success and blah, blah, blah by becoming an integral part of your professional family." Oh, my goodness, this was a lot of words, but it didn't really say anything. It comes across like this person is just saying what they think they should and pulled the rest from ChatGPT. It basically whatever they think the hiring manager wants to hear. This is what people got bombarded all day with. Imagine being a recruiter or a hiring manager or an HR professional talent acquisition, imagine reading this stuff all day. This is what people think they need to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:20

Let's listen to the second one. "My entire career has been customer-focused, and I thrive in this type of environment. The thrill of knowing you impacted someone's life whether that is big or small, with minimal effort or a heavy lift. It makes me feel so freakin good. When I am given the opportunity to be myself and communicate with someone freely without the hindrance of feeling robotic or scripted, I do my absolute best work. In my 14 years with my current company I primarily focused on customer experience and providing what we call white glove customer service. I eat, sleep, and breathe effective customer communication, tone of voice, being your best self, positive word and phrasing, planning and organization follow through follow-ups and so much more. Needless to say, customer service is my passion, and it's something that I truly enjoy. It makes me happy. I strive to provide the best experience possible to each customer as if it were my only one." Okay. Now, this isn't even what I would consider to be a phenomenal response. But you can see the difference, like it is very, very heavily different. One sounds much, much more genuine, it sounds like this is actually what they want. They've put not just some thought into it but they understand themselves enough to be able to communicate in a very different way. And then that very different way, appears to be more organic, more specific, more genuine. And it turns out that we, as humans, we respond to that, we get different results, were attracted to levels of clarity, were attracted to levels of specificity. Okay, so they made their own experience relevant to the job listing on top of it. And overall, it was an enjoyable read. It was relatively free of fluff, or lots of corporate jargon, there's a little bit in there that no one wants to bother with. They also did the most important thing. They clearly communicated what they love doing and explained how the open role fits them. It was built into it. It almost didn't feel like they were, a lot of people call the selling themselves. But in this case, it didn't feel like that. They were just communicating what they loved. Okay, I want to get into something that most people overlook here. If you are communicating what you enjoy and love to do and are great at and in the ways that you can contribute the best, but also, you're getting much back out of that, and you get hired for that, that's a great situation. But let's say that you're communicating the things that you think that you have to even though it doesn't fall into that category of enjoyment, or the right challenges, or the right types of contribution for you, and you get hired for that. That means you're stuck in a situation where it's actually not that great for you. A lot of people miss this logic. And this is where I want to get into the nitty gritty of job searching and how you can use this knowledge from what you need in your Ideal Career Profile to land the right opportunity. Not just any job, your ideal role, or what we often call your unicorn role. Okay, let's first point out the obvious, our society has shorter attention spans than ever before getting shorter by the minute. In fact, the recent research shows our attention span has decreased in specifically just the last 15 years in 2000 even it was 12 seconds, now it shrunk to about 8.25 seconds on average. And the funny thing, this means humans actually now have a shorter attention span than goldfish, who can focus on a task or object for like nine seconds. So how do we break through all of the noise here? Well, what's been proven time and again, is that customizing your interactions actually stand out making them relevant to the person who is listening, relevant and useful to the person that who is listening. Think about it. We live in an age where everything is customized to you. Your phone is set up to your preferences, the ads you see are personalized recommendations, even the music you hear on your streaming services, we've come to expect it at every single term. Customization grabs attention. And that's even true when it comes to job search– customizing your interactions, cover letters, resumes. And guess what helps you do that? Knowing what you want. Since you know what you're looking for, and what you bring to the table, it makes it that much easier to get really specific on how the role or organization you're discussing fits you. You can tailor every interaction to show why your strengths and your experiences are a great fit for the role. This type of customized job search, well, it takes longer than just clicking an Apply button.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:15

Oh my goodness, we have we opened up a role. And by the time this episode airs, it'll have been closed for a couple of months. But we opened up a role and I'll tell you, just recently, we have hundreds, hundreds of applications for this role where people have just to click the Apply button. And then it automatically sends their resume and the resume often has absolutely nothing to do with this. And then, you see the stories all over the place where it's like, "I've applied to 250 different roles." And people wonder why. People don't quite connect the dots normally for how this is pretty much a waste of time. It's a waste of time for the people who are applying, it's a waste of time for the organization itself. What really makes a difference? So you're not just finding just another job. And instead focusing on finding work that truly fits you is this customization. Now, I have to mention how AI can play into this. Like I said earlier, AI can come off as really generic and bland. But this can be really very helpful in a different way, though. If you're using AI to help you distill information or collaboration or get ideas on something, that's going to be very useful. If you're causing AI to write for you, a lot of times, it's going to write in the most bland way possible. It's going to come off much the same way or candidate that we just read earlier came off as very robotic. That doesn't mean AI can't be very useful. Think about job search as a marketing process. And it works just like any other type of marketing. We actually just used AI really recently for creating marketing, and copy for our Airbnb property. We made a big list of all our benefits and all the features that the house has. And then we asked ChatGPT to rank them. And then I asked him to rewrite them so it would fit our particular target market. I shared with ChatGPT the specific target market that we're looking for, and that we want to attract to rent the house. And then I said, "Hey, write a..." I probably actually did write "Hey" you don't need to if you don't want to, but I probably did, I said, "Hey, write a benefits-driven description of our house using these bullet points in 500 words or less." And then it popped out something. And then I was like, "Okay, now take this and make it shorter, make it more concise." And then once it was completed, I went in and personalized it and made it sound like if I were saying it out loud. By the way, that's a super easy secret if you want to stand out and feel more genuine. There are spaces where that doesn't make sense– academic could be an example for that or other professions where you need to adapt to that particular profession, or that particular person, which again, is about customization and knowing your market. In this case, though, writing as if you are talking is a huge hack that makes it feel more genuine. Here's an example of how you're doing this if you're tailoring your resume. Have your list of all your features and benefits. In this case, your results, responsibilities, experiences, achievements, the same things you might normally find on a resume for yourself. And then you're going to leverage AI to find the highest priority ones for a particular target market much the way what we did with Airbnb. In this case, the target market is whoever this resume or application is going to go to. So one of the ways that you can do that is by feeding the job description into AI as well. Then ask AI to find the highest priority, responsibilities, achievements, and bullet points on your resume and ask it to write a summary. And then you can generate multiple different options quickly, as opposed to struggling to write it for yourself, because that's where a lot of people get caught up. AI can do the initial work for you and then you can modify it. Once you have AI write multiple versions, the modification is much much easier, then you can make it sound like you and make it feel genuine. Make sure it aligns with what you actually want. If you're struggling to adapt this to where it feels like you are talking out loud, another simple solution would be to pull out your phone and use the dictate function or talk-to-text and just talk about each point and then take that and modify it from there. Sometimes it's easier for us to communicate authentically when we are saying it out loud verbally. And then once you have it down on paper, you can edit it so that it makes sense and you can come up with something really great. To some people, these might seem like a lot of extra steps in order to go from understanding what you want to be able to communicating what it is that you want. However, when you do this, you up the chances significantly. And I'll share just for me personally, it's been a while since I have personally done a job search although I do personal marketing all the time in various different ways. And obviously this is what we have done for thousands of people over the last 10-plus years now. But I'll tell you, for me personally when I was using the same exact type of approaches, I would get pushed through to the interview process almost every time. It was a rarity that I wouldn't get at least a first-step interview minimum. And the reason is because now we're customizing or tailoring, we're making it relevant to them, and therefore we are standing out amongst all of the other things at the bar is very low sometimes, and you can use that to your advantage.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:27

Now, let's talk for a minute just about recognizing what you want. AI can of course, save you time. When you're job searching today, it can help you get past some of those stuck points, it can help even prioritize for you. There's lots of that it can do. But knowing what you want may save you even more time. Here's what I mean. Completing an Ideal Career Profile helps you focus on jobs, industries, organizations that actually fit you. And consequently, the thing people don't think about is it makes it so much easier to identify if you're applying or going after the right roles, the right jobs, instead of wasting your time applying in interviewing for jobs that ultimately will not end up working out for you. It's very counterintuitive, because it seems like that it's a lot of work upfront to be able to customize, and to be able to tailor for each and every situation. However, if you only need to focus on two or three or four organizations and roles and opportunities until you find the right one versus the story that we just talked about a couple of minutes ago, where you hear it over and over again, like, "I applied to 250 or 350, 900, I applied to 900 jobs." Applying to 900 jobs, even if it's just a simple click easy button still takes a really, really long time– reading through all those job descriptions and finding them like that is insane, and it feels terrible on top of it. Instead, what we're talking about is yes, taking more time, but doing it for a much, much, much lower amount of opportunities because you have a higher level of assurance that these are right opportunities for you. And then it doesn't really come as a surprise when you're customizing, when you're tailoring, and when you are better aligned, when you know you're better aligned with that upfront, that you get better results. Not a surprise, right? When you've done the work to figure out what you want, and to begin applying for jobs that fit and talking to people about those opportunities, even more important than it is, that it's more effective. This process actually becomes more fun because you're interested in it, and you're excited about it. If you're not enjoying talking about those opportunities, or you're not getting excited when tailoring your resume to that job, that's probably a sign. Like even if you don't love tailoring resumes is still probably a sign that you might not enjoy working in that role every day. Pay attention to these feelings. I want to give you an example from Samantha on our team. She's our content manager. And recently this process showed her that she had been applying to the wrong roles for a long time.

Samantha Martin 23:23

Yeah, I found this when I was changing my resume for this role. Actually, I was finally enjoying what I was translating, like, I was taking stuff I actually enjoyed doing in my past roles. The things I actually liked, not just every single thing I was doing or the things I accomplished, but the things I really truly enjoyed in my past roles. And then I was translating those things into what this role was looking for. And I was excited about that, like, it was an enjoyable process because I was talking about things that I liked. And it was just finally all clicking into place and it started making sense. Like in the past, it was so hard for me to translate my marketing experience into what the application was looking for because turns out, none of those roles I was applying for were ever a good fit for me. And I was just continuously trying so hard to make it work. And so it was like red flag after red flag. Because I was like, "This is so hard and grueling to do. Why is it so difficult? I shouldn't be able to write a frickin resume. I'm a writer." But it turns out it wasn't my lack of skill. It was just the universe trying to tell me like stop trying to make this happen. It's not the right role. And when it finally was the right role, I could tell from the very beginning.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:43

Okay, we got specific on tailoring, resumes, tailoring applications. Let's talk about actual interactions with real people where you're, you know, having conversations with during the job search. Let's say you found an open role that fits you, tailored your resume, submitted your application, we recommend taking it a step further. Reach out to someone in the organization, make a connection. It's actually pretty easy to find most people on the internet today between LinkedIn or their company website. A lot of times, I can find somebody in less than five minutes, sometimes less than five seconds. A lot of job listings even have contact information for who the hiring manager is specifically, not all, but a lot. And once you find your method of contacting them, what you want to do is begin to build a relationship with that person inside the organization. Just a short paragraph, like, the example earlier in this episode can really get through when you know what you want and it can connect with that person inside the organization. We had a client, Jenna, who had figured out the exact type of organization she wanted to work with and made a list of organizations that fit that description. And there was one that kept topping the list. So when a role became available, she applied. And then she took it a step further to start building relationships with the people, the real people inside that company. She created loom videos, these are video messages, there's lots of ways to do this. And talked through what she wanted out of her next role, what skills and strengths she could bring to the organization. It's not the perfect solution for everybody but it's a great example. Here's Jenna, talking about how she did this.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:47

Well, it was not perfect for every single situation, but in your situation, I think it was highly effective because, one, as you said, you can put a face to the name, which creates more personal type of approach. It also, in your case, it was a casual company already, like that's how they operate, you had already done the research to indicate that that wasn't just a thing that they did on their website, like, they operate this way, right. So in your reach out, if you're modeling that in the same tone, it strategically feels to them like you fit. And more importantly, you'd already done the work yourself to realize that that's what you wanted. So you're simply answering their call to help them understand why you're a good fit in ways that they don't even necessarily, it's not like on a resume or anything like that. It just feels like generalists.

Jenna Bias 26:28

Just one step of research led to another and I found myself just learning a lot about the company that way. And then furthermore, when I decided to apply to certain positions in their application process, they often would have a little blurb about the hiring manager there. They're very transparent about who would be hiring. And I almost feel like, it's almost like an invitation like, we're telling you, "Hey, I'm the person doing the hiring here. I'm introducing myself to you via the application. I almost felt like it would be a disservice to not then go introduce myself." Like they're almost asking you, how do I felt. And so and I think for me, that made it a little bit more comfortable. So as far as reaching out, like via LinkedIn, or email that wasn't super challenging, it almost like I said, seemed invited. But then I did kind of take it to the next step and created a few loom videos to just kind of further introduce myself, but further express my interest, like face to face, because I mean, you can say so much in an email. But I feel like until you hear someone out and like see their genuine expression, I feel like that goes so much further. And at the end of the day, lots of people are sending emails. So I feel like if you can create a little video and kind of put a face to the name, I think for me that ended up being priceless.

Jenna Bias 28:39

Right. I think too, I didn't mention this but the fear that goes along with it is like oh, the potential of them not responding which: A, I realized now it really doesn't matter. They get so much influx of information. It's like, who cares if they don't respond. But for me, my CEO did end up acknowledging my video and just sent me like a simple email back, telling me good luck on the interview process. And from there, I ended up applying to, I think, four different times through a few different roles. And every step of the way, I just sent her an email updating her on my journey. And she responded to every single email not being like, nothing like extraordinary, but just the response itself was like, to me, again, just as exemplified, this is a company I want to work for. Here's this busy CEO taking time out of her day to just shoot me a quick email, acknowledging the work that I'm putting in to try and be a part of our organization. And then yeah, as far as applying to multiple roles, it just came down to, "I knew this is the company I wanted to work for." So again, rather than spreading myself thin across different companies, I was like, "No, I'm just going to focus here." And even though I actually got denied initially for my current role, obviously in the end, it ended up paying off when I applied the second time and I think a large part of that was because I had already touched base with the hiring manager, we did already kind of have that rapport. And yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:06

Okay, so let's dig into that for just a second. What did that look like? Take me through, I think you said you applied for four, how many did you interview for? What did the process look like?

Jenna Bias 30:17

Yeah, so one of them that I applied for initially, to be frank, I knew was, not that it wasn't a good fit, I was just like, highly underqualified. It didn't so much, I think there's a lot of situations where you can pull from your past work, and kind of more fit to fit new roles. In this situation, when I tried to do that, it was a stretch, to say the least. But I gave it a go. And that was one of those situations where I did create a limb for that hiring manager, as well as their recruiter. And I sent her a LinkedIn message just introducing myself. And she was very sweet in her response and transparent in the fact that I probably wasn't going to have what they were looking for in that role. But again, it was the response for me of how they handled it, that didn't turn me away because they were so inviting, encouraging. Not everyone's gonna be a good fit for every role. So I didn't take it personally. Late, fast forward, I applied to one other role that I never actually heard back from because I think what happened is I applied to my current role. And at that point, I had made contact with the recruiter. So I went through the recruiter, like a phone screening, and then got to the first round interview with the hiring manager, which it went great. I really connected and talked about the role, and it was something that I thought it'd be like a really good fit. And then I didn't make it to the next two phases of the interview. So then at that point, we exchanged some emails, she again, when I got the denial email, I asked her just for positive feedback, you know, "What can I do differently? Any recommendations moving forward." And she sent me like a novel, which was super awesome. I could tell she took, like, time out her day to give me feedback. Am I ever gonna be working at her company? It can be she doesn't really even know me. But I think that's because when we had our interview, like, we were able to connect, even though I didn't end up being the pick for the role that time, she could still, you know, connect with me on a personal level. And we still learn a lot about each other. So to me that first interview was still a win, because we fostered like a relationship.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:24

Yeah. Wait, can we dig into that for just a second? Because I think that's a frustration for so many people, like, "Hey, I'll ask for feedback", and they won't get anything. But you got a novel worth of feedback because, not by accident, and yes, this is an amazing organization. And clearly, they value people who are interested in them. But also they don't have infinite amounts of time too. So the reason this worked is you've already started to establish some kind of beginnings of relationship with the CEO. I'm sure those emails were probably forwarded, I don't know, but probably they were forwarded over to recruiting, or maybe they were BCC'd or something else along those lines. You had continuous touchpoints all along the way. Maybe they talk behind the scenes, maybe they didn't. But then you had, as you said, begun to build a connection during that interview, and you had focused on that. So you now have the beginnings of relationships. So now, it's not just some random candidate asking for feedback. It is this person that I know and had a great time with. And that's totally different than when you go to make the ask than just some random person that's out there. So I wanted to take a moment and just break that down because you did a really nice job allowing it to get to that point, so that it worked when you went and asked for feedback.

Jenna Bias 33:40

Yeah, I think a big thing for me, I'm sure it's probably for other people as well, is because I had all those touchpoints. And in seeing institutions that like asking for feedback, I know big thing for me, it was like kind of a fear component. I almost felt like, "Oh my gosh, am I reaching out too much?" You said, oh, they're probably talking behind the scenes, like in a good way. But in my mind, I was like, "Man, are they like, that Jenna girl, she applied again?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:06

Never hire that one.

Jenna Bias 34:09

Yeah, can't get rid of her. And of course, that's just your, like, limiting beliefs that I'm sure everyone has. But no. So then after I reached out, got that feedback, it was great feedback. I rather I was, obviously I was disappointed. But like you said, a lot of people when they get denied are kind of turned off and like maybe would like go the other way. But I was just more intrigued and I was more like on board I sent like a really nice email back. And I told her I was like, "I'm gonna continue to like watch your job board. But if a spot opens up in the future, like, please do consider me." And so sure enough, I did watch their job board here and there. And I think it was two or three months after I initially applied for that role that I happened to notice that the role was up again. And so I just reached out directly to the hiring manager before submitting an application just to kind of express my interest in right away. She was like, "Oh, yeah, like you were actually on my list of people reached out to you this week, I definitely would want you to reapply, if you could just go ahead and submit application like, won't go through the process of interviewing again." So I did that. And then obviously, this time, I made it through the entire interview process, which was that initial interview with the hiring manager, again, I did a mock demo. So a big part of my job is doing demos for my company. So they just, you know, it's kind of a mixture, you can do the job kind of thing. And then I had an interview with my manager's manager. And then the last kind of piece was a call with the CEO. So that was the steps.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:40

All of Jenna's reach-out paid off. She did not end up getting the first role she applied for but she had built a relationship with the people inside that organization. So when a job did become available, she actually turned the tables. And they thought of her as an ideal candidate for the brand new open role, because they already had that trust with her, they already had that familiarity with her. It was easy at that point, very, very different. And more importantly, she actually was getting something that she wanted. Pretty cool, right? Okay, you know, the most effective way to job search. It all starts with you, and getting clarity on what you truly want, and what you need out of your career is the key to this. Once you've done this, it will be much easier to find roles that fit your ideal career profile. And it'll make tailoring your resume, your cover letters, your in-person interactions, much more natural, much more genuine and ultimately much more effective. Again, check out the show notes for links to the resources that we covered in this episode, I think that you'll really enjoy it. Once you've gotten clear about what you want, all of a sudden, that puts you in a much better position to be able to get specific and ask for and then get what you want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:03

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 37:55

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

Speaker 3 38:01

There was a part of me that definitely recognized that I was, I had strengths, and I had value to offer an organization. But I didn't know how to navigate the next steps. Work out how I could communicate what my skill sets and value were.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:24

Let's say that you took a break from your career. Many people do. I've personally done it. Whether it was for your children, your health, travel, whatever. When it comes time to return to the workforce, it's common to not want to go back to the same work that you were doing before your break. However, if you've only worked in one industry, or done one type of role, or worked for one organization, it can feel well, a little challenging. It can be really hard to figure out how to translate the experiences you've had to a new industry or new role or new opportunity. So the question becomes how do you do that? How do you translate all these experiences in a way that becomes useful to other people?

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:09

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.