Sandra Cloud 00:01

So much of it has been trusting my body, trusting my gut, trusting that when I'm fearful or anxious, that's just an emotion. But my heart is actually telling me what I'm interested in, my heart is actually telling me what I want to do.

Introduction 00:22

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 00:47

Riddle me this, what if being too good that your job is the reason you need to escape? Maybe you do the work three times faster than everyone else, so you are just being given more and more and more and more. Or maybe you're constantly getting praised by leadership for being the highest performer, but it's making the team resent you. Maybe you're an educator whose relator strength causes your students to adore you and want to be around you, but you're beginning to feel overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Sandra Cloud 01:18

I was building so many relationships, and I was leaning so hard on that, that it was burning me out. I was not practicing my other strengths, and I was just beating the heck out of that relation strength. And I just thought, "this is not sustainable."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:35

Sandra had been working in education for 12 years, and for a time she absolutely loved it. She was getting to use all of her strengths, she was really thriving in a role. However, over time, she realized her growth plan was not in alignment with her administration's plan for the future. Additionally, the role that she had been placed in was no longer allowing her to live her strengths and utilized all of her tendencies. So she was having that feeling, you may know that feeling, that pigeonholed feeling, and it was causing her to be burned out. When Sandra reached out to us, she knew that she was done in education, but she wasn't sure what she should do next. And in our conversation here in a moment, you're going to get to hear how she went from thinking the solution to her problem would be finding a new job that fit her, all the way to realizing that she might even want to start a business that she'd had in the back of her mind for years. Sandra's story, well, I think you'll find it has great examples of discovering what it means to do meaningful work in a way that's unique to you. And you're also going to hear how she asked for severance from her education role, how she overcame her long held limiting beliefs about entrepreneurship, and how she added a really meaningful mission to her new company in order to make the impact that she really wanted in the world. Okay. So if you're someone who is wanting to get out of education, maybe even start your own business, but certainly find more meaning in your work, you're gonna be interested in Sandra's story. All right, here she is explaining where her career began.

Sandra Cloud 03:17

I did not love my educational experience. I felt like when I was in school, I probably could have done a lot better than I did, but I never felt like school was doing anything. It wasn't teaching me anything that I was interested in, or not a whole lot that I was interested in. I moved to a smaller school my junior year, and for the first time, experienced positive peer pressure to get really good grades. And so then I did, then I was part of the National Honor Society, but it was really the culture, not the substance of learning. So fast forward, I'm a young mom. I've got an almost two year old daughter, and I'm about to give birth to a baby. My marriage is in shambles, but I don't really know why. And then I end up being a single mom of two little girls, and from early on, I had really strong opinions on what learning was. I felt that we were born learning, we came out of the womb, that's the first thing we did, was try to figure out how to get comforted. And from then on, all that happened was that we kept learning, and the people around us cheered us on. They thought we were delightful and wonderful. We would take a first step and fall down, and they'd be like, "Yeah, good job. You're amazing. Good job. Try again." And then we get to school, and they start giving us red marks, and we start feeling stupid because we learned something that was not the point of the story, even though we still learn something that wasn't what was on the test. And so I began to feel like I wanted my daughters to experience a love of learning for as long as they possibly could. So I homeschooled them. I felt like we learn what we want to learn when we want to learn it, that we're all capable of it. And I love, you know, I am learning every year. I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means, but we love to grow vegetables. I'm learning about growing flowers. And I just felt like all of life should be school. So they learned how when they were four years old. They learned how to do their own laundry, and they learned how to, you know, they unloaded the dishwasher with me, and we cooked dinner together. And so all the things that make up a life were considered school. So I was a single mom, so we didn't get to do a lot of, you know, lots of families go on great vacations, and we didn't have any money, but I tried to make it as I tried to give them as much agency as possible over their learning.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:51

Yeah, very cool. So that was your introduction into education.

Sandra Cloud 05:57

Yes. And then we got to the end of their eighth grade years, my oldest daughter, and I'm like, wow, I don't know what to do now because I knew High School counted for credit. I didn't know if I wanted to deal with the accreditation in Oregon, and I didn't really know what to do. And that year, I got an email about this charter school that was opening up. They were hoping for 100 students, along with my daughter, ended up with 150 the first year, and it was a unique approach to education. It was all about empowering the students that they weren't supposed to be cookie cutter. That they were... they had their unique strengths, and they wanted to encourage them. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I believe." Yeah. And then I had just, I had gone back to school at age 33 and finished my bachelor's degree while I was single momming and homeschooling. And so later, two years after my oldest daughter started, it was time for my youngest daughter to start at our PA, and they offered me a job, and I've been there ever since 2011 until last year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:00

That's a great story, first of all. And second of all, one of the things I'm curious about then, you know, you eventually decided you wanted to leave education. What caused you, or what led you to have that realization that you wanted to leave?

Sandra Cloud 07:19

So, at RPA, because it was a charter school, I didn't have to have a master's. So I just have a bachelor's degree, and I was able to teach business classes. We did that part time. And for... So RPA now has around 900 students in grades sixth through twelfth. When we started there, it was 150 students in grades ninth through twelfth. So it's grown enormously. Yes. And I got to be part of that growth. So every year, for years, every year, my job would change, and at one point, one of the assistant directors called me the Swiss Army knife of RPA, and I was just, I'm like, I loved it. I loved solving problems. I love being needed and being able to be helpful and knowing a lot about everything, so that when somebody comes with a question, I can help them find an answer or move forward in the ways that they're stuck. And then at some point, you stop being an entrepreneurial endeavor, and you start being a business. And the last business problem to be solved was marketing. And so I just sort of got stuck in marketing. I love entrepreneurial concepts, and I'm interested in marketing as it relates to those things, in terms of, like, it's taught me a lot about thinking like my customer instead of thinking like a business owner, which is super important, as you know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:46

As it turns out, yes. If you don't understand who your customer is, then it's going to be challenging to be able to serve them in different ways.

Sandra Cloud 08:54

Exactly. And so I got a lot of training in that, and it was super helpful. I always found myself drawn to entrepreneurial conversations. So I, you know, I taught entrepreneurship, I taught branding, and marketing, and classes like that, and that was half of my job. And then the other half of my job was to do the marketing and community outreach for the school. And I did that with excitement the first few years, and then I could feel boredom setting in. So I tried thinking, well, "What would be cool for us to do?" And a lot of those cool ideas were often beyond, maybe what our customers were ready for, at least that's what the director's opinion was. He's a very smart man, and it's his baby, and he's probably right in some ways, but I just found myself not interested in trying to make people think things that they don't already think. I am interested in helping them solve real problems for themselves. So I was probably, you know, at one point, he said, "I probably had visited with almost every family in the school. I would have really honest conversations with people. Here's what we can offer. Here's what we can... And so, is your student able to handle these challenges?" And because we looked like a small community college, and it was an amazing environment for the right student, but for a student who needed more guidance and where to be and needed to have all of their time filled, we didn't do that. And so it was great to have real, honest conversations with people and set them up for success if they decided to be part of us, or turn them, you know, say, "You know, we're probably not the right choice for you", if they didn't feel like their student was a fit. But pretty soon, I mean, 2020 was hard on everybody I know. We had additional personal things going on in our world. My daughter was diagnosed with MS. A freak storm came through our farming community and just destroyed, I mean, destroyed things, knocked a friend's house down, and twisted irrigation lines around each other, and our dog died. My mom, they told us my mom was not going to live much longer, it was just...

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:01

That's a lot.

Sandra Cloud 11:02

I mean, it is. Everybody had their stuff, right? But it was just walking that life kept going, and then there's all this other stuff. So obviously that was very wearying. And all teachers can attest to what 2020 did to education and to everyone's mental health, teachers and kids. And so coming out of that, we noticed quite quickly that we had students in front of us who had been changed and not necessarily always for the better. There's just a lot of changes. And I mean, I could go on. But so I realized pretty quickly that I was not refreshed by the end of last August. Last August came, and usually, you know, you got summer off, and you kind of get your energy back, and we had a lot going on last year as well, and I just got to August and thought, "I don't know if I can do this." And then one of the lessons I've learned to ask is, "Well, what would make this easy?" And I thought, "Gosh, if somebody would come in and vacuum, mop and clean my bathroom, that would make it easier for me. It'd be a mental load off of me." And I couldn't find anybody to do that. I started thinking, "Maybe I should just go do that, but I don't want to clean houses." But then I was like, "Wow, I could replace my salary, actually, pretty quickly." Huh. So it just kind of stuck in my head, and I kept noodling on it and kept thinking, "Well, what could I do?" You know? And then this girl came up to me one day. She's probably like, four foot seven, tiniest, sweetest little thing. She doesn't trust very many people, but she trusted me, and she would come and stand in front of me. And I know all teachers know exactly what I'm talking about. There's these students who will come and stand in front of you, and they're just waiting to get loved on. That's all they want. But they don't know how to have a conversation. They don't know how to, you know, ask about somebody else, or, you know, any of those conversational skills, so we're left to just sort of pull out of them a conversation and let them know that they're loved and cared about, and ask questions. So she walked up to me like she often did, and I couldn't breathe. I lost my ability to breathe, and she'll never know. I mean, I was able to kind of keep it covered up, but she'll never know that she was really the thing that made me go, "I've got to get out of here." So I was like, "Oh, look, what time it is. Oh, you have class. Cool. I'll walk you there." And I walked her to her class, and I just kept walking and for blocks and blocks and blocks. And it took me, I don't even know, 10 blocks before I could even catch my breath again. And realized, huh, I mean, I'm not going to diagnose myself, but I'm pretty sure that was close to a panic attack. This is not good. I need to leave. And so that's what started the process of me leaving.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:54

I can appreciate that on a lot of different levels. A panic attack is also what caused me to realize that this has to be different. There has to be a different way. There has so many different things needed to change, and that was the catalyst. So definitely can appreciate that on a lot of different levels. Here's my question for you, though, aside from, you know, acting as a catalyst for you to make a decision that, "Hey, look, this needs to change." What did that lead to for you next?

Sandra Cloud 14:34

Well, I started thinking, "I need help with this because...", and it's hard. I'm a pretty introspective person. I have a lot of interpersonal strengths, and so I knew I needed somebody pretty skilled to help me with this. It wasn't going to just be go to a therapist. I've, you know, I've done therapy. I'm appreciative of what it gave me when I needed it, but this was a different purpose, and I didn't know, I just didn't know what to do. I've done a million self assessment tests, and so I needed some help. And so I came across Happen To Your Career in a quote on a website, and it was the title, Happen To Your Career. I'm like, "Wow. As a woman growing up in the 70s, my career has always happened to me. It was just what happened to work for me." And to think that I could happen to my own career was kind of a mind blowing moment. So I checked into, you know, you've got that 8-day free course on the website. And as I started into it, you know, and I always do those free courses with a grain of salt, because usually I'm like, "No, I'm more skilled than this. This is far from me. I don't need this." But the approach was so different that I'm like, "If this is their free material, I need to get a coach. Because if this is their free stuff, it's making me think differently. It's challenging some of my perceptions. And I think I'd like somebody to kind of walk with me as I continue to explore this." So I contacted HTYC, got connected with Ben. And as I was doing that, you know, one of the first things that, I think, it might even be in the free courses, is to do the Strengths Assessment. And I'd done that in 2018, and looked at the results, and kind of went like, "Okay, I don't know what to do with this." It seemed obvious to me, and it also seemed like I was surrounded by people who had similar gifts and skill, I guess, strengths, and so I'm like, "Well, I don't know." So I kind of just put it away. It was one more self assessment that I had done. But having to go through it, not having to, getting to go through it, Ben's guidance, and with the directions that the course gives in terms of going through and highlighting the things that really are like, yeah, that resonates with me, and adding to them, and really, you know, massaging them so that I could understand them at a deeper level was really, really beneficial for me. And then as I did that, I realized, "Oh my gosh, I've got these top five strengths." But right now, for years, I used them all at our PA, at the charter school. And now I'm using one of them, and it is the relator. So I am building relationships with kids like crazy. We did a forum where kids filled out who they were comfortable like they could check off as many staff as they wanted to, that they could connect with or felt comfortable with us coming to them. And I taught halftime, really small classes, like my top class had 12 students in it, but I had built relationships. I was the third number, the third person on the list in terms of how many students felt comfortable talking to me. So completely out of proportion to my actual job. I was building so many relationships, and I was leaning so hard on that, that it was burning me out. I was not practicing my other strengths, and I was just beating the heck out of that relation strength. And I just thought, "this is not sustainable."

Sandra Cloud 19:11

Oh, it does. It was very deadening, and it was probably the hardest part of this self discovery. Well, I'll say one of the hardest parts. Because suddenly, I had names for everything that I was feeling for years, and because I could name it, then I was seeing it all the time. And that was really challenging to be in this position that I, you know, I'm a grateful person. I have felt grateful for that place and for my mentor, you know, my boss was kind of my mentor as well, and still have tons of gratitude. But to have such a stark understanding of why I was not doing well was, kind of, it was just really hard to deal with, you know, been a big part of my life, and so, yeah, that was really challenging.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:17

Well, that's really interesting too, because what I hear you saying is that you had this wonderful situation that did actually allow you to utilize your combination of strengths together. And that is, I mean, that's only one portion of what creates fulfilling work, and ultimately, a fulfilling life. However, it's an important portion. And then, you know, as things went on in time, eventually, what you were spending your day to day doing was leaning pretty hard only on one particular area of your strengths. And it sounds like that, in itself, was a massive change when you're used to be able to operate, you know, full floodgates open, and everything else, and then you shift to where now you can't do that anymore because of the circumstances, then it feels very different, doesn't it?

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:56

Yeah, okay, well, let me ask you a different question. And since we're on the subject of strengths, because it sounds like this was an area that, personally, I think you did really well in. And at the same time, I also would say that this is an area that seemed to have a large impact for you. So I'd like to talk about it for just a few minutes, in terms of what you specifically did. I heard you say that, "Hey, I had taken all the assessments and all the things in the past" and that's great. A lot of the people that we get to work with have had those experiences where they've been fortunate to take a lot of different types of assessments, quizzes, whatever, you name it, right? And then at some point you gotta take StrengthFinders, cliftonstrengths. And it sounded like what that did for you was begin to provide you verbiage. So now you had names for this. But what else actually helped? What helped you begin to start to make those connections, not just where you're seeing it every place and becoming more aware of it, but starting to be able to utilize that information in a way to make decisions? Take me through what worked for you specifically.

Sandra Cloud 21:07

Well, it's also maybe what didn't work for me and still what I'm iffy about. What I ended up realizing, number one, was that I had to get out. Period. So as I worked with Ben, we came up with a plan. He supported me through that, and I got out. And I realized, it was so scary to put my needs first when I didn't really have a plan yet, but I decided to take that risk and do that. So then, even though I was still working until December 15th, I had some mental space because I knew it was just getting through. So once I started having some mental space, I started the process, like, I kept going with the process that the HTYC course takes a person through. But I kept coming back to these strengths and these ways that I liked to be with Ben's encouragement as much as I could while I was working. And then man, December 16th came, and I was free to just let my days be whatever they wanted to be, which terrified me, because I just thought, "Gosh, if I'm not using every moment and every resource that I have to get another job, I'm toast." And one of the things that had happened was, I said, "Ben, do you think I should ask for severance?" And he said, "Yes, you should ask for severance." So he helped me come up with the way I was going to ask, and I got to tell you, Scott, I am the fairly confident person. My boss and I have a friendship, as well as a mentorship, as well as he's my boss, like very multifaceted. I squirmed. I turned feet red. I broke out in sweat. I couldn't look directly at him. I had to look in my lap to get through this conversation to ask for severance. So I was really proud of myself for doing that, and I asked for twice what I needed knowing how he tends to operate. So he gave me half of what I asked for, which was actually what I needed. And then I realized, I could tap into my retirement. I could just take some time and heal up. And so I did that. So now my slate is clear, like I have no commitments, and I can start resting and trusting myself and listening to what my body seems to want. So I would ask... I'd come in my... I rearranged my spare bedroom so that I have a desk where I'm with you right now, but on the other side of this desk is just an open space with a big old fat yoga mat and I can lay there. I could do yoga every morning, and I could lay there and just ask my body, "What do you need today?" And to be honest, for months and months and months, it was, "I need to not do much." So we were gardening, you know, it's very physically active, but I just took tons of time this year and continued working with Ben, continued trying to hone down these strengths. But I remember the point, and he actually made a note of it too in one of our sessions, where I just thought, "Ben, I don't think anybody will pay me for this. It's really hard for me to imagine that." And if I'm being honest, it's still hard for me to imagine that. And so all of this time that this has been going on, this idea about house cleaning has stuck in my head. I could replace my income. And then I started thinking how I've been looking around the school and seeing this new generation that they don't want to work 60 hours a week on salary, they don't want to give up their personal life. And why should they? We've left them a planet that's beat up. We've left them the inability to buy their own home. The, you know, what we would call the American dream, is not in most of their sites or reach any longer. And so we had good reasons for working all these hours because we were working towards something, but they're not, they don't have that same vision. And I just started thinking, you know, "What if I built a cleaning company? What if I did this thing where I could take really good care with these young people who didn't know what they were doing after high school, like I didn't, and yet, they're bright, they're hard working. It's not that they're flaky, it's just that they don't want to give their entire life over to a company or a business." And it's just so funny because I've always had entrepreneurial ideas, and I've never, ever, ever, ever wanted to have employees. And even when I started this idea, I was like, "Oh, they're going to be contractors." And then I realized, if I have them, if I have a company, then I can take 10 minutes at our staff meeting and talk about personal finance and help them understand that they could be a millionaire by the time they're 65, and help them build into something, help them understand why credit cards are a terrible idea. All of these bits and pieces of education that I've loved for so long that people don't know, and frankly, you know, like if Oregon passed a personal finance requirement to graduate from high school, but if you don't have your own money, and most high schoolers aren't working a job, if you don't have your own money, then personal finance means nothing. So again, you're shoving open their mouth, pouring a fire hose down, they're giving them a grade on it, but they have no practical application for it. Really, where personal finance, in my opinion, needs to be is in those young years where you've got service workers out with their first jobs, and that's where personal finance needs to be introduced. I'm like, "Why can't I do that? Why?" So I just realized, "Oh, contractors are not going to sit for 10 minutes and listen to personal finance. They're going to get on with their day." But if I'm paying them in a staff meeting because I've long believed, if you want people to care about what you're saying, you have to pay them. You have to build time for it and pay them for it. So I just realized this needs to be employees. So I'm building a business with employees, which I never thought I would do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:25

Let me ask you about that really quick. So you got all the way from, "I need to find the next opportunity, the next job, next role", all the way to that migrated into, "you know, I've had this business idea in the back of my head" to the point where you're now realizing, "look, part of the way I want to make an impact is by doing something that I didn't ever think that I would do." And here's my question, it sounds like you're really starting to bring, for you, much more meaning into this business idea, and kind of taking the core of this idea and turn it into something that is more meaningful for you. So tell me a little bit about what else transpired. What does the idea look like now? But also, what I'm really curious about is how you have experimented with this along the way?

Sandra Cloud 28:19

Well, I guess to go a little bit back to this strength exercise, I started... I found a few jobs that looked pretty interesting. They would give me lots of flexibility. They gave me a lot of autonomy. And in the end, like the one that I found, you know, it's a company that builds really cool training programs for HR offices. And I just thought, even that, I just think I'm gonna get bored. I think it's not what I want. I really want autonomy over my life.Which feels so, at age 53 as a woman in America, at age 53 who grew up in a very patriarchal system, I feel like I'm so out of my league asking for that for myself. And that's where Ben really came through as well, was just encouraging me to take ownership of this, of these things that I want for myself, to believe them. So it's, I mean, I love your question, right? "How did I get from there to there?" I think so much of it has been trusting my body, trusting my gut, trusting that when I'm fearful or anxious, that's just an emotion. But my heart is actually telling me what I'm interested in, my heart is actually telling me what I want to do. And so I think, like, I can't explain it, except that I think my previous, I don't know, forays into the idea of entrepreneurship, was always, it was kind of based on a, "get rich quick", kind of a mentality.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:04

That's what you had in your head thinking about entrepreneurship or building a business. You sort of associated it with, I don't know, whatever you see for "get rich quick" type of...

Sandra Cloud 30:15

Exactly. Yeah. "Oh, three weeks, and you can be blah, blah, blah." And I think that's sort of what I had in my head. And this, as it's come together, and I can't even tell you how it feels like a gift. It doesn't feel like I've thought this up. It feels like it's been given to me. And I don't know any better words to explain it, but as I trust it and listen to it, I've just been blown away because the next person comes into my life and they're exactly what I need when I need it. It's been that way the entire time. The fact that Ben started, one of the first things he said to me in one of our sessions was, "It sounds to me like you've been surrounded by patriarchal men all of your life, and you've grown a lot, but you haven't been able to completely trust yourself." So because I knew I needed a man coach. You've got a lot of women coaches, but I knew that I needed a man and I didn't know why, and my husband agreed. And he said, "So I think it's really important that you lead our sessions, that you are the one that is telling me what you need, that you're the one..." And I felt freaked out by that, but I also immediately knew, "Yep, that's exactly what I need to do."

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:36

Are you gonna do that, right? If you haven't practiced it on purpose? Yeah. Carries over to everything.

Sandra Cloud 31:43

It really does. And he also somehow through the screen, and this is one of those moments where I'm going to be really flattering, like through the screen, I would be talking, and he would say, "What was that? What was that expression on your face? What does that mean? Or, what was that word that you just used?" He would just nail into something that I just had some very wrong patterns of thinking about myself and my strengths and me as a woman in this world. And to be honest, this business is built just as much for the employee as it is for me, as it is for the homeowner. It feels like the first idea I've ever had that's win, win, win, and that has kept me focused on it and motivated because sometimes it's about me paying back my retirement that I've spent this year. And frankly, I didn't have enough retirement because I started my career so late, so I've got to make some money, and I want to pay my employees right out of high school or, you know, early 20s, really generously. I want to provide insurance for them. I want to help them understand personal finance so that they work for me for one to three years and then they move into their next, or they purchase a franchise. Because my goal is to franchise this business. And all of those things have kept it, and obviously, I think it's a value to the homeowners that we're going to serve. So I feel like sometimes it's all about me, and other times it's all about that employee, and other times it's all about what kind of service are we giving. And all of those, it's like that tripod that holds up the stool. It feels very, like, this is the most solid I've ever felt–creating something, thinking about something, trusting my gut in it. And it's because I'm assuming that, yes, I need profit, and it's not the most important thing, the most important thing is building something that's different that gives my house cleaners, you know, my model is based on five houses a day, basically seven and a quarter hours a day for them. So they get to have dispatcher access in the back end, so they get to dispatch their own day. So if they have a kid to pick up from school, or if they have a doctor's appointment, they can schedule all that for themselves. It's not a, "Can I have this time off?" kind of a situation. It's completely...

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:00

There's ownership of your time. Very cool. What advice would you give to someone else who's in a similar place as you were a year or two years or three years ago, and is no longer getting to work in their strengths, or maybe not getting to work in their strengths in the same way and they have now realized that they need to make a change. What would you tell that person?

Sandra Cloud 34:26

Yeah. I think I would say, trust your discomfort. Trust the ways. Listen to it. Again, I was super grateful, so I kept putting my discomfort away. And I've realized since that I can have gratitude and acknowledge my discomfort. Before I just thought I kind of had to, "Oh, well, there's all these things, but I'm just going to focus on this thing that I'm grateful for." And that's not wrong. But at the same time, I think we can be super grateful for circumstances, for where we've been, and where we are, and we can trust the discomfort that we're feeling, and maybe even give it more attention than we do the gratitude for a little bit, right? I think we don't want to be jerks. We don't want to be entitled. Trusting our discomfort, and then ask our body, I literally say it out loud, "What do you need today, Sandy? What would feel good right now, right this moment?" And then trust the answer, even if it seems impossible, even if it seems too big, even if it seems not even possible. I think when we start trusting it, and one of the questions that I've learned to ask is, instead of freaking out and being anxious, is, "I wonder how this could happen. I wonder how this might happen. I wonder if I move toward this, what might happen?" And the people that have been brought into my life, it's mind blowing. I can't explain how, I mean, if I would take another two hours for me just to talk about just the right people coming in my life at just the right time as I just trust this process, I believe what is here, I believe my body, I believe that there's love that is guiding this entire thing, and it's amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:25

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 37:18

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:23

There are lots of things that we've been told about our careers and career changes that simply are not true. We've been told them so confidently and so many times that we haven't ever thought to question them. And every single time I get to chat with our readers and listeners, I hear the same misconceptions. And guess what? It's not your fault, not your fault at all. Society in the media pounded these misguided non facts and myths into our brains. Today, we're doing some myth busting. I want to share with you the top seven misconceptions I hear almost every time I talk with people about fulfilling work, like, for example, "If I career change, I need to take a pay cut." Actually, it turns out that less than 15% of our clients end up taking a pay cut, and most make more. You want to know about the other six? Well, let's dive in further.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:18

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.

Mike Goodman 00:01

I think I got to a point where I thought I had changed jobs a couple times as it was, and I thought, you know, "Is there anything out there I'm going to like? And is there, you know, what if I change jobs, and what if it's something worse?"

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

Some people can just keep going forever in a job that they no longer find anymore. But for many other people, there's an expiration date when it starts to get really painful to keep going to work, sitting at your desk and knowing you're just not that excited about it. But if you're at that point, how do you know if you should just simply quit your job? Will that be the right move? And aside from the financial aspect, there are many other reasons that this could be the best or the worst decision of your life.

Mike Goodman 01:18

I knew I was going to have challenges ahead, but I knew that I was making the right decision. Because staying in a job that literally just made me feel ill was not ever going to do anything right for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:30

That's Mike Goodman. Several years ago, he came to us after working in higher education, and we had the pleasure of working with him as a client to find his ideal career next step. During his journey, Mike did a phenomenal job evaluating whether or not he should quit his job in higher ed before having the next role lined up. Later on in our conversation, you're going to learn four questions, we get into four specific questions to ask yourself to know if it makes sense for you to quit, and we're talking specifically about without having another opportunity. But first, we need to start with how Mike got to this step in his career in the first place.

Mike Goodman 02:07

It has been a curvy road, to say the least. Boy after college, I held a number of kind of entry level work positions, and then I decided I wanted to pursue a career in higher ed. So I started working for a small liberal arts college in the marketing office. And I really had fun with it at first. It was a cool way to learn some different, you know, I was responsible for managing a website, which I really liked, and I was the first point of contact for anybody that needed help, you know, marketing related projects. It was a fun role, but then it, kind of, like any job I had held previously, I got to a point where it just kind of got stale. And while I was there, I decided to take advantage of a tuition benefit, and I went for another degree, and then when I finished, I moved on to another role that was an advancement in title, responsibility and luckily, also in pay. I never really felt overly engaged in the new role, but I felt like I needed to give it some time. And unfortunately, as time went on, my lack of engagement never really changed. If anything, I probably got more and more unengaged as time went on. And yet, the funny part about that is, of all the jobs I had held full time, I stayed in that role the longest. It didn't really feel like a fit, but yet, I stayed in that role for years. I think I got to a point where I thought I had changed jobs a couple times as it was, and I thought, you know, "Is there really... Is there anything out there I'm going to like? And is there, you know, what if I change jobs and what if it's something worse?" I did this routine with myself for several years while I was there where I would apply for jobs, I would sometimes get called for an interview. Sometimes I go to the interview, or as the interview was approaching, I would change my mind and just think, "This isn't for me. I don't think I'm going to pursue this." Or I would go to an interview and then sometimes remove myself from the process because I leave the interview just feeling not excited or it didn't feel like an improvement from where I was. I mean, this went on for too long. This went on for several years. And I would just kind of tell myself, "it was almost like the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." And on top of everything else, I felt like while I was in this job, my mood was kind of, I phrased it like a constant state of blah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:38

A constant state of blah. What is... Expand on that for me. What do you would mean by that?

Mike Goodman 04:42

Nothing felt exciting. I didn't have any sort of clue what I wanted to do, work wise. I didn't have any sort of excitement in the role I was in. But then I was looking around at other jobs, and I think, "Well, you know, what am I qualified for? What is my resume show like? What am I going to find that's any different than what I'm doing?" Because I think, like most people, you sometimes feel pigeonholed in that, you know, my resume states I've done this, but how am I going to show that I can do something different, or how am I going to translate my experience into showing that I can do something different? I had about an hour commute without traffic, so regularly I did hit traffic. So, I mean, it wasn't uncommon for me to have a day where it could take upwards of two to three hours to get home, or in the morning, say, if the weather was bad or there was an accident, it could take that long to get in. I was in this spiral that was just really, really bad, and I just felt like literally, a constant state of blah was the best way to phrase it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:42

That is... I was gonna say super interesting, and it probably didn't feel particularly interesting at the time. In fact, the opposite of it. It's interesting because so many people get stuck in that state where, you know, you're commuting multiple hours a day, and you're, I don't know, gridlocked along traffic, and then you are feeling like, "Hey, I'm not sure even what I want to change to, but I know that this isn't it", and you're struggling or trying to push through that all at the same time. And I think that's where a lot of our listeners have been, and certainly experienced at least parts of that. So I think everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. Now, what ended up happening from there? You lived in that state of blah for, it sounds like almost five years, right?

Mike Goodman 06:26

Yeah. I mean, pretty much four and some change, but you know, much too long. What happened was I didn't want to feel that way anymore. I knew if I didn't take control of my situation and make anything change, then another year would go by, and I would still be in the same job, and I would still be kind of spinning my wheels in terms of, "All right, what am I going to do?" So I had been on the East Coast. I'm from the East Coast. And I decided after a long time of thinking about it, the time had come and I was going to move to the West Coast. I approached my boss and told her my plans. I didn't really have a whole in depth plan other than that, but I thought, well, this is going to force me to find something else and get a new start and just kind of kick things off on the right track. So I told my boss, and they approached me with an offer to allow me to go to the West Coast, but I could work remotely for a set time period, so it had an end date, and I was very surprised, but I was definitely appreciative and accepted the offer. And so I came to the West Coast and still worked remote. And then it was, kind of reality, in a sense, hit me because now it's like, "Well, now I really have to figure this out. What am I going to do?" I applied for some jobs, didn't really find anything that I was overly excited about, and then time marched by really quickly, and my contract came to an end, and then all of a sudden, I got contacted by a recruiter for a job opportunity that was in Florida. I knew the company, and I was intrigued, and I thought, "Well, I don't have any other options at the moment. Let's check this out." Yeah, the whole process was extremely rushed, like it was just, there was very... There was no real personal connection, you know, so I would talk with a recruiter, and they'd set me up for a phone call, say, with a hiring manager, and then I ended up talking to a total of three people by phone. There was no in person and no Skype. It was all by phone. It was very quick, I think. In the period of a week, I had three different conversations, and then I got an offer. The whole process, again, like I said, was so rushed. They wanted an answer within 24 hours. You know, it wasn't like, "Oh, take a few days and think about it. Let's make sure it's the right fit."

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:49

Bad sign number one.

Mike Goodman 08:50

It was like, yes. And my gut already was kind of like, I need time to think about this. But then I didn't have anything else. Florida had never really been a plan or a thought or an interest. But I thought, well, maybe this is just a different way of going on an adventure. And I accepted the offer. I had about three weeks from when I accepted to when I had to be down there to start. And the whole period between, honestly, I was just in like a personal hell, and I just felt my anxiety was just, literally, it was through the roof. I was like, "Oh my, I don't know if is this right, and do I really want to be in Florida, and what do I know about this job? And am I really prepared for this?" And, you know, just constant, there's just a lot of doubt. And I didn't have an excited feeling, if anything, I just, I felt extreme anxiety.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:37

Did you recognize that in the moment, or was it only afterwards, where it that was really apparent to you? What was going on at the time?

Mike Goodman 09:45

I knew at the moment I was anxious because I wasn't sleeping well, and I was just kind of like... But I was unsure, but I thought, "You know what, it's nerves, and when I get there, it's going to be better." So I just, I thought, like, see this through, and see where it goes. And, you know, allow myself to get there and then just kind of absorb it, and things will feel better once I arrive. Normally, that's the case when I have felt uncertain about other things and they've unfolded. But unfortunately, this situation, things didn't get better. So I had these three interviews while I was talking with this company, and so three weeks later, when I went down to start of the three people, one had left the company, one had moved into another role, and then I was going to be working for someone who had just started, who I never talked to, it was just like red flag.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:39

It's almost like a total worst nightmare come true, in some ways, because that's one of the reasons that you stay in those types of roles that are blah for so long. It's like, "Well, this might not be any better. It might be way worse."

Mike Goodman 10:53

And you know, looking back at it, the signs were there that it wasn't going to be the right fit. But I think because of the fear of not having a job or not having anything lined up, I jumped. But even then after jumping, I thought, "Oh, I don't know if this was the right choice." So anyway, I went and I was down there, and literally had zero support at the job in terms of, you know, someone to ask questions to or resources or anything. And after, I didn't even make it at the job eight weeks, I made it just maybe six or seven. And I just decided, "You know what, there was a lot more in between. But I just decided no job is worth this, and this is not a direction that I want to pursue, and I am just going to cut my losses." And I remember saying to my family down there, "I just want to pretend like this never happened. Wipe the slate clean." So I did. I showed up at the office one day and turned on my computer, and I just said, today's my last day. And I left.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:55

What was that like? Because I think so many of us think about doing that in one way or another, very few of us have that experience, though.

Mike Goodman 12:05

I felt good because I made the decision in my mind and then being able to go and kind of unload my gear, so to say. So, like my computer and any sort of their property, I turned it in. I sent a letter. The person who was my boss was really never around, so when I went, I just, you know, submitted a letter, and then I went and turned on my computer, and then I stopped in the break room, I grabbed a soda, and I walked out. I decided, this is it. And I felt, you know what? I felt, I knew I was going to have challenges ahead, but I knew that I was making the right decision because staying in a job that literally just made me feel ill was not ever going to do anything right for me, so I needed to figure out what was going to do something right and pursue that rather than staying in, you know, it's like a puzzle piece that didn't fit.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:56

We've used the puzzle analogy more than a few times in our business, but certainly when the puzzle is not fitting in any way whatsoever, and you've already tried hard to make it fit, and sometimes it's impossible and sometimes the change is needed. Not everybody has had that experience of quitting a job without something else lined up. I've done that, you've done that, and a host of other people have done that, but that's only a small portion of the world, and this is a question we get on a regular basis. In fact, we recently had a listener that had sent in a question along those lines, and here, I'll read it off really quick. She had said something, here we go., "HTYC always seems to discourage the idea of quitting a job that is not working before you've accepted an offer and when that feels right. But I'd love to hear an interview with somebody who took an intentional break between jobs without the next thing lined up, and I'm increasingly feeling the instinct to take a life sabbatical." And she goes on to say that, "Hey, I haven't heard when it's okay to give yourself permission to let go, and when it's okay to regroup, and when it's not okay. When does it make it a good idea, essentially? When might be a wiser choice for the long run?" That is what I'd love to dig into with you. Because the reality is, your decision might not be right for everyone, but it was certainly right for you. right?

Mike Goodman 14:18

Yeah, it was what I needed to do. You know, when I left the job that I had been at for several years, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to this too, but between a long commute and days of just total non-stimulation and, you know, un-engagement, I wouldn't feel energized to go home or take a weekend and be like, "I'm going to figure out what I want to do and, like, what my next move is going to be." I would just kind of be, again, like I said the constant blah, you know, I would just kind of be like, "Oh, I'm not there, so I'm going to enjoy my time, but I'm not going to think about anything, because I don't know, and that's just going to make me more obsessed." But then I got to a point where I just thought I can't keep moving forward like this. And if I'm going to be working until I'm 65 to 70 years old, I don't want to waste my whole life being blah. I don't want to be counting down the weeks and the months and, you know, just waiting... life was just passing me by. And I knew if I didn't take a stand and change something, it wasn't going to change. Another year would go by and I'd still be at the same job, in the same boat, feeling the same way. What I did, in that sense, was I jumped headfirst into the pool because I just knew, all right, I'm doing something, but I know if I stay where I am, I will still be here, like, nothing will change. The Florida situation was very different because that never fit from the get go, and that just never felt right. I didn't want to be there. I knew at that point I was fortunate that I had support of family and friends, and I said, you know, I just I need to take some time decompress from all this and figure out what is going to be the right fit and what is going to be the right move for me, because again, working another 30 to 40 years in a situation that I'm not happy with, life is too short, and I don't want to look back at my life and think I had the chance to make a change, and I didn't.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:14

I like what you said there. You are looking forward and saying, "I don't want to ever be in the place where I had that chance to make a change and I didn't." Like, making moves for avoiding regret is probably one of the times where it's actually okay to avoid something. This is super interesting. And there's a couple areas where I'd love to really go into deep. One, I want to make sure that we're leaving everyone with some ideas of when it's okay, when it's a good idea to quit your job, especially when you don't have something else lined up. And you and I had this conversation the other day when we were talking about what we think it's going to be like after we quit, and what it's actually like after we quit.

Mike Goodman 16:56

Very different.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:57

Yeah, are often very different. And we've pretty well proven again and again that we, as human beings, are terrible at anticipating the future and what things are actually going to be like in the experience versus what we perceive in advance before it ever comes time. So what I'd love for you to do, and I'm super curious, and I can help share some experiences when I quit, too, without having something else lined up. But what was that like for you? What took place? What did you... what was similar to what you expected? What was far better, far worse?

Mike Goodman 17:26

There were good days and there were bad days. Luckily, there were more good because I would, you know, take some time and kind of explore different options, explore opportunities, and then I'd start seeing things, and I'd feel a sense of excitement and hope, and that made me feel better. But then there are days where I felt like nothing's happening, I'm not doing anything, I don't have anything lined up. And, you know, feeling almost more of a sense of, I guess, almost despair, I'd say, just feeling down. But then when I would have those days, I would think about specifically the Florida job and the Florida office, and I would think, "You know what, this is all going to work out. And I would rather be in this spot now than being back there." And that would make me feel better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:12

That's really interesting. And I think that's one of the things that people need to consider before they're making a move like this and leaving a role blah or not, and really understanding the full impact, or at least attempting to understand the full impact. What is driving this in the first place? What are some of the real impacts, too? In your case, like that Florida role, was having real physical impacts on you. It was causing anxiety, and it was making your life a living....

Mike Goodman 18:42

I was a mess, for lack of a better word. I was an absolute mess. And I just knew I'm like, I did not leave the last role to come to something even worse. And I was like, I know there's something better out there. Looking back in hindsight, like if I was ever put in that situation again where I felt rushed, and I wasn't sure that it was the right move or the right opportunity, I wouldn't do it. And, you know, it was definitely a learning experience. And I think it came at a time when I needed the lesson. But again, I would never put myself in a situation like that again, because no job or anything that makes you feel ill or just sick, or just, you know, does not make you feel good is worth it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:22

Yeah. And that's what I had for my first professional job experience straight out of college, that same feeling, also the same commute, whereas multiple hours in the car, and you're looking at the people next to you, and they don't look that happy either, and then you're thinking the entire time, like, "I don't even like this job, like, why am I...?"

Mike Goodman 19:40

"What am I doing?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:41

"What am I doing?" So totally understand on that. What I think people experience, though, is they experience either what you experienced where it's like, "Hey, this is completely blah, and I know that if I don't do something, then I'm going to be here for a long period of time." The other side of it is, I think what I experienced, too, where I got myself into a situation where it was like, "Look, anything has to be better than this. Anything has to be better than this." It was a little bit of a case of distorted grass is greener, and thinking that, "Hey, any situation will absolutely be better." It became a situation of me wanting to leave, just because I wanted to get the heck out of this situation. So that's the number one thing I would tell people to consider– is what's driving this decision in the first place? And specifically, are you running to something versus running away from something? And if you're just purely running away from something, that's going to make a bad decision. Like, in my case, I was running away from something. Had I left when I first wanted to, I would have 100% been running away from something. And in your case, I would say that that actually wasn't true, which I think is part of the reason why it made it better for you.

Mike Goodman 20:56

The Florida situation I needed to leave, the first situation was something that had, you know, I think that had been on my mind for far before from when I actually did do it. And I think sometimes I try and talk myself into staying, say, for example, at Christmas, we would get a really nice vacation and a gift, and then, you know, so then the fall would come and I think,"Well, you know, the Christmas vacation is really nice, so I'm not going to leave now" and then it got to a point where the things that I stayed for, or that I would talk myself into staying for, were no longer enough. Like, you know, what's a two week vacation? Yeah, it was great. But what if the other 50 weeks of the year are not good? Then it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to stick around for the two weeks off. It just, it got to a point where the reasons I stayed just diminished, you know, less and less, and I just knew that it was time. I needed to go. It was past time. And it wasn't a quick decision. It was something I really thought about for a long time, but then I knew I'm ready. It's time. I need to go.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:04

That kind of invokes the second thing that we really have people take a look at as well is what's going to be required, you know, asking yourself this question, what is going to be required to make a substantial life change? Because for some people, some people really can do this over time, and that's something that I've done at different points in time in my life, even starting this business like, you know, we started it on the side, and did it from 4am to 7am every single morning. And, you know, that worked well. But then I think that there's other periods of time and other people that doesn't make sense for them, that doesn't make sense for them because they either can't put enough focus in making the life change, or it doesn't make sense for them because of any number of other reasons, too. And I think in your case, you've said multiple times in the last 25 minutes here that you had to have that break. You had to have that.

Mike Goodman 22:57

I did. Yeah, I needed that time. I was fortunate that I was able to take it, but I definitely needed it because, you know, in all those years of commuting and then, just like I had mentioned being really disengaged, I didn't take, when I say I had a week off, I wasn't spending the time doing the work in terms of, like, really digging and searching to figure out what is it that I want to be doing? What do I want my life to look like? Because in a week, I was just more or less decompressing from being out of office, and I wasn't taking on anything of that nature. When I had that time in between jobs, it was like, "Well, now, I have this time. I can really figure out what is my next move is going to be, and what do I want that to look like." Because for so long, that wasn't something that I had thought about.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:45

Yeah, and that makes a ton of sense. And for you, too, from what I know about your situation and everything that we've talked about, you had the runway, and that's where we get into question number three here. Do you have the runway in terms of financial or other to be able to make this a real possibility, or is it going to be a case where you might have to make a couple of jobs like make a shift from one job to another, even though that's not necessarily the perfect job, or one job to another, that's going to free up your time or headspace or something else, so that you can create a different level of focus? But in your case, you had a bit of savings, right?

Mike Goodman 24:05

I did. I was fortunate that I was able to take that time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:22

What did you do to put yourself in that place?

Mike Goodman 24:25

Over the last several years that I was in the job, before I left, I had gotten some, you know, annual increases, and there was a period where I had gotten a promotion. So what I would do is, every year, I would just put away the difference, so I was essentially living off my original salary. Over the years, I had put a decent amount of money away for, like, a rainy day fund, so to say, or, you know, a couple months of living expenses. And then I was fortunate during my gap where I wasn't working, that I had a supportive family so that I was able to have, you know, a place to stay, and that helps tide my savings along, that much longer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:04

Lower living experiences for a period of time.

Mike Goodman 25:07

Exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:08

Very cool. That's the question that everybody needs to ask themselves when they're considering leaving, not to something else. One, do you have that financial runway, whether through savings or other income coming in or something else? And then, usually, when I'm working with people, one on one, we're figuring out, okay, what is the likelihood of you being able to move into something else in addition to what it's actually going to take, and always budget worst case scenario, I think everybody has a tendency to look at, "well, I think it's going to be three months, and I can get a job in three months, no problem. " And we're overly optimistic in a lot of those cases, versus, it might realistically take a long period of time. How long did it take you?

Mike Goodman 25:50

It was over six months. Maybe more like eight months. It took a while. So it had happened, I allowed myself a little period where I just took some time in the beginning. And then I thought, "all right, I'm going to jump in now." So I took, you know, the first, it was a month or two off to just kind of resettle and decompress, and then, probably, then from when I started really doing the work about six months. And that was, you know, the holiday time things tend to slow down. And some interview processes can take quite a while from start to finish. Yeah, you have to allow that time because there's just no way of knowing how long it's going to take.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:25

Yeah, and generally, we'll have people budget whatever time they need away. Like, in your case, you said, "Look, I need this month, month and a half, two month time to be able to decompress." And that's 100% okay. Like, what Laura is asking in her question, if she needs that deeper compression time, that's great. And then additionally, she should allow minimum of six months, just in case, because I've personally been in a situation where it's taken much longer than what I anticipated, and it is uber-stressful, especially if you're in a situation where you have either a family or spouse or other things like that, that's not just stressful for you, but it's stressful for them, as well. That actually happened, geez, I probably like eight or so years ago to me too, when I was transitioning from a job, I felt like I couldn't take it anymore, and ended up leaving. We had savings, was able to get job offers, already had a number of interviews in the works at the works at the point in time, and I left and everything like that. So it wasn't like just leaving completely clean, but there was more to the story too. Because even though we had some savings, even though we had about six plus months savings, easily, even though those other things are in place, it's still, in hindsight, I don't know was the right decision based on everything else we had going on. We were trying to pay down a bunch of debt, and that ended up putting that on hold. And then for Alyssa, my wife, was really stressful for her too, because she has all these people that are asking her, like, every time they turn around, like, "Hey, this guy have a job yet?" And everything else along those lines, too.

Mike Goodman 27:55

It's very stressful. And I think going along with it, you have to be prepared and be willing to give up a certain degree of control, because you can control what you put into the situation in your efforts, but you can't necessarily control the outcome, or you really can't control how long it's going to take.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:12

You can have a lot of influence it, but ultimately, you don't get to decide whether that person's on vacation and whether you get the job offer in writing this week or three weeks from now. And sometimes those things just don't line up perfectly. If you've only got three months of money in the bank and you're dependent upon that happening, and your spouse is looking at you, going, "Hey, you've promised it would be okay", then that's not going to create a great situation for you. So that ends up being the fourth question that we would advise everybody to ask. Who else has a vested interest in this decision, and are they okay with it? Are they on board? And do they understand all these implications, too?

Mike Goodman 28:49

Yeah, having that support can make all the difference.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:51

Yeah, absolutely. I want to really quick just run through those questions again here, for anybody that is finding themselves in this place where they're considering like you were, is this something I just need to do? Is this something that I should do, and is this actually a good idea for me in my situation? So ask yourself, number one, do you have that runway? Do you have that savings, or do you have more liabilities than you're going to be able to afford at the time? Number two, why is it that you want to leave in the first place? What is driving this decision? Is it 100% emotion, thinking that is going to be better, or is it something that you're able to run to, versus running away from something? And if it's purely running away from something, probably not a great idea. And then question number three, who else has a vested interest in this decision and are they 100% on board, or at least enough on board and committed to making the same decision? Then last question is, for you personally, what do you need in terms of breakthroughs to make this substantial life change? Because it is a substantial life change. I don't want people to underestimate that. Anything that you'd add to that Mike for people to consider? You know, having you done this yourself in a couple of capacities.

Mike Goodman 30:05

Think it through and be prepared. I think, you know, having that support, like I just said, is really is important, and just looking at it from different ways. Like, are you okay with it? If it's not going to happen for six months, it's going to take longer. Worst case scenario, are you okay with still making that decision? Just weigh... Look at the different sides and weigh the outcomes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:26

That is phenomenal advice. And the cool thing is, even if you decide it's not a good idea, then I think that there's plenty of other alternatives. You can work on getting what we call a bridge job, which it might not be the perfect job, but it might be something that is vastly improved, and either maybe it's not the state of blah, and you're getting to beginning to use more of your skill sets and what you enjoy, but maybe it's not the perfect thing, if you will. Or maybe it's a case where it's freeing up more of your headspace or more of your time so that you can devote some time or headspace or bandwidth, like you were talking about earlier, Mike, to figuring out what is going to be a great situation for you.

Mike Goodman 31:05

Exactly. Yeah. What does that look like? Figuring out what's the right move, or what's the next move going to be and what's going to make it better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:11

As people are going through that figure it out type process, any other advice that you'd give to them once they have decided, "Hey, look, I need to quit. It is the right decision for me, and I'm going to use part of that time to determine what is next and what's going to be a great situation for me."?

Mike Goodman 31:26

Allow yourself the time to don't jump into a situation just because it comes up. Learn from my mistakes. Don't jump into something just because it's there. Make sure it's the right move. Because if you've made the decision to leave where you were to find something better, see it through. Don't jump into something, you know, a lateral move, or the frying pan into the fire, for lack of a better word, just take the time and discover what it is that is going to make you happy, and seek it out, because it is out there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:02

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 32:49

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

Speaker 3 33:00

So much of it has been trusting my body, trusting my gut, trusting that when I'm fearful or anxious, that's just an emotion. But my heart is actually telling me what I'm interested in, my heart is actually telling me what I want to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:17

Riddle me this, what if being too good that your job is the reason you need to escape? Maybe you do the work three times faster than everyone else, so you are just being given more and more and more and more. Or maybe you're constantly getting praised by leadership for being the highest performer, but it's making the team resent you. Maybe you're an educator whose relator strength causes your students to adore you and want to be around you, but you're beginning to feel overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:48

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.

Erin Szczerba 00:01

It felt like I was wearing 2000 pounds of bricks. I felt depressed. I had major brain fog. Any action I needed to take, felt like I'm wearing this backpack of bricks trying to take the steps necessary.

Introduction 00:26

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:51

Back in 2005, I was working in a job that had me considering driving into a ditch or jumping out a second story window, nothing fatal, but enough damage to give me some time off work. Crazy, right? Well, after gaining 50 pounds through medicating with food and multiple anxiety attacks, I was pretty desperate for an escape. When I wasn't thinking about how to collect worker's comp, I was internally screaming, "There has to be something better than this!" There has to be. And since then, I've talked to many thousands of people who felt just like I once did. And this shouldn't come as a shock or a huge revelation, but your job, your work, should not make you physically or mentally ill. Work shouldn't suck the life out of you. Actually, it can do the opposite. It can add excitement, it can add fun, it can add purpose, it can add fulfillment, and so many other positives to your life.

Erin Szczerba 01:48

Ultimately, the decision was made for me to leave that role. And I'm glad because I am not a quitter, so I was very determined to figure out how to make it work, because there was so much in that role that the work of it that I really enjoyed. So I was very determined to figure out how to make it work, even though I was growing more miserable by the day.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:13

That's Erin Szczerba. The interesting thing about Erin's career change journey is that in some ways, she ended up right back where she started her career out 20 years ago. She spent the past two decades getting really clear on her strengths, defining her ideal role, and today she's a completely different person. I want you to pay attention to how her experience with roles outside of real estate helped build her confidence and give her the mindset shift she needed to thrive as she re-entered the real estate world much later. Here's Erin talking about what is different in her life compared to when she was working with Dell recently, and now that she's back in the real estate world.

Erin Szczerba 02:55

I would say the biggest difference is probably that I am 100% in-charge of what I do every day and what I see come into my bank account.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:11

I remember chatting with you about that specific thing, and I remember that that was something that was, even though it can be scary, I think for many people out there, and it's not right for everyone, I remember you talking about it with some reverence, because it's not the first time that you have been fully in control, if you will.

Erin Szczerba 03:36

Yeah, there were two things going on. One is that I knew that there was so much that I loved about it because I do like to be able to have a wild idea and then go investigate it and see is this something I should pursue. I love the freedom of that, and I really loved the autonomy that I had as business owner and entrepreneur, and I also really disliked the financial insecurity that I experienced. And so it was really, really torn about, how do I have all of it? I want to have all of it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:19

How do you have all of it? How do you get all the things, or at least the ones that are most important to you, right? So, okay, let's jump way backwards for a moment here. Where did your career start out?

Erin Szczerba 04:30

I started in real estate. I had thought that I wanted to be an actress, and I was waiting tables, and I thought, "This is not it for me." I also want to be able to, like, buy things. I was like, "I don't think maybe $500 a week isn't going to work for me." So I thought, well, I love houses. That's what I do in my free time is I'm looking at houses, I'm going to open houses. I'm on realtor.com. I'm thinking about houses all the time–I want to decorate. I just love it. And so I was like, "Well, if I could get paid to, like, spend all my free time looking at houses, that would be cool." Turns out, there's a profession where you get to do that. So at 25, I got my real estate license and started selling real estate.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:16

What... There's... In chatting with you almost a year ago, it sounded like there were a lot of twists and turns compared to what led up to you working with Dell and then ultimately leaving Dell and then ultimately, eventually leading back into being fully in control of your income, full circle in many different ways. However, what caused you to make some of those changes along the way? What caused you to go from 25 real estate eventually to Dell?

Erin Szczerba 05:49

Yeah, well, in 2007, I was a mom of an almost four year old, and my husband, at the time, and I made some choices to benefit his career. And all of these choices led to the realization that our marriage wasn't working, and he didn't want to be married. And so I went through divorce in 2008 which is also when the housing market crashed. And so at that time, I had to make a decision. The real estate career, I think every real estate agent who was selling real estate at that time will tell you it changed dramatically. It went from being a nice career where, you know, you're helping buyers and sellers and they're happy with you because they're getting what they want for the most part, to it being incredibly stressful. It became kind of a dog fight between agents, because the sellers, you know, wanted more for their house, and the buyers want a lesser. I was like, "Listen, I have enough stress in my life. I don't need more from my career. I need peace in my life, and my son needs me to be a peaceful mom, not a monster mom", which is how I felt I was being. And so I made the decision at that time to do something else, and I didn't really know what it was. I was also flat broke. So we lost our houses in the housing market crash. We had to. I had no money, literally, negative money. And so I just was like, "What can I do?" And I also was not ready to put my son in full time childcare. My husband had moved away, and so I was a full time single mom, and I just really felt like he's already missing one parent, am I going to be gone all day too? And so I was just like begging the universe to give me an idea. And I had this idea to start an eco-friendly house cleaning company, because I thought, "What do I know how to do that I can do better than other people and make money doing it, and will give me time flexibility?" And I was like, I'm not beneath scrubbing toilets. I'll do it. So I started an eco-friendly house cleaning company. The reason then I thought, "Oh, I'll do eco friendly, because I started using eco friendly products, and I'm loving them, and people are into that." I was in Denver, you know, so it was crunchy, and I was very lucky that I had this huge sphere of influence. And so I put together a little flier, and I emailed it out, and I got clients really quickly, and I was spending long days cleaning houses. I didn't know the right way to do it, but I learned. And so I eventually grew that into a well oiled machine that allowed me to go back to school, and I got my degree in organizational management, and I still was spending, I still was like, working three days a week, and I was spending a lot of time with my son. And then, I sold that one in Denver. And then I started another. I moved to Austin to be close to my family, started another one in Austin, sold that after two years, and then that's when I was like, "Now, what do I do?" I don't even know. I don't even know what jobs are out there. I've only ever worked for myself. So how do I get a job?

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:15

What is this thing that...?

Erin Szczerba 09:17

Yeah, I was like, "Do I have skills? I don't even know. Can my skills be used in corporate America?" So then I just started investigating, I just started looking and talking to people, and one thing led to another, and I actually asked a friend's husband, who was an executive director at Dell, to review my resume and a job offer I had received from a very small company, and turned out that he actually had just opened up a wreck on his team. He needed someone to be a Marketing and Communications Manager. And he was like, "You have pretty much everything that I'm looking for, and here's what I would need you to do." I literally didn't understand the words coming out of his mouth, and I was like, "I am so afraid, but I've only ever done what I already knew how to do", so I'm just going to try something new that I'm not already good at. And I was way more money than I had been making, and it was super exciting and very scary, and I became the least informed person in the room, real fast, and figured it out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:26

When you were at that point in time, what was the scariest part for you to jump into that, as you called it, you know, thing that you had never done before?

Erin Szczerba 10:36

Well, it was just, I was afraid that I think I had definite imposter syndrome. I was really afraid that people will find out that I was totally incompetent and should never have been given that job with that salary.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:52

The way you talk about that, I am guessing that at this point, almost everybody feels that way at various different times, sometimes, many different times. What ended up helping you be able to, not just jump in, but move through that?

Erin Szczerba 11:10

I think it was that I was surrounded by really good people, and I was very honest with the people on my team and with my boss. I felt overwhelmed. And that I, you know, these huge conglomerates use acronyms that nobody else knows, and then they change their acronyms, like every other year too. So a lot of times, nobody knows what acronym somebody's using. And so I was like, I need, like, a dictionary for these acronyms. And so I was really honest with people that was feeling overwhelmed, but a lot of people told me, "You've got to get used to that. You have to get used to not knowing. You have to, like, trust that you're going to find a way and just make small, valuable inputs."

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:56

Why do you think it is, in your opinion, that we put so much, we being, you know, many people all over the world put so much pressure on ourselves to know all the things, as opposed to trusting that it can be figured out in one way or another?

Erin Szczerba 12:13

Well, I think that it's because people don't really broadcast their lack of knowledge and the struggle, you know. I only was seeing the results of people who'd been at Dell for over 10 years. And it's also very much a... the corporate culture is very much, you know, achievement, like, you're hearing about the people, the overachievers, over and over again. And so to not immediately be an overachiever is like, "Oh no, I must suck." And I do. It's very painful. And I do. I mean, I really, I'm loving LinkedIn these days, because I feel like people are finally being super transparent and honest on there, and people are ready for some honesty about the hard stuff, about work, and I really like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:08

So what happened for you? What happened for you? You had eight years at Dell. I know that you enjoyed many things over the course of that time. What caused you to decide eventually that, "you know what, I think I'm ready for something else."?

Erin Szczerba 13:24

Well, I'm the kind of person who I love to see, like, what's the next thing I'm going for. So for me, it was promotions. I, you know, as an independent contributor, and there's several levels of independent contributor, and I had moved up to the highest level of independent contributor at Dell, which meant that then I needed for me to move up again. I was going to need to go into people management. And my leaders were saying, "yYou should be a people leader. Obviously, you should do it." And so I started looking at these roles, and I actually interviewed for one. But even though this people leader didn't hire me, he wanted to have a follow up interview with me and talk about what's next for you, and how can I help you get there. What I learned was that I was going to really need to begin eating, breathing, and sleeping at Dell if I was going to move into a people management position. Because first of all, there's not that many. There's fewer available than the independent contributor positions, and more is expected of you. You're kind of that catch all in that catch all position when you're, you know, entry and enter into the people management. So I just was like, "You know what? I just can't do it. I'm just... Dell's a great company, but I don't want to talk about or think about storage or servers anymore. I don't care about them." That's just the truth. I like what they do for me in my life, but I don't care about them. So that's when I just was like, "I don't know. I don't know where I would go from here", and I think there's a whole world of opportunity out there that I'm not aware of, and I need help figuring it out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:09

I think that's amazing because it's not easy to come to that realization where you said, "I just don't care about server", like, I think that it's easy to say that in hindsight, but when we're there, when we are experiencing and going through all of those things in the moment, it's like, "Well, should I? Shouldn't I?" And all the questions come up. So I think it may send, it's easy for us to just gloss over that. Like that was a smaller thing. But that's actually really powerful that you came to that conclusion, overall. What helped you come to that conclusion? Was it simply the conversation that you had about, "Here's what would be required", or were there other things going on at that same time where it helped with that realization for you?

Erin Szczerba 16:02

Yeah, well, that's a good point. I definitely went through a season, a long season, where I was finding it very hard to do my work. And I had my projects I was working on, and a lot of it was, you know, there was my maintenance work, and then there was some strategic things I needed to be working on, and some problems I needed to be solving, and that's my jam. I love that. And I was feeling extremely demotivated, and I felt like something was wrong with me, and I was being a bad employee. And actually, this is a funny story. Maybe this will be encouraging, or maybe people will think that's weird. But my annual review was in March, but I was like, I'm not doing nearly as much as I used to do, and I was feeling real guilty about it, and I thought for sure in my review that I was going to be told like, "Hey, we understand it's been hard, but you got to get it together." And then what I was told was that I was super creative, and I showed all of this great problem solving and strategic ability, and that I was one of the most, what was it, I was one of the most, like flexible and adaptable people on the team, and then I was getting a big raise, like, "What? Oh my gosh." So, I mean, so that was helpful, but then I didn't feel as bad about my brain fog and my demotivation. But then there's only so long that you can show up every day to work that way. That's just not going to work for me. I need to be excited about what I'm doing. I can't just trudge along and collect a paycheck. And my leader at the time was like, "Don't you give some good thought to what you really want to do?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:54

I think that's a story that I've heard over and over again in various different like names and companies and job changed, but the commonality of somebody who, like, in your case, you were going to work, you're feeling guilty about being able to contribute in the way that you wanted to, and then the perception of everybody else is that you're knocking it out of the park, that you're doing really well, "Hey, here's more money." And that is, it's a weird position to be in, I think, from chatting with many people that have experienced that, but I think what's really powerful for me is that you, instead of just staying in that position, because it's actually, I think, arguably easier to just stay in that position where people are telling you like, "You're doing an awesome job. This is fantastic. Keep on going." But instead, you started taking action to do something about it so that you could find the right ways that you wanted to contribute, so you didn't have to have those feelings anymore. So kudos to you, first of all. And what did you learn out of that?

Erin Szczerba 18:59

Well, I think I learned that I do good work, first of all, and I also learned that I can do way better work. I'm able to do way better work than I've ever done, and that I'm much more motivated by aligned values than I am by a paycheck.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:26

When you say aligned values, tell me what really drives it for you, like, what are some of the things that you value the most that have to be there to create an amazing situation for you?

Erin Szczerba 19:40

So I want to be problem solving personally. I want to be able to know that I'm solving a problem that actually directly impacts someone's life, that is important to me and that I can see the impact that it's making on individuals. And I also need to be in a decision making role, and I need to be in a visionary role where I'm saying, "Here are the problems that I see, and these are the solutions, but I think we can do better than those solutions. Let's find new solutions, put legs on them, and see how much more impactful that is." And I need to be much closer to the customer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:33

So when you didn't have those values aligned, what did it feel like that was associated with having those gaps, or having the lack of fit?

Erin Szczerba 20:47

It felt like I was wearing 2000 pounds of bricks. I felt depressed. I had major brain fog. Any action I needed to take, felt like I'm wearing this backpack of bricks trying to take the steps necessary. It's just... and then after a day like that, where I really didn't feel energized, I didn't feel confident, I felt bad about myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:16

That's, you know, that's, I haven't heard anybody describe it like that, but that's actually very similar to the way that I felt too when I was misaligned with my values– that ton of like drudging through almost carrying all of that extra weight. So I appreciate that description on many different levels. So all of this ended up leading you to accept a different role outside the company, and some things fit about that role, but ultimately, some things did not fit too. So tell me a little bit about what happened and what took you through that next evolution.

Erin Szczerba 21:54

Yeah, so working with my coach at Happen To Your Career, Alistair, we... Alistair helped me to see that I needed to be in some sort of client facing sales role, like everything that all my strengths, all of that add up to, you know, it's obvious. And then going through these exercises that I went through, I just could not deny that what I really wanted was to be working with clients in real estate every day, and that scared me, because I had experienced financial insecurity before. I was a real estate agent during the market crash, it was very difficult time, and I was in a place of financial security, which I was not willing to give up. And so Alistair worked with me on addressing the fear of the scarcity. And so like, "What can I do to safeguard myself from these things that I'm afraid of so that's no longer a fear of mine. It doesn't have to be a fear." And I loved that because, like, the fear was real. You know, those are real things to be afraid of, but those don't have to be a reality. All of those things are solvable. So, you know, I was giving up benefits, I was giving up my health insurance, I was going to give up my 401K match, and I have a son going into college, and then I was giving up my regular paycheck. So those things I worked through, and I figured out, what do I need to feel confident about leaving Dell? And part of that was choosing a new brokerage where I was able to get more service and support for my commission split that I would be paying it than I'd had previously. That was important to me as well. But I couldn't shake, like I still had this "what if", like, surely, this is just a reality that I'm going to be really slow in real estate and I'm not going to have any money, and then I'm going to feel this way, and my partner is going to be impacted, and I'm going to lose my relationship. I mean, that's the road I was going down– the spiral, just like, whoa. And so when it came about that there was a position opening at this new brokerage that I had joined as an agent Success Manager, I was like, "Ooh, what's that?" And then I read the job description, and I was like, "Oh, sounds perfect for me, actually", because it was continuing to produce, you know, sell real estate while also helping agents to sell more, basically, business development with the agents at the brokerage, which I love to do. I love helping people. So it just seemed like such a miracle. Felt like a gift from the universe. Here we're I'm going to solve all your problems, you're going to have a regular salary, and you'll still be able to sell real estate, and you're just going to be only in real estate, not one industry, plus real estate. I was like, "I'm gonna get this job." And I did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:02

So you had your mind on this, and you went and got it because that's what you do, and that's honestly part of what you're great at. But also, it sounded like there were some things, since you got set on that really quickly, that weren't in alignment as well as you thought they would be. Tell me about that.

Erin Szczerba 25:19

Well, one of the things I did not think about because I think I, you know, it didn't... I had several different bosses at Dell, and some were a better fit for me than others. I'm sure vice versa. So I'm sure I was a better employee for some of these bosses than some others, and a worse employee. But I did not think about what I really needed in a leader or a manager. I made assumptions that certain qualities were there based on what I knew about the brokerage and the services and the competency of the agents, and definitely those assumptions led me to not be curious, not ask certain questions and move, just jump in with zero reservations. And then, yeah, I think I could say it was not a good fit for either me or my leader.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:19

If you could go back and do it over again, what do you think some of the questions you would have asked in order to understand more about that?

Erin Szczerba 26:28

Well, I think that I would have asked about, what are the expectations of me as a worker? How do you like to work? It didn't occur to me because you can't do this at Dell, right, like Michael Dell can't say, "I want all 150,000 of you to do everything the way I would do it." You can't become Dell Technologies if you do that, right? So I had never experienced that before, so I didn't actually know that it could be a thing. Knowing what I know now, I would have gone back and said, "What is the voice of the brokerage? And do I have the flexibility to bring my own voice, or do I need to do this all in a certain way?" Like those are the things that I know now that don't work for me, because any sort of restriction around that doesn't work for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:23

Well, I think just getting to know you a little bit, you need that type of autonomy. I mean, we all as humans need some level of autonomy. However, what we need as individuals can be drastically different, and I think that's your own person, one of the pieces, at least, of your own personal brand of autonomy that you need that creates much more fulfillment for you. So I can definitely see that and fully appreciate that. That's super cool that you know that now.

Erin Szczerba 27:53

Yeah, it is.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:54

So bring us full circle here. What caused you to decide, "Okay, you know what? I accepted this role. I went out and got it, I went and did the thing that I'm great at, and it's not a fit." And you made that decision. We already know some of the reasons why it wasn't as great of a fit as what you were looking for. But what cinched the decision for you? And then what did you end up moving to?

Erin Szczerba 28:19

Well, ultimately, the decision was made for me to leave that role, and I'm glad, because I am not a quitter. So I was very determined to figure out how to make it work because there was so much in that role that the work of it that I really enjoyed. So I was very determined to figure out how to make it work, even though I was growing more miserable by the day. And so then I did have a choice after that. Okay, so I'm selling real estate, and I was actively selling real estate when this happened. And I had a choice, "Do I just sell real estate? Or do I try to find something, another sort of filler position?" And I talked to several very wise people about it, talked to Alistair about it, and the consensus was always, the universe has shown you what you need to do, and you need to trust yourself. You're fully competent. You're great at it. It's real estate. You need to sell real estate. And it really was a mindset shift for me. It really was a, I have to look at the world in abundance. I can't be looking at the scarcity side, because whichever one I'm focused on is what I'm going to get. And so I just really started thinking about, "What do I want my real estate business to look like?" And that's what excites me. You know, I get to think about, like, what's important to me is not selling the most real estate of anybody else in the area, I'm never going to do that. I'm not because I don't care that much about having huge sales. I would much rather make an impact on people because, for me, selling real estate is easy. I've done it hundreds of times, but for the average person who doesn't sell houses every day, trying to figure out how to get from where they are to where they want to be is really challenging, and it often feels overwhelming, and so they just don't do it. So if I can help people figure out how to get from where they are to where they want to be, and look at what are those obstacles, how do we overcome those obstacles, very much like what Alistair did with me when I was trying to figure out how to go from Dell to real estate, then I'm helping them do something that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do, and that's super fulfilling to me. And as long as I'm focusing on that, I'm going to have plenty. I'll have plenty.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:57

Do you feel like you would have had that mindset shift as quickly had you not gone through that set of experiences that we just talked about?

Erin Szczerba 31:05

Probably not. Because having been thrust into that position is so much different than saying, "Okay, now I'm ready." I could potentially still be a Dell, you know. Because I just... it would just feel like, "Was now the right time to pull the trigger?" I don't know. You know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:24

Roughly 20 years ago, when I left an organization, not by my choice as a regional manager, I spent so long going back and forth. I spent months and months and months and months going back and forth. And eventually they decided for me, and I think it is as crazy as it probably sounds to many different people, probably the best gift that they could have given. I could still be at that organization today, 20 years later, like fully unhappy in so many different ways. So I am very thankful for sometimes the weird ways that happen and you called it the universe speaking to you. Also, I would say that in addition to that, sometimes it just becomes obvious to everyone else too, like, what your strengths and your gifts are. And sometimes we need a little extra nudge in so many different ways.

Erin Szczerba 32:17

Yeah, totally.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:18

I'm so happy for you that it worked out in this particular way, and I am thankful that we got the opportunity to help out in any part of that. And also, I'm curious, what advice would you give for someone who's back in that situation, where you were at with Dell, where you realized, "Okay, this is not it for me. I know that I need to do something different, but you know, what is that? And like, should I even fully commit to that direction?" What advice would you give to that person who's there right now?

Erin Szczerba 32:54

Yeah. I mean, I would definitely say that you've got to embrace that you don't know what you don't know. And that if you're feeling at all dissatisfied with where you're at or like maybe there's something more than you've got to go down every hallway and look in every nook and cranny to figure out what's your sweet spot. And so I think it can be, we can get really small worlds in work, and we can have absolutely no clue what else is out there. And honestly, I mean, this is the truth. It's because I was listening to your podcast, and I just loved hearing people's stories that I realized, like, "There's something out there that's the perfect fit for me. I don't know what it is, and I need some help figuring it out, but I believe I'm going to find that thing that's perfect for me."

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:03

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 34:55

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

Speaker 3 35:01

I think I got to a point where I thought I had changed jobs a couple times as it was, and I thought, you know, "Is there anything out there I'm going to like? And is there, you know, what if I change jobs, and what if it's something worse?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:15

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.

Travis Moore 00:01

I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I had gone into this new career that I was like, "This is it. I'm making great money. I've got all this opportunity. I get connected with all these high level people." It was like the thing that I thought that I wanted, and it wasn't. And it was terrible, and it was a bad experience, and it was something that I definitely didn't want.

Introduction 00:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:53

Do you remember those quizzes they had a stake in middle school, or maybe for you, early high school, that matched us with our career path that we should probably be on forever? My results said I should be an architect or a dentist, or I can't even remember what else, doesn't matter, right? But life would be a lot easier if we just took those results and that was the exact career that would fulfill us for the rest of our lives. But unfortunately, that's not how it works. And the journey to figuring out our calling can take a lot longer than we expect, and it leaves us feeling pretty lost at times. If you're in one of those spots where you're feeling lost in your career or like you don't know what the next right step is, this episode is for you.

Travis Moore 01:00

[01:43] I've got to figure this out because this is supposed to be like the best experience of my life, and it's going to be like a big builder, and it's going to be a game changer for the trajectory of my career. And it sucks.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:54

That's Travis Moore. Travis had been all over the map working in healthcare, but still felt like he was called to do more and kept getting pretty bored in every role he held. He is a registered nurse, a board certified healthcare leader, and holds a doctorate in nursing and health innovation, yet he still felt like he was lacking his "why", and thought that if he could just figure out that one thing, then he would finally feel like he'd reached his career goal. Spoiler alert, these days, Travis finally feels at peace with where his career is, but it's not because he found that one single thing that he's going to do for the rest of his entire life. He did land a really awesome opportunity, but we're going to get to that. Pay attention to how Travis got to the core of what he truly wanted out of life and overcame his limiting beliefs. Here's Travis talking about where his healthcare career originated.

Travis Moore 02:43

So I grew up in a pretty rural town in central Virginia, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. And then I became an EMT when I was 16, and right after high school, got a job in the emergency department, working as an EMT as a ED Tech. And that's kind of like how it all my career started really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:59

Interesting. So that's where your career started. If we go way back then, what happened from there? What was the next step?

Travis Moore 03:07

Yeah. So after I became an EMT, my first job was working in the emergency department. I wanted to be a paramedic. That was the only thing I ever wanted to do when I was in high school. So I became a professional firefighter paramedic for a while, and really felt this sense that I wanted to do more that I felt like I had gotten really good at what I was doing, and I wanted to expand my horizons, think a little bit further outside of the box, and go a little bit further upstream in healthcare. So I looked at nursing opportunities because there was transition programs to transition from a paramedic to an RN in a shorter amount of time, and it was a defining moment that really has established the foundation for the rest of my career, which is deeply founded in being a nurse right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:43

Clearly there has been so much that has happened since that point in time. That's a really fun start. What led you down the road of deciding that healthcare was no longer for you? Something happened along the way. What happened in between there and now?

Travis Moore 04:02

There's really not a single defining moment. It's an evolution. It's progress. It's a journey. And I got into, eventually became a nurse, worked in the emergency department, worked in a couple intensive cares, and consistently felt like I had gotten good at the skills of being a nurse, and I really enjoyed, loved taking care of patients, but I felt like I was in a box and that I was doing the same thing over and over every day. So it caused me to kind of continue to move upstream. And so I took a job as a Director of Nursing at a home care company, and that was a really defining career move for me because it really helped. It was my first taste in entrepreneurship and getting into a business, and we had 400% growth in the first two years being with the company, acquired two more agencies, rolled out a bunch of service lines, and I really enjoyed that. But again, I hit that ceiling where I was like, "I'm ready for more. And I really want to diversify my experience and how I can execute on things." And so then I went and became a management consultant. And that was probably the farthest away from healthcare, like actual patient care, that I ever been. And I was bringing this wealth of experience and knowledge and background in the healthcare world and this education, and I'm trying to figure out how I can use this in like a meaningful way to be able to drive sustainable changes in health systems. And I was quickly bogged down by the business of healthcare and the business of consulting, and really didn't feel like I was able to deliver the kind of impacts that I wanted to make, and didn't feel like I was able to have had the spaces of autonomy that I really was used to in that startup world in this new consulting role. And I had a really hard time communicating with my superiors the vision that I had and the strategic thought behind some of the decisions that we were making. And at the end of the day, the work that we were doing was so much higher level and not closer to the problem where I really thrived in being, and it left me super, super frustrated.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:01

So when you say impact, is that what you're referring to that it wasn't close enough to the problem to really feel that connection in the way that you wanted to? Tell me about it.

Travis Moore 06:12

I think, yeah. I think that is a part of it. I think that, moreover, I really wasn't able to align my company's incentives with my incentives, or the things that I feel like we're going to be value drivers in our health system. And a lot about being a business consultant is about providing a perspective, and that is sometimes just a perspective, and it doesn't matter if it's a good perspective or not, it's a perspective they're paying for something. And that didn't drive with me, and I did not want to provide perspectives because based on a timeline, if I didn't feel like we had enough information or had enough insight to be able to truly give a perspective, and that seemed to take a backseat in a lot of the conversations that I had during my time in that world, and it was really frustrating not to be able to dive deep enough into these problems to really thoroughly understand them to then be able to provide the recommendation. And it seemed like we started with recommendations, and they would figure out how to back into the solution later, which was incongruent to the way that I think about things, and that I think, on a very personal level, things should be done. And trying to reconcile that was just an arduous challenge that I was not successful at doing, and I was not able to really find alignment between my value set and my value structure and my personal mission vision and values to with what the company was doing on a day to day practice. And it was extremely frustrating. And to be completely transparent, it was like the first time in my life that I had things like the Sunday scaries and that I had no freaking clue what I felt like my job was, or how I could deliver effectively and be able to prove my value. I have all this education, all this experience, and I can't figure out how to use it in this context because every time I try to use it, I'm told, "No, that's wrong." Or, "No, that's not what we're looking for. We need something more." And it was like I equivocated to playing battleship with, like, no feedback, and it's like, "A7", "No, that sucked." "Okay, great. How about B5?" You're just throwing stuff out to the point where you're just throwing stuff out that you don't even know you don't have any strategy behind anymore, because you're just like, "Well, I use strategy and it didn't get me anywhere." Then it just is, again, not something that I aligned with because I feel like the product I was delivering was not useful and it wasn't meaningful. And ultimately, I could see that in a lot of the conversations that I had with clients and really the perception that business consultants get when you walk into, especially healthcare organizations, and they're just like, eyes roll immediately. And I completely felt that. And I was like, "I don't want to be one of those guys, like, I don't want to be part of the problem. I want to fix the problem." And so it was a it was a tough time for me personally and it was also, to give it some context, this is also during the pandemic. So I got offered this job the week that the world locked down. And so I didn't have the normal onboarding. I was working completely remote. All of my previous jobs have been working in person, surrounded with people, interacting with people. I am an extremely extroverted person to get a lot of my energy from that interaction. And then moving from that kind of world into a world where I don't feel successful, I don't feel heard, I don't have that energy, the world is on lockdown, so I can't even do like the normal things that I would do outside of my job, and I'm working from home for the first time in my career, and I was just like, completely done. After working there for about a year and a half, I was on antidepressants for the first time in my life, I was in therapy, and I was just like, "This is just not good." And even when I had these conversations, like, my doctor about getting on like antidepressants, she was like, "Do you feel like your job might have anything to do with it?" And I'm like, "Well, I don't know. It's a job. I've got to learn, and these are things that I don't know, and it's a new environment, and I just got to continue to trudge through, and I'll eventually figure it out." To now looking back where I was like, "Absolutely, that had a lot to do with it", because I think most people, and especially nurses, really resonate with the work that they do, and it's part of like, your calling and part of who you are, and it's an outward expression of what you do and who you are as a person and your value to the world. And when you're not able to express that, and you don't feel like the value you're delivering is like meaningful or what you want to do, it really breaks into who you are as a person. And especially in this environment, in the pandemic, where you ain't got nothing else going on because you can't do anything else. So it's like work, and then maybe some zoom sessions with your friends to try to keep your "social connections" to the world. It was just super, super hard.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:33

That is hard in so many different ways. And I'm also curious what took place between where you're having that conversation with your doctor, and you're like, "Well, I don't know if my job has anything to do with it, or I'm not really sure. Maybe... I don't..." to the point where you learned what caused you to begin to recognize and then begin to do something about it? What took place?

Travis Moore 10:58

Yeah. So I think it was something that I thought it was like, "Sure. For sure, my job has something to do with this. But is this a reason? Like, am I just going to quit because it's hard?" And that was the bigger piece for me to try to come to terms with. And I recently read a book that was called 'Dip' by Seth Godin, and that really exemplified where I was at in that job, "Okay, do I need to quit and protect myself? Or do I need to go through the 'Dip' because of what's potentially on the other side?" And that was like the question that I asked myself every single day. And I started to reach out to people because I was like, "Okay, I'm struggling. I need some movement." "Do I stay or do I go?" Like, that's the question at this point. What's the value that I'm going to get if I stay past this 'Dip', or what part of me am I losing by staying through this and how is that going to ultimately impact my trajectory in 10, 15, 30 years from now? And I started reaching out to people inside the company that I knew I had been assigned a mentor, and I had developed relationships with people that understood the value of my perspective. And I was going to them, and being like, "This is the struggle I'm having." A lot of people related with me and the challenges that I was having at the time, and I built some really strong relationships that I still have to this day. And then going outside of the company and talking to people, and competitors that have similar roles and asking them, "Are they feeling the same way?" And a lot of them did. What are things that I can focus on to make this a better experience for me, or to really capitalize on my time here so that this is not just like a black hole in my life where it was just like, "Oh yeah, that sucked. I don't want to go back there." But to really try to turn this into, "What's the value?" Maybe it's not a positive experience. Maybe I'm not going to be for long. What's the value that I'm going to be able to take away from this experience? And seeing if I can, in fact, turn this around, and if I can stay through the dip. And that's really part of that whole process when I started, when I reached out to HTYC and initially started coaching with you guys. It was really out of that despair, desperation. I've got to figure this out because this is supposed to be like the best experience of my life, and it's going to be like a big builder, and it's going to be a game changer for the trajectory of my career, and it sucks. So I've got to figure out how I'm going to either work through this or figure out what the heck I want to do with my life. And so that's how I originally started listening to your podcast, and that's what kind of got me hooked, and listening to some of the other people that had similar experiences and what they had done to mitigate their challenges and their transitions out of one career to the next. And I wasn't really sure that I wanted to leave, like, I love being a nurse, and I wasn't really sure that I wanted to leave nursing or leave healthcare, but I knew that I didn't want to be a bedside nurse, and I didn't want to be any one of the traditional nurse leaders or managers or directors. I remember very distinctly when I was in grad school, was my second semester, and I did an internship going into the program. I was like, "I'm going to be a CEO of a hospital, or I'm going to be a CNO, Chief Nursing Officer, at least." That's where my ambitions are. And I got into the program, was in my second semester, and I did a shadowing experience with the chief nursing officer, and was like, "Oh, my God, your job sucks. I would never do this. This is terrible. I don't want to do this at all. This is like what I do times 1000 and it's like, this is not the kind of position that I want to do with my life." And so I remember after that experience, going to my advisor and being like, "I think I'm going to change into the nurse practitioner program because this is not... I thought I wanted to be a CNO or CEO, and I've seen that now, and no thanks." And I remember she sat back, she was like, "Well, my goodness, that's amazing." She was like, "It sounds like grad school has already paid off for you." And I was like, "It's not the response I was expecting." And she's like, "Well, think about it." She was like, "You imagine you had spent your career a couple more years that a manager, a couple years as a director, a couple more years as the vice president, and then finally you get into this role 20, 25 years down the line, and that's when you realize that you didn't want it. You know?" She was like, "So you've saved maybe 20 years of your life and two semesters of grad school." She's like, "It's a pretty awesome ROI, if you think about it." And I was just like, blown away by that and had to sit back and chew on that. And was like, "Okay, all right, maybe you're right. Maybe I do need to continue to think more broadly on what it means to be a leader and what it means to be an innovator, and how I can use my background and my experience to really create the kind of impact that I want to create in the world." And so all of these things coming together, and that's when I originally reached out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:23

As you got to the point where it's like, "Okay, I know that I need to do something about this." You started taking a number of steps, you were reaching out to people inside, outside your company, you started working with us, you have all of these different areas to create traction, we'll call them. What was the hardest part for you in going through and identifying, "Hey, do I want to stay? Do I want to go? What does an amazing next step look like?" What was the hardest part for you in making this type of career change?

Travis Moore 15:53

I think the unknown of what am I giving up. And trying to understand, what am I giving up if I leave. And then thinking about that on the other foot of, what am I giving up if I stay. And trying to forecast what you think the value of what you're doing is into your future. Because I have done a lot of hard things in my life. I completed nursing school in one year. And if I didn't die during that, I can do anything, is what I tell myself. And I'm willing to put in the work and the stress and the effort to get towards a goal, but I also have to know that that goal exists, and that this is actually driving towards that and is going to be a value to me, and I'm going to have ROI for this sweat equity that I'm putting into this. And so that was the framework in which I was approaching this decision, but I had no idea what is the value of staying here for three years, five years versus one year. What am I actually going to learn? And I had to break it down into little tangible things of like, "All right, I can get better at facilitating communication or a conversation. I can get better at telling a story to a client. I can get better at utilizing data to support my communication." Those are little specific things that I was like, "That's what I'm going to focus on and try to get out of this experience." And at the end of the day, ultimately, I remember, I had my first conversation with my first coach at HTYC, and I essentially was like, "Hi, I'm Travis. I need to quit my job, and I need someone to tell me that it's okay." was, I think, basically what I was trying to get. And I was like, just dying to get the conversation started because I wanted someone to tell me, "Yeah, it's okay. You can quit. It's going to be fine. We'll find you something better." And that wasn't the response that I got from the first coach. And it really was good because it then pushed it back on me, and it was like, "nobody's going to make this decision for you", which is ultimately what I was aiming for, was someone to tell me, "Yeah, it's okay. You can make this decision, and we support you and you're making the right decision." And I needed to come to that decision to myself, and I needed to be able to make the determination like, "yeah, no, this sucks", and you're not getting out of it what you want to get out of it. And furthermore, it's really deteriorating your mental health, which is the foundation for everything else that you do in your career and in your personal life. So ultimately, after that original conversation, I did resign from my job. And I had no idea. I did not... I just woke up that day and was like, "Yeah, I can't do this anymore. This is not working." I tried many different teams. I tried many different clients. And that's what I kept saying to myself, "Oh, maybe it's the team, maybe it's the leader I'm working with, maybe it's the client I'm working with." And ultimately, I changed again. And I was like, "This is the exact same." And my last project was like, really in my wheelhouse, and I still felt terrible. And so I was like, "It's time to go." And I remember thinking to myself, like, "Okay, well, I've been toying with this decision for, like, I don't know, six months to leave. So this is not like a new and I'm not being reactive." And I know that looking at my career history, like, I think the longest job I've ever had to date is two years. So, like, I know I have a propensity to leave positions, but I said, "You know what? I'm going to wait tomorrow. If I still feel the same way, and I'm still as fervently, you know, opposed to working here, as I am in this moment, I'm going to quit." And I woke up the next day and I still felt very fervently against working there, and I was like, "Well, I guess, I'm going to resign." Had no idea what I was going to do, what my next job was. I knew that I was a nurse and that I could always fall back on that, I could always go back to caring for patients the bedside, and maybe that's what I needed to do. And I started looking at like, travel nurse positions and pretty in positions again. And of course, I had been away from the bedside for a little too long for most places to be like, "Oh yeah, come on back." So that was a bigger challenge than I thought. But then someone had connected me with a leadership, an interim leadership, opportunity out in California. And I interviewed for that, and it went well. And so that's ultimately what I took but I didn't take the job until, like, I think I accepted the job on my last day at my previous company. So I had a solid two weeks where I was like, "Now what I'm gonna do?" But anything is better than this. So I ended up taking that position. And it was such a great opportunity for me because it was definitely was in a leadership position working directly with a team, and it was building a new program. And that amazing opportunity for me to be able to come in, work with a team, build rapport, build a team up, build a system and a process and implement it, and I got very positive feedback, was very well received by the organization, and really needed that opportunity to kind of dust myself off and be like, "Yeah, no, no, no, you're worth it. You're an okay guy. You have some things to offer."

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:34

Let me ask you about that, though, and just insert a comment here. I cannot tell you the number of conversations, probably over 1000 at this point, of conversations that I've had with people that we've worked with where they have talked to me about the impacts of staying in the situation like you did that had you questioning everything. And then I just heard you say, "I really needed that experience in that contract role", or you call it a temporary role, to be able to build yourself back up. And so I have two questions about that. One, do you feel like it needed to happen the way that it did for you? The length of time–you've been thinking about it for six months. Or do you feel like looking back, there was an opportunity to prevent that? Or do you feel like that experience actually allowed you to come out better off than if it hadn't happened? Tell me just a little bit about how you're thinking about that, first of all.

Travis Moore 21:29

Yeah. So I do not regret my decisions, and I do not regret going and working there, and I do not regret the opportunity the time. I mean, I think that's just my general framework in approaching life, like, you're in each moment of your life for a specific reason and to learn something. And you are the only person in the world that has your unique set of experiences, which is what makes you who you are and provides the value that you can provide to this world. And if you don't have those really challenging and really hard times in your life, you're never going to be able to hit the mark that you could make. And looking back in the context of like, knowing what I know now, could I have approached that differently? And the answer, I think, is no. I think that if I had known now what I knew then, I would have never done it. And then who knows what I had to learn during that time of my life that gives me the ability to do what I'm doing right now, and even more exciting, what I'm going to do in the future, and allowed me to have connections. And just having that kind of experience on your resume opens a lot of doors. And between those experiences, and just like the resume fodder, who knows how that impacts my trajectory in the future. So I think that, you know, as with most hard things in life, if you knew they were going to be hard, you might not start them. So it's best you don't know, so that you work through them instead of dancing around it. But so I don't think that I would have changed anything. But looking back, I have a colleague that's going through a similar situation right now, and she and I talk frequently. And so I've had an opportunity to really reflect back on this and like, "What could I have done different? What advice can I give her that would have made her situation different than mine? What things can I tell her to do to try?" And I keep coming up with, like, "I don't know what to tell you. This was my experience. This is what I did. This is what I tried. Maybe you should try it and see if you have a different outcome." But at the end of the day, it is all part of making me who I am and giving me the perspective that I have and the experiences that I have. I think it's healthy, honestly, to have bad experiences, because if you don't have the bad experiences, you'll never be able to resonate or connect with or relate to people that have had really bad experiences. And it gives you just like this appreciation and this better ability to empathize with people that are going through tough times, and is humanizing. And I think that, especially in the world that we live in, humanizing things is important. And having shared experiences, and even if they're crappy shared experiences, being able to connect with those people that are going through stuff like that, or been through stuff like that, and give perspective or advice, and most of the time trying not to be a silver liner and just be like, "Yep, it sucks. And I'm here", and that's it, to kind of like, wade through all the malarkey with people. So I think it gives you an invaluable lens, an invaluable experience, and gives you an ability in the future to do things you don't necessarily see how they're connected, and may never see how they're connected.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:24

That's one of my favorite things about the work that we get to do with people, is we get to, in some ways, come in and help people put together all of those sets of experience–the great stuff, the bad stuff–but all experiences and tying it together in a really useful way to proceed forward. That's one of my favorite things. That's one of the reasons why I love this type of work for what we're talking about right now. Also on the flip side, to comment about something else that you mentioned, in many ways, you have to go through these bad experiences. We get many, many emails and questions about like, "Hey, have you ever considered going into high schools or things like that?" And while I think there's a ton of value in helping change the mindsets around what work is and what work can be in high schools, ultimately, I think a lot of people have to go through some bad times in order to really leverage those experiences fully for the future of their life, and I think that's part of what you were getting at. So I fully appreciate that. And then I'm also curious about what worked really well to be able to make that transition for you?

Travis Moore 25:33

So when I first started working with Liz, there was this definite like, there was a brokenness to be completely honest. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I had gone into this new career that I was like, "This is it. I'm making great money. I've got all this opportunity. I get connected with all these high level people." It was like the thing that I thought that I wanted, and it wasn't, and it was terrible, and it was a bad experience, and it was something that I definitely didn't want, and I was defeated. I felt small, inadequate, I had lost all of my confidence, and I needed to rebuild, essentially. Which is why I left the organization and did something that I felt was in my wheelhouse, to kind of rebuild myself, rebuild my confidence. But at the same time, I also had this new framework of thinking, and was like, "All right, I'm going to project manage myself, and I need to set up specific milestones, or I need specific milestones so that I can get to where I'm going." So my "what I want out of coaching" is I want to figure out where my North Star is, and I want a 15 step plan how to get there. And that's kind of like how I entered this. It was very operational, very tactical, and was just like, "I'll just get over it." The kind of like emotional aspects of making this transition and leaving this specific workforce and joining another, figuring out what the heck I want to do with my life. And I feel like working with Liz, like, really, the biggest value she gave to me was she gave me space, and she let me explore and think, and she gave me guardrails. Because one of the funny things that we would talk about, is she gave me the analogy of drilling wells. And she was like, "You're all over your front yard drilling wells." She was like, "But if you don't continue to dig, you're never going to find water." And just like, I was all over this place because I was acting really out of fear and out of insecurity, it was like, "I want to do this. I want to do that. No, I want to think about this." And I think the ideas range from like, I want to start my own coaching consulting firm, which I did, to like, I'm going to buy a hotel and run that. Or I'm going to join my dad's business, which I also actually did. So just like a couple of ideas came out every single time, and she was like, "Whoa, let's back up, pump the brakes a bit, and talk about why we want to do these things, or maybe focus on one thing and go deep before we come back up and go into to something else." So she provided that safe space for me to able to do that in a very non judgmental, very loving, supportive way of helping direct my thoughts and help me figure out what direction I wanted to go, not even like, the question was never answered, and still hasn't answered of what I want to be when I grow up. It's a journey. I'm where I'm supposed to be right now. But it was realizing that, and leaning into the journey and leaning into this, I don't know what step 10 is but I can see the next step, and that's the step that I have to take right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:25

That's awesome. Okay, so after all of this wonderful work to define what you wanted, all of the drilling wells and exploring and trying to find the right well or combination of wells, even, tell me a little bit about where you're currently at, that is the right space for you right now.

Travis Moore 28:45

So as I'm making this transition, I launched my own business, and we're going through multiple iterations of that, trying to figure out that one of the other deficits that I saw is that I really needed to learn more about running a small business. And my dad was running a small business, and he was hitting some growth walls. And so I found an opportunity to join his organization as a corner of a welding and fabrication company in Central Washington. And I joined that really to start to build those little leadership skills, things like accounting and payroll and hire, the other mechanics that I had not done in my leadership background that were more entrepreneurial and really learning the business of running a business. And then I don't know, fate comes knocking at my door and somebody in my network reaches out to me is like, "Hey, I have the perfect job for you. Will you consider taking this position?" And I'm like, "Oh, thank you. Not really interested. I'm kind of, like, focused in this area of my life and growing my businesses." Now, mind you, I had no like, investors or capital to speak of, I was just had, like, a prayer and a good attitude that it was just all going to work out, and that somehow I was going to be able to fund my lifestyle this way. And so they're like, "Well, would you just have a conversation?" And so I had a series of conversations with different leaders for this position, and the position is to lead the healthcare category for Indeed.com, which is a large jobs board and the leader in really healthcare job seekers, the largest provider of healthcare job seekers in the US market. And so they were looking for someone who had experience both in business consulting as well as operational leadership, and was also had a clinical background. So had been in the space of the people that were actually looking for these jobs, the job seekers, and also the other side of the market, who said, market is the working with employers and being the hiring manager. So they were looking for someone who had this like experience on both sides of the market, as well as some consulting background. And I, because of my background, was like a unicorn for that position, and fit really well. And so I had some really good conversations with the hiring team about what I wanted to do and what I was experienced in, and what the value that I could bring was, and what I was not willing to do very aggressively. And they were like, "Yes, that's great. We love it. Every single step of the way." At one point, the hiring manager was like, "Hey, you know what? Why don't you take a look at the job description and just like, cross out anything you're not comfortable with and then send it back to me." And I was just like, blown away by this opportunity that I was being pursued so hard because of my experience and how everything in my life had kind of led up to this point of, "Wow, I am being aggressively pursued for this position that I really feel like I can make a difference in, and really feel like I could drive an impact. And I had to weigh that against but I'm running my own businesses. This is my world, right?" I've got these two businesses that I'm trying to get off the ground and grow, and that's what I want to do with my life. So this is really hard. It felt like I almost had to pick one of the other because I knew if I took this job, I wouldn't have as much time to devote to my businesses, and I don't want them to die off. But I also saw this huge opportunity to work with this an amazing company to really change the way that we hire healthcare workers in the United States and potentially globally. And I felt that because of the way the process happened, because of the way the interviews happened, because of the way that I was kind of brought into this opportunity, that it really aligned with my own personal value set and how I would want things to happen. And I was like, things don't just line up like this without it being meant to be. And so I ultimately decided to take the position with Indeed to help influence the way that we kind of market for job seekers in our current climate, which is ever changing, especially after the pandemic. And even still, after joining, it's getting into the organization, being the first of my kind, and trying to figure out what is my space in this world, where do I fit in with people that don't have similar backgrounds? And I'm the first nurse that the organization has hired to help lead some of these programs. And now the challenge is figuring out, how do I meaningfully insert myself? What is the value that I add? How can I add that and build these relationships to be able for me to actually execute on some of the ideas and opportunities that I've been able to see? And that's been fun and exciting and also ambiguous at a lot of places, an opportunity to kind of find my way in this kind of new world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:06

I think that is something that really fun about that and listening to it, is that had you not done some of the other work to be declarative in what you wanted and needed, then you either would have completely passed on the opportunity, or, let's say that you had even taken it and allowed other people to convince you to just take it because they thought it was perfect for you, then it would have been very, very different than, "Hey, go and pick out what you want", essentially like choose your own situation, choose your own career, choose your own job opportunity. And so kudos to you.

Travis Moore 33:41

Thanks. It was, you know, you're exactly right. And I think that all the experiences I had not gone through, the things that I had been through and had that opportunity, had that experience, really, to even get this job, and then had the experience with working through what I wanted in my career and my life, and being able to reconcile that against taking this job or not, like it gave me so much clarity and direction and knowing that I made a very intentional choice, and not just like, "Oh, I happen to get this" or, "I happen to stumble into this opportunity", it was a very clear choice. And then when it gets challenging, it's like, "No, no. I chose this. I wanted this. I thought about this. I know how this fits into my life, and this is absolutely what I'm going to do. So let's just put those thoughts to bed and continue to do the work, continue to show up in this job and deliver the impact that I'm meant to deliver here." And then I get excited around, what is that? The journey and the excitement of discovery and figuring out what it is that I'm going to do and what's the impact that I'm going to make, and how can I change somebody's life today is kind of a motivating thing that re-inspires me. And when I'm having these days where I'm like, "Oh my God, I don't want to show up. I don't want to get up, I don't want to be involved", it gives you this new breath of fresh air and little wind under your wings, as it were, to be able to get up and show up. So I think that my biggest advice is to show up for yourself, know that you're worth it, know that your value in the world is important, and we need you to authentically show up as yourself in order to change the world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:12

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:05

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

Speaker 3 36:10

It felt like I was wearing 2000 pounds of bricks. I felt depressed. I had major brain fog. Any action I needed to take, felt like I'm wearing this backpack of bricks trying to take the steps necessary.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:30

Back in 2005, I was working in a job that had me considering driving into a ditch or jumping out a second story window, nothing fatal, but enough damage to give me some time off work. Crazy, right? Well, after gaining 50 pounds through medicating with food and multiple anxiety attacks, I was pretty desperate for an escape. When I wasn't thinking about how to collect worker's comp, I was internally screaming, "There has to be something better than this!" There has to be. And since then, I've talked to many thousands of people who felt just like I once did. And this shouldn't come as a shock or a huge revelation, but your job, your work, should not make you physically or mentally ill. Work shouldn't suck the life out of you. Actually, it can do the opposite. It can add excitement, it can add fun, it can add purpose, it can add fulfillment, and so many other positives to your life.

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.