Why You Should Trust Your Gut Intuition When It Comes to Your Career with Jason Bollman

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Wherever you are in your life, do you ever find yourself asking:

Why does this not feel right?

At times we may even think:

“What am I doing?
This should be everything that I want. It should be hitting all the right things and for some reason, it just doesn’t feel right.”

Whether it is about your current financial situation, your relationship, or your job, sometimes we have these feelings that we just can’t shake.

Those feelings we don’t know how to describe exactly.

It’s that feeling at the pit of your stomach that puts a little doubt in your mind when you set out to do something you weren’t really too sure about to begin with.

And sometimes, it’s that utter and complete feeling of self-assurance that comes out of nowhere when you’re about to make one of the biggest decisions of your life — like marriage, buying a new house, or your career change.

Those feelings? That’s your gut intuition trying to tell you something. Trusting your gut intuition is important!

The definition of intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.

It’s safe to say that the decisions we make in life are usually made with our head or our heart.

But, a lot of the time with specific big life decisions, our heads will use all the logic it can to persuade us to stay in the safe zone when it comes to finalizing those big career decisions.

Many people find themselves torn when it comes to their career change.

They know and feel deep down inside that something isn’t right and they struggle with taking a chance to actually make a change in their career.

Why do we fight what we know to be true in our core?

We see how others reach their goals and we think we must follow in their footsteps to reach the same success.

But, the truth is: we don’t.

Success is defined by our own definitions and the way we reach our career milestones and life goals is up to us.

LISTENING TO AND TRUSTING YOUR GUT INTUITION

One way to breakthrough the traditional path of success that we’ve built up in our heads to be the only path of success is to listen to that little voice in the back of our head telling us where we need to be to successfully reach our own career goals (whatever they may look like).

Here’s how we can learn to listen to our gut intuition and trust ourselves enough to reach our career success.

There were other instances in my personal life where following my gut, instead of my head really paid off.

Jason Bollman
CREATE A SPACE TO REFLECT

Career change requires a lot of your time, energy, and effort.

It doesn’t do you any good if you are in a constant battle between deciding to listen to your head or your heart.

Getting in the habit of creating your own space to reflect on your life and career goals and how you reach them is something you should make a top priority.

Make time to go for a run, read a book, network, or just find some time you can set aside for yourself to sit, relax, think, and reflect.

Creating a space without an agenda or to-do list to just be present to listen to your gut intuition about your career choices is the first step to find the answers you’re looking for.

I journaled — tried to figure out what is wrong.

This looks right on paper, but it just doesn’t feel right when I wake up in the morning.

Jason Bollman
PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE AND TAKE ACTION

What is something you can do that will move you one step closer to where you want to be?

When you find that one thing you can do to bring you closer to your career goals, you can begin to put that commitment into action.

Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

If you decide that you want to dip your toe into a new field by volunteering for an organization to either get a feel for their organization’s culture or if it is a position that you are thinking of switching to, make it happen.

Dedicate a set amount of time to your commitment and get a feel for what your life would look like if you made the career switch.

Trusting the work that you did by listening to your heart deserves a good try.

So, listen to your gut and take action.

Trusting your gut intuition will give you the opportunity to intentionally put yourself in a situation that you can enjoy.

By listening to your instincts, you give yourself a chance to grow your career.

If you’re not quite ready to hand over all of your logic to the decisions made by your heart, we’ve got the resources to help you keep moving forward with your career change.

Check out our career coaching.  We have world-class career coaches that will ask you challenging questions, keep you accountable, encourage you to take a step back and reevaluate, and offer you a different perspective.

Read more about it here or visit our Career Coaching resource for a more personalized one-on-one career adviser.

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Scott Barlow: Welcome back to Happen to Your Career. I am incredibly, ridiculously, ecstatic to be here with our guest today because he has done some amazing things with his life and journey and career very recently. What is even more fun is our team has been able to participate. He has allowed us to share in it. He has a great story. Welcome to Happen to Your Career Jason, how are you?

Jason Bollman: Doing great Scott. Glad to be here.

Scott Barlow: We are going to get to your story and changes and progression but before we do that help people understand what you get to do now.

Jason Bollman: I have just started a new role where I oversee the offerings our company puts together in how we sell our products to our clients and how the team delivers that. As part of the offerings I’m putting together there is a big focus on training. I have a couple training developers under me putting together e-learning, training guides, and training our consultants. I run that portion of the business.

Scott Barlow: That is super cool. I have had hands in all that before. It can be a lot of fun.

Jason Bollman: I’m very excited about it.

Scott Barlow: You haven’t always been doing that. This is a recent change. I’ve talked to Lisa and she’s shared some of your story. You worked with Lisa Lewis. For those of you who don’t know her you can hear her story on episode 147. Way before that you have had quite the career. Where does this start for you way back? What did the beginnings of your career look like?

Jason Bollman: I went to school for civil engineering. A little ways from working with a software company that I’m at today. During college I did a co-op program where I worked a semester then went to school for a semester. There were a lot of engineering points I liked but it didn’t get all of me. I would get involved in campus ministry and a fraternity on campus. I was being really active on campus. I realized engineering wasn’t all of me. I did volunteering after graduating and settled on a teaching program in Omaha, Nebraska. I taught for two years while working on a master’s degree. I taught middle school math. I enjoyed it but realized that teaching wasn’t for me either.

Scott Barlow: I didn’t realize you had a detour in Omaha. I’ve spent some time there. I almost moved there. There is a lot of cool things I didn’t know until I visited.

Jason Bollman: My wife and I really enjoyed our time there and considered settling in permanently but it was a little bit further from family than we’d like. We moved a little closer to home. Omaha was a great experience.

Scott Barlow: Very cool. You went there and you were teaching and determined that maybe this isn’t the right thing for me. What happened from there?

Jason Bollman: Fortunately coming from a teaching position I had a summer buffer to figure out what was next. I did some reflection to determine what would be a good fit for my engineering and teaching background and found technical consulting getting into a software space working with clients and it is technical. It had everything I wanted. Once I got into the company I started at a help desk. Not many people were willing to put me in a consulting role with my background. I started at a help desk, learned the software and showed my abilities and was able to move to consulting. Eventually I managed I team of consultants.

Scott Barlow: Back up for a second. I think you just glossed over a bunch of stuff that took place for those to happen. You didn’t walk in and start at the help desk then boom let’s get this guy to manage a team. I’m guessing that wasn’t the case. I’m curious what happened in between there that took you from one spot to another?

Jason Bollman: Absolutely. In coming into the help desk position I knew I didn’t want to be a support analyst for a career. I wanted a more client facing role. It played out, because I was eager to learn. I was on the software that focused on multi-family division and was figuring out how the reports worked and financial worked. Let me look at the development piece. It was a constant hunger going above and beyond what was expected. It helped me give a resume to the consulting team that showed I wasn’t just doing the status quo. It helped make the transition.

Scott Barlow: Interesting. I’m curious going from teaching into making that initial move, was that a difficult decision for you or was it obvious? I’m partially curious because we are in the middle of the summer and we get so many teachers that find the podcast because they are in summer and have time to reflect. We also find that a lot of teachers don’t make the move even though they feel like they should. What was that like for you and why did you decide to do it?

Jason Bollman: During the teaching program I was part of it become apparent I love kids. I think I did well as a teacher but it become apparent I didn’t have what it takes to do it full time. I struggled with the parents. I was looking to get more into the complexity of problem solving and troubleshooting. The lesson plans were consistent each year. It hit on a number of key pieces that were helpful but not the whole package. There was a lot of frustration and I was struggling to make things happen and get the analytical pieces of me that I had in engineering. I lost that in education.

Scott Barlow: That makes sense to me. Lisa has shared bits of you story. You strike me as the type of guy that can sink your teeth into difficult or complex problems.

Jason Bollman: Absolutely I love the details. Let me dive in and see things from top to bottom.

Scott Barlow: That makes sense. You aren’t getting all of that in the teaching role and you make the move to the help desk and are taking some great steps that cause you to move through the ranks pretty quickly. What happened from there?

Jason Bollman: Working as a consultant I was doing a lot of projects on my own. Running my portion of the business without a lot of checking in. I was mentoring the younger consultants and taking the portions of the software I knew so they could do the portions of the training I was doing. There was an opportunity when a manger left the company. I had expressed a desire to take on more and had proven I was doing all right in my current role. They gave me a shot managing a group of consultants.

Scott Barlow: Very cool. They brought you on board and you are managing a team of consultants which sounds awesome and from the outside looks like a great job. So what happened for you to say it isn’t right anymore?

Jason Bollman: You have it right there. It looked from the outside the ideal position. Working with clients, doing deep diving things, being a leader which has always interested me, managing a team. It seemed it would all be good. I was on the road traveling to visit a client and wondered what I was doing. It should be all that I want hitting all the right things but it doesn’t feel right. I struggled with that for a while before asking for help and pursuing a career coach. I talked to family and friends, prayed, journaled trying to figure out what was wrong. It looks right on paper but doesn’t feel right when I wake up in the morning.

Scott Barlow: What do you feel like after going through all that and you know deep down something isn’t right. What did you determine wasn’t right or was misaligned?

Jason Bollman: Great question. In part, it didn’t come out until later, but realizing there is an entrepreneurial bug in me and desire to run my own business someday. Lisa helped me uncover that. It was part of why I was struggling to pinpoint. My dad was successful working in business as an employee moving to an executive level. I thought that was the way to go. He enjoyed it. Not until after working with Lisa did I realize I have a desire to branch out and do my own thing someday. The environment, the leadership team I was part of wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped. I enjoyed who I managed but my upline was not one that I gelled with as much as I’d like. I didn’t feel I was on part of a team. It was a desire to branch out on my own and not being in the right environment.

Scott Barlow: Interesting. That makes a ton of sense. The bosses and leaders you are working with, whether you feel supported in whatever it looks like, if it’s not lining up, it’s one of the biggest things that have a huge impact on your level of happiness, based on research. First of all kudos for doing something about it. What was the period of time where you said I’m doing journaling and talking and I need to do something to change this? What happened?

Jason Bollman: Great question. In part it was one of my close friends. He hired a business coach. He is in the process of launching his own professional speaking, career coaching type of company and hired a coach. And talked about how beneficial it was and having an accountability partner to keep you moving in the right direction. It was partly that and my wife and closer friends getting sick of me asking the same questions. I need some professional help instead of just complaining and brainstorming with my wife.

Scott Barlow: Part of it was you seeing other people and your wife giving you the boot to stop complaining.

Jason Bollman: Absolutely, I love you but we have to stop talking about this.

Scott Barlow: Totally understand that. Been there. Alyssa will tell you.

Scott Barlow: That is interesting because I didn’t know that part of the story. It makes complete sense. As you started embarking on this journey what did you go through to get to the point. You’ve made this shift in roles. I would say it’s not the easiest thing to do. There are two things going on if I understand. You’ve made a shift to a role that is much better in alignment for now but also you still have this desire to do something on your own on the side. Am I seeing that right?

Jason Bollman: Absolutely. This is a great role currently. It is allowing me to develop skills to branch out on my own. I know this is a shorter term game knowing I’ll move on to something on my own. It’s a good gig along the way.

Scott Barlow: To be honest that is why I’m interested in talking to you. That is real world for how some of these things happen. I think many of us want to know how to get to the point where we have four million dollars and spend our days doing whatever we want. I think most people don’t realize the things that happen in between there. That is an opportunity to still enjoy yourself or intentionally put yourself in a situation where you continue to grow. I respect what you are doing and how you are thinking about it because few people do that. Help me understand what led up to this? You and Lisa had been working on this for a while. What happened? What was hard and what was easier?

Jason Bollman: It was a rollercoaster working with Lisa. It ebbed and flowed. She identified pretty early about the entrepreneurial bug. I dismissed it. It’s not for me but for others. We discussed the roles I had. We talked about moving from project management to managing product. Building the software instead of just implementing it. Went down that route, did research, applied for jobs, networked, and talked to a bunch of people. At one point my homework was to connect with a certain number of people in product management. I talked to a couple people and realized it still wasn’t right. It feels like my current job. Still not what I’m looking for. We had to back pedal and try the focusing questions again. What do you want? What do you want your life to look like in 20 - 30 years? In 30 years I’d love to have the four million dollars and work when I want and do what I want. How do I start taking steps to that? We went down the route looking for a different type of job, company, and environment. And having to backpedal when it didn’t feel right.

Scott Barlow: What was that like being in that? The steps forward, testing if it’s right, and then as you called it, backpedaling, and coming back. What was the most difficult part of that?

Jason Bollman: The hardest part for me was to sit with the topics and get deep into why I wanted to make the change. Lisa was good about asking the questions with our coaching calls. I’d have three questions I could put together easily but she’d ask for four and it was hard and five which was really hard and then six or seven. The six or seven clarifying questions really got past the surface level to decide why I wanted to pursue certain things and why I wanted my own business in the future. It’s uncomfortable to get down to those questions in your life.

Scott Barlow: It’s interesting and I love how you are putting it. It helps people understand how this really works. I think we all know logically there will be steps forward and back as you are tackling this. It’s hard while you are in it. It’s how it actually works. You go out and you have this hypothesis about yourself and you test it. You talk to people and in your case you realized it isn’t the thing at all and you come back. It feels like a step backwards but it isn’t because it allows you to move forward in a different area or get closer to the answer. So many people get derailed because it feels they are going backwards. What caused you to keep going and not being discouraged? Or did Lisa have to drag you?

Jason Bollman: There is a little kick in the butt from her. She helped me realize that following my gut or intuition has really helped me out. That intuition that brought me to coaching. There were other instances in my personal life like relationships with my wife where following my gut instead of my head paid off. Being an engineer by default I’m analytical and don’t like to follow my gut. It was a kick in the pants and also her helping me understand what my gut is saying. Put your head out of it for a minute and let’s sit with it.

Scott Barlow: Super interesting. That is actually to be honest, the reason we didn’t move to Omaha, Nebraska. We had an opportunity to move there with the company I was with. My wife and I had been talking about this and actively planning to move there because that was where they were located. We visited and loved it but then we were talking in the kitchen one day and realized we were ignoring that gut feeling. At the same time we a realized our plan was to move to Omaha to get experience so we could move back to Moses Lake, Washington. We looked at each other and said why are we doing this? We were doing the same thing you were describing. We were “logic”-ing the crap out of it with our head and ignoring our heart. It’s interesting you bring it up. For people just starting to pay attention what advice would you give them to push off some of that stuff? Our head overtakes and we ignore the gut feeling. How have you done it?

Jason Bollman: You have to create space in your life to sit with it. It started with me journaling for the first 15 minutes of my morning. No agenda, just whatever was on my mind. Getting in the habit of being reflective, sitting and asking what I’m feeling. No lists or questions. Just where am I? One thing I did while working with Lisa was using some of my paid time off. One day a week for two and a half months, 8 - 10 days where I took a day off, switched it up, and created space to go for a run, read, and do some networking, to have time to sit and think and reflect. That was most helpful. Creating a space with no agenda or to do list. Just sitting and listening to your gut.

Scott Barlow: That is invaluable advice. It is also something some people may have heard before. Creating space. What prompted you to actually do it and take action? I think so many of us think about it, planning on using the time for other things. How did you prioritize it high enough in your life? It’s clearly paid off but I don’t think when we are on the other end it’s very easy to see the pay off. If I do this it will lead to insights and millions of cash. Whatever comes with it? What did you do?

Jason Bollman: The morning journaling. I read the Miracle Morning and hearing his story, taking care of his lifesaver, visualizations, and affirmations. Hearing all those things made it seem I could get up 15 -20 minutes earlier and do those things. Why not. That was the first seed to start me. Moving to taking the time off, which is big step. I had put together a list of what I needed to make a change. Lisa is helping me see I can branch out in my own thing. Where do I want to go with this? With my analytical mind I made a list of all the things I could do. I could do a side business and jump out a plane with the parachute on the way down. I could take a part-time job to have some income. I could move to a different company with a different role. Ultimately taking some time off to have space was the best option.

Scott Barlow: Two things I take away. One it’s the smaller changes earlier on that enable you to move down the path to get to the bigger changes. Journaling allowed you to see the benefits of the time and space and reflecting. Being able to put multiple options in front of yourself to decide and what is the best fit. It allowed you to look at it holistically rather than be in perpetual what ifs. I could quit my job but then I’m scared for different reasons. Looking at it with different options allows you to evaluate differently. Ultimately get to a better position. Is that what you experienced?

Jason Bollman: Absolutely. You touched on starting small. I can get up earlier and journal. Five minutes becomes fifteen and it becomes finding a career coach which leads to writing everything down. I have a bad habit hearing people say you have to create space and take all this time off and jumping right to this. But what’s something you can start just five minutes a day and go from there. It builds on itself.

Scott Barlow: I love that. For someone on the other side of this just starting to have the same feelings you did that something is wrong, not totally sure what it is yet but they are no longer ignoring the gut feeling. What would you advise them to do having just done it in the last 6 months?

Jason Bollman: Yes I’ve been working with Lisa in January so, six months.

Scott Barlow: Super cool. What advice would you have?

Jason Bollman: Great question. If you can just take some time. Take time this weekend to sit and reflect and ask why doesn’t it feel right? What am I committed to doing about it? For me it was journaling. It helped get things moving. Maybe for someone else, it could be I don’t feel great physically and need to start exercising. It looks different for every person. I’d challenge you to find some time, whether its fifteen minutes or a half hour to sit and think about if I could just change one place where would I start.

Scott Barlow: I love that. If I could just change one place where would I start? It happens that way for every person. It happened that way for me and Alyssa. Eight to ten years ago we were in a ton of debt and it was a huge issue. We fought all the time and bad stuff happened. For us it was just the tiny start to pay it off slowly which led to all kinds of other crazy life changes. It starts with one thing. Journaling, asking a question, whatever it might be. Super sage advice. I very much appreciate you taking the time and coming on the show. Before we leave I have one or two more questions. I appreciate this it’s been awesome.

As you thought about this and making the change what parts of it were unexpected for you? Especially more recently the last three months or so. What weren’t you thinking about or what things were unexpected?

Jason Bollman: Ultimately the role I am in now is a little of my own creation. There had been someone managing the offerings. There were individuals that worked on training development but not one single team working in the same way as I’m trying to get us to work. Creating a position out of nowhere. I was surprised how easy it was after I suggested it that they said yes. I thought I’d have to do an elaborate presentation. It was as simple as saying there is synergy here and my skill set and I’d like to talk more about it and they said let’s make it happen.

Scott Barlow: Super cool. I’m curious what do you think was in place at that point already so that it was well received and allowed creating something new? A new position. Not every situation will flow like that. Seeing this multiple times behind the scenes, I suspect that you probably already created the time and place. What do you think they were?

Jason Bollman: I had started being transparent with my leadership team that I was working with a career coach realizing this wasn’t the right fit. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go but was pursuing other opportunities. I would keep the team informed of what was going on, while I am here I am fully committed. Being open and honest and coming from a place of value that I want the team to be successful but I won’t be my best version if I stay in this role. Laying ground work, following my gut, having scary conversations. I felt it was right and it made the sell at the end much easier because I had been open and honest coming from a place of value.

Scott Barlow: I didn’t realize that was part of it. I’ve done a lot of that same thing. Probably as people hear you talk about it and how you shared it openly it probably scares the crap out of most of them. And it scared you and me but when you do things other people wouldn’t do and put yourself out there you earn the opportunity to develop trust others wouldn’t have and at the same time getting results that other people wouldn’t get which is crazy. What then took place in between there? Was it just you decided I see this opportunity I’m going to talk to them about it or was there more?

Jason Bollman: It fell into place. I had seen the opportunity and the portions I enjoyed and not having a fully formed thought. A different part of the organization was going through a re-organization, realigning to build the company for growth. We had acquisitions. I was in my manager’s office when he told me about it and a light bulb went off. Everything I’ve been thinking of this would be a perfect time to pitch it. I’ve been thinking about this and I htink it fits well with the re-organization that’s happening. He said it sounds great let’s talk to the vice president and get his insight. He was more excited than my boss. It had been marinating and I’d been thinking about it. It just came up. I’d been practicing following my gut so I put it out there.

Scott Barlow: Now I bet you are glad you did.

Jason Bollman: Absolutely.

Scott Barlow: That is amazing. Congratulations again by the way. I had only been able to tell you that over e-mail. I want to tell you face to face, or as close as we can, everyone else will hear it on audio. That is absolutely amazing. Jason thanks again for taking the time and making the time. This has been awesome.

Jason Bollman: Absolutely. This has been great Scott. I appreciate it.

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Life Crafting 101 – Deviating From the Norm: The magic of incremental changes

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WHAT WOULD THAT OPEN UP FOR YOU IN YOUR LIFE — IF YOU KNEW YOU COULD JUST CHANGE THE COORDINATES, AND THAT YOU HAD THE CAPABILITY, AND THE GRIT, AND THE HUSTLE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE LIKE THAT?

Lisa Lewis

The art of life crafting.

Ever heard of it?

It’s about desining your life: defining what you want in your life, taking that vision, and prioritizing where you put your energy and effort to achieve those goals.

Simple enough, right?

You’d be surprised how many people don’t take advantage of the benefits that life crafting can bring into their lives.

Not only will it open doors to everything that is possible for you, but it will also provide a framework to get to the life you want.

Now, let’s take a moment and think about what it is that you would like to have in your life.

Think about it this way, in a perfect world, what does your life look like?

In terms of your career, where would you be working? What would you be doing? How does your work impact your personal life?

Life crafting allows you to design your career goals and manage how your career aligns with your overall life goals.

In order to get comfortable with the idea of life crafting, we’ll take a look at what may be holding you back from intentionally designing a life you’d be in love with and how to move forward in achieving your career goals to better fit that life you’ve designed.

WHAT STOPS MOST PEOPLE FROM CRAFTING A LIFE THEY LOVE

Successful people don’t reach their goals by sitting back and letting life play out on its own. They may roll with the punches, but they don’t let the punches roll them. Successful people succeed in spite of their circumstances.

Here are a few examples of the types of barriers that hold people back from going after a life they love.

FEAR OF BREAKING “THE RULES” WHEN DESIGNING YOUR LIFE

Rules. There is a time and place for them, but when it comes to reaching your dream career — shouldn’t you push beyond those boundaries?

Society has made us believe that the way to get a good job is through that traditional path of success by which we get a degree, score an internship, and work to the top of that corporate ladder.

But why does it have to be that way?

People have this fear that breaking the rules or stepping outside of what is normal won’t get them what is considered a successful career.

That fear stops them in their tracks and they continue down a path of unhappiness in an unfulfilling career. 

WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK

Many people can’t help but take into account what other people think. At times, other people’s feedback really weighs down on our ability to make a decision on whether or not we choose to pursue our goals.

On our last podcast, we met Rebecca Maddox who made the decision to leave her job and move across the country without a new position lined up because she knew she was ready for a career change. But, her decision was met with a handful of people that:

  1. Couldn’t believe she would leave such a great situation in a dream career
  2. Doubted that she would be able to pull off such a massive life change

Like it or not, it’s other people’s voices that begin to take over our thoughts and plant the seeds of doubt in our heads that create a lack of confidence within ourselves, which ultimately leads to us to staying in the same place in our career.

THE ‘WHAT IFS‘ THAT MESS WITH YOUR MINDSET

Yes, big life changes — especially those that concern your career and livelihood, bring a lot of unanswered questions to mind.

What if I really don’t have the skills I say I do?

What if I make a switch and the job ends up being exactly the same, or worse?

What if I don’t make a successful change into an entirely different industry?

All of the ‘what if’ scenarios that come into mind are just another distraction.

Life changes are scary because of the unknown results. That is understandable.

This fear of the unknown is common, but it shouldn’t be a big enough obstacle to completely stop you from designing your life and achieving your goals.

MOVING FORWARD IN DESIGNING YOUR CAREER TO ALIGN WITH YOUR VALUES

Reaching your career goals and having them align with what you value in life doesn’t happen by accident. You must be clear in your direction and intentional in your actions to achieve that career and life you dreamed.

You don’t need to dive straight into the deep-end in order to change your career trajectory.

You can begin to make small, incremental changes in the following areas to begin to move forward on your new career path.

PERSPECTIVE

Shifting your perspective on life from accepting the things that are given to you as is to an outlook that encourages you to take control of what is given to you and make things happen in the direction of your goals is the first step in creating momentum for your career change.

Don’t be the person that stands in your own way of achieving what you already know is possible for yourself.

Give yourself the permission you need to make adjustments where they are needed to better align your career to your values as you craft your life.

INTENTIONAL ACTION

Be so intentional and clear on what matters to you, your priorities, and how you are willing to make changes to align to your values to earn the life you dream.

Living a life with intention as you move in the direction of your values will make achieving your goals that much easier.

Start with something small like dedicating 30 minutes of your day to creating your career to-do list and constantly updating it with new asks. As time goes on, you can grow that into something bigger and bigger, until you’ve reached your goal.

CONSTANTLY EXPOSING YOURSELF TO NEW EXPERIENCES

Making the decision to do things differently than others to find ways to make your career fit your life needs is a new experience in itself.

Continuing to push on different boundaries that you’ve previously set for yourself will help you advance more quickly toward that life you have designed.

As you experience new things in the career sphere, you are able to evaluate and help customize exactly what you need to create a better fit for your life.

DESIGNING  YOUR LIFE: READY TO TAKE THE REIGNS BACK TO CREATE A CAREER AND LIFE YOU LOVE?

Whatever it is that you want in your career, be more intentional about your actions to get it.

HOW?
  • Go to your employer and ask — when you make an ask, make it about your employer and how it will benefit them
  • Start by asking for a trial period to test for the results.
  • Make sure you track your performance output and not mention it to any of your colleagues

If you follow these steps and prove to your employer that you’re capable, this little ask can turn into something more permanent.

If you want to get to a place where you feel like you are the master of your own destination or the captain of your own ship, you’ve got to be willing to start making asks, even if they’re small.

Lisa Lewis

When you take a step back and look at the big picture of what you define as a successful career and life, it looks like it may take FOREVER to get there.

But, when you shift the way you look at change, you’ll see that it doesn’t take one big move to achieve your successful end-result. That change actually consists of little tiny steps that you’ve taken in the direction of your goals and designing your life.

Each time you cross a task off your career change to-do list, you’ll have to make minor adjustments to better align with your values every step of the way.

You need to constantly make those incremental changes relative to where you need to be in your life.

If you’re ready to go in a direction that suits you, but are having trouble identifying where you need to make those incremental changes, we’ve got the resources for you. Check out the Career Change Bootcamp program as it was created to help guide you through changing your coordinates of where you need to go as it applies to your career change.

Read more about it here or visit our Career Coaching resource for a more personalized one-on-one career adviser to help you craft your life and plug in new coordinate if need be.

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Scott Barlow: I’m Scott Anthony Barlow and you are listening to Happen to Your Career. This is the show that helps you figure out what work fits you by exploring other’s stories. We get to bring on experts like Emilie Wapnick that helps people that don’t have just one true calling and people with amazing stories like Kirby Verceles who found her ideal job by learning her strengths. These are people just like you that have gone from where they are to what they really want to be doing. As it turns out they are just like and have gone through what we are going to talk about today. We have something special today. We haven’t done this before or spent a lot of time talking about it. We are going to get deep into how to craft a life that fits you. We are calling this and a series of episodes over the next couple months life crafting 101. I have with me live, or as much as a recorded podcast can be, Lisa Lewis, our head career coach and career change bootcamp. Lisa welcome back.

Lisa Lewis: Thank you Scott and hey to the Happen to Your Career family. It’s so great to be back with you today.

Scott Barlow: I’m excited to have you here because I know this is near and dear to both of us for a variety of reasons. Where did you start thinking about taking agency and control and responsibility over not just what happens in your life but what the future can look like and how you want it to look like? I didn’t tell you we were going to talk about that, I’m totally springing it on you because I’m curious.

Lisa Lewis: I love it, it’s a big juicy question to dive in with. I think it's so befitting these big juicy questions of life. For me, the first moment I started to crack the nut open on life, crafting and defining my own desires and priorities for my time, started in incremental ways. Little baby steps that stack upon themselves over the past years. I have a funny anecdote to start. When I first started to think about designing your career and setting career goals to meet life goals: Back in college I was a student always looking for more experience, get the next internship, the next thing to be exposed to. I wanted to leave college with the most knowledge about the real world as I was walking out with academic knowledge.

Scott Barlow: I had a lot of the same experience. Keep going.

Lisa Lewis: I did this fabulous internship with a nonprofit in Colorado in between my sophomore and junior year. There was a group of interns that would have lunch together. I did this as an unpaid internship because I assumed that was all that was available. You do this to earn street cred to get paid one day. But then I learned another intern was getting paid. I thought whoa hold on. There was this sense of injustice, how could they? I’m a victim in this situation.

Scott Barlow: How dare you get paid for work.

Lisa Lewis: Exactly. Then I thought, I can’t change the fact that he is getting paid. He played the system well. How do I start to play that game? How do I look for opportunities to get paid? He wasn’t getting paid through our organization but through a sponsor organization that wrote him a grant to come do the work. I was all of a sudden looking at the whole intern game with a 1% shift in perspective. It made all the difference in what I thought was available to me. I had thought they said on the website it was unpaid so I had to take it that way. But now knowing it was possible to find ways to get paid for the work I wanted to do opened new possibilities for me, breaking the rules, doing things differently, finding a way to fit my needs, and also continuing to push boundaries that you would generally see people accept the rules and behavior or to see if there was room for negotiation or wiggle room to fit me better.

Scott Barlow: That is so interesting. I didn’t realize we had a lot of similarities. I had a similar experience. In college I had to go through an internship. I had to do it to graduate as part of the business program. I was forced, or I probably wouldn’t have looked at it. I was working at Staples and RadioShack at the time. I was pretty good at sales and making good money. But I have to go get an internship and make less money? It was my intolerance saying it was stupid that I started looking at how I could do it differently. I guess be careful what you wish for because I came home with a small business and all the earning potential and potential problems and learnings. That was my reaction as well. For me I had to solve the problem. I didn’t want to do it any other way.

After college for you, when you realized you could get paid other ways, what was your second big light bulb moment that opened up the possibilities that looked at it in the way to design it the way you wanted rather than accepting what comes to you?

Lisa Lewis: For another data point, if we are looking at a lot of moments in my life, you’ve heard me say this a bunch Scott, one thing I talk about all the time is Jim Rohn’s principle that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I think spending time with people who inspire, motivate and uplift you is so important. If I zoom back in time I got to spend time with an incredibly inspiring person when I was way too young to appreciate it. My mom started her own business when I was just a kid. She had a brick and mortar fabric and sewing store when I was maybe in first or second grade. She was an entrepreneur for decades of my life. It planted seeds in me of not having to accept the corporate world as the end all be all option for my own career. Zoom me forward twenty years and I am working in a corporate communications agency one of the most respected in the greater D.C. area. My best friend is working in a design capacity. She is doing this for the corporation but has also started her own business on the side to do design work for other clients that would not be a problem for non-compete because they would never afford the rates we were charging. They weren’t clients the company would want to pick up. Watching how she was able to prioritize her life to bring in a little bit more money and create flexibility and plant her own seeds for something that would eventually be her full time business, was so inspiring, motivating, and inspiring.

Another little funny piece of the story I thought man I don’t like the types of clients I work with on my projects. I’d love to work with clients more aligned with me and my passions and interests. I went to legalzoom and started my own LLC and thought I would do my own side communications consulting for those types of companies so I could align my work hours, brain power, and energy to what mattered most to me. I started a side consulting business or what I thought would be. It was a spectacular failure. A total waste of money, and time because I didn’t’ have the tools or resources, coaching, etc. to be able to know how to have conversations with prospective clients, market research, package and price my services, talk to people who were legitimate prospects. By all definitions it would look like a failure.

There were two things that made it a unique stepping stone for me. One I had the courage to do it. This person is running a side business, so can I. Just leaping and being brave. The other lesson was when I defacto failed I was not defeated. It didn’t crush me as a person. I think on some level I had a fear of not being successful and what that would say about me as a human being. I know what my risk tolerance is now and the amount of money I’m willing to sink into a project before I see a return. This was not the right way for me to enter into the entrepreneurship world. I had the courage and guts to potentially make it work under different circumstances and terms. When it comes to life crafting and choosing to intentionally do things differently from other people there can be a huge amount of fear that can hold you back whether you think of it as deviating from the norm or what will other people think or what if I’m not immediately successful. Three are a lot of big ifs that can pop up and keep you from taking action and mess with your mindset, keeping you from finding out answers to those questions.

Getting yourself to a position to where the fear of not giving yourself permission to find out the answer and explore it is greater than the fear of what might happen can be a huge turning point to taking back the reigns on your own life and career, instead of it happening to you with no control, into you saying I’m going to take control and if it fails then I’ll take responsibility for that, but if it succeeds I’ll take credit it for it too.

Scott Barlow: Your set of experiences is a perfect dovetail into what we want you to get out of today and what we are covering. We want to help lift the veil of what is possible for you. We have realized working with so many people that most of us aren’t achieving to our full potential, and most of us, myself included, we are what is standing in the way. It isn’t necessarily life or other circumstances, anyone successful by their own standards succeeds in spite of the circumstances. They get out of their own way.

I wanted Lisa to share her story because we want to expose you to different mindsets and provide exposure of what is holding you back. All the reasons we don’t go forward, and it being scary. If you listen to last week's episode of Rebecca Maddox she made a huge life change. Her friends and family. She had the sought after job in D.C. As an attorney. When she started talking about it she met with resistance but she saw what was possible for her and what success looked like in her own standards. What do you think are some of the things that people don’t realize when they are just getting into being interested in making big drastic changes and how it becomes possible?

Lisa Lewis: I think one big thing, while the changes look big on the outside, they are usually the product of lots of little baby steps in the direction of your values. They won’t happen by accident you have to be so intentional and clear on what matters to you and your priorities and how you are willing to make changes to your own life to align with your priorities and values to be able to earn your way into the life you want to craft and dream of. It can be something like asking something small from your current employer like say work from home after a doctor’s appt. something easy for them to say yes to. Continue to grow that to be bigger. There is a gal that works for a technology company called Sprinkler where she has got to a point with her boss that she can work abroad once a quarter. She was a full time employee but now part time because she started making smaller asks that would be helpful to her for workplace flexibility and aligning with her values. And showing how a happy and productive she would be helpful to the organization. She opened doors to get more of what she wanted while the company still got what they wanted. That never would have happened by accident. Her company would never come to here and say you know what....

Scott Barlow: You know what would be really cool if you could go ahead and fly across the world. That would be cool if you could do that and do work over there that would suit us. What do you say? Yeah right.

Lisa Lewis: If only it was that easy. If our bosses were mind readers that knew all we had contributed, saw the value of it, reward it and gave promotions without us asking for it and making a case for it. That is not the world we live in. If you want to be a master of your own destiny and captain of your own ship you have to make asks even if they are small. They are motivated by seeing people around you doing things differently. If you are listening to this now you can probably think of one person that is less smart than you, less talented, less capable, committed, or driven as you that is doing something in their life that you would love to do in your own world. Just seeing the examples of people that are less capable and qualified but making the asks and being intentional about how they design their lives can be such a motivation and inspiration of what can be possible for you.

Scott Barlow: I was thinking I might be that person for a bunch of people because many people we work with are far smarter than me. I don’t have a tolerance to spend very much time living a life that doesn’t align with what I am interested in and what I want to be doing. I think that a different mindset than what most people look at. They choose what they believe is available to them or what happens in their life that they are reacting to versus what is actually happening in my life. This isn’t the end goal because there isn’t one or a quote “you’ve made it” you’ve reached a destination. It is more like an airplane pilot not using autopilot. You are constantly making tweaks and adjustments as you head toward a destination versus straight line heading to one place or another.

Lisa Lewis: Being able to make incremental changes and adjustments is so important. Fun fact, my dad is an airplane pilot, or he is a private pilot now, but autopilot doesn’t put you on one perfect course and you never make a turn or adjustment but it is constantly checking your own position relative to where it needs you to be and making incremental slight changes to your course and direction.

Scott Barlow: I feel we are like the autopilot for crafting people's lives. We do that to a degree as a company. I think about coaching and career change bootcamp and we are constantly helping people make corrections, did you know you are going a little off course? Here is a boot to get you back on course.

Lisa Lewis: We help people program where the autopilot is set to land. Everyone has social norm autopilot. Everyone goes on vacation to Orlando or someplace. What if we changed your autopilot to vacation to Bali or Bora Bora or Fiji. What if you could change the coordinates and you had the grit and hustle to change your life like that?

Scott Barlow: It’s almost like the autopilot is set to go to Spokane, Washington. Nothing against there, I lived there. You are heading there and the coordinates are plugged in so you might as well go, but what if they just had a gas leak and it's not so desirable any more. That might be the equivalent of we just had kids and I want something different in my life. Or I looked around one day and realized I don’t want my boss's job and I’m not sure what I want. Do you want to keep going to Spokane or go to Bali? You are going there soon right?

Lisa Lewis: Not that long from now. We can talk about how to create a life that empowers you to go to Bali in one of our life crafting episodes. If you would be interested in hearing about that send us an email.

Scott Barlow: We are going to turn this into a series and our intention today is to talk about what some of the differences are. I’d encourage you to answer this question. Depending on what the answer is I’d suggest you take an action. Is your autopilot flying to where you want to go and when you land there will you be truly happy with it? If you hesitate or it is no then I think it is time to learn how to plug in different coordinates. That is what we want to teach you and achieve in the upcoming episodes. Every three to four weeks we will drop in a new episode to craft a life you love with your career and what can be possible. It is our intention to plug in those different coordinates and go a different direction that suits you. Maybe you want to go to Bali or maybe it’s Nevada. Whatever it is, is okay, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is interested in, just what you are. What do you think Lisa?

Lisa Lewis: I love it. If we take fantasy travel off the table. There are so many easy everyday things that can make huge differences in people’s lives. Maybe getting one work from home day every week or every two weeks or getting flexible hours to leave early and pick up your kids from daycare or it's getting an opportunity to work remotely for a week or month so you can go and travel and explore or do co-working. The possibilities for the ways you can make the life or your day to day reality closer to the life you have been imagining are endless if you give yourself permission to think about what could be possible. Equip yourself. The people can help make it happen and you can make it happen for yourself.

Scott Barlow: That is where we will leave you. I’ll share one quick story about how I started looking at this differently. For me, just like Lisa, I had a series of times that have influenced how I think about what I want and what is possible in my life. There are several points. One in particular, I worked at Target for a while doing HR. I was training an HR manager and we were in casual conversation because she was working with me for several weeks. She kept talking about her dad. She was really close with her dad. I just had a little girl at the time. I realized I wanted that. Her dad was around all of the time. She spoke very fondly of him. I wondered how he was around so much. He was there when she got home from school, helped with homework, and who she called when she needed advice. I wanted to be like her dad. That was mind flipping for me. I realized later he owned a series of apartment complexes that enabled him to live the lifestyle I wanted. I took that and almost dropped in a collection of things I wanted for my life. Nine years later this led down the path creating this type of business.

One of the first steps was negotiating flexibility and time off. Here is one thing you can put into action. If you want more flexibility, I first tried to figure out how it could be a great situation. Is there a universe where this could be a great situation for both me and my employer? As it turns out there was. By allowing me have work from home days each week I got a ton more done. I was more productive, plus I had extra time, that I didn’t have to commute or stay at work later. I got more done in less time. I went to them and made it about them and helping. How it could be a good situation. Asking my boss for a trial period. Not asking them to commit. I made it blatantly clear that I wasn’t going to talk about it to everyone because they were worried about people not performing as well wanting to do it too. I alleviated some of those concerns. Let’s try this for just one month. I asked for two days and we settled on one. I did that intentionally. We tried it and revisited it a month later. It was working. I kept things to track what performance output I was getting so they could see it was effective. It let me keep going. They could commit on a brief trial. Once we could see it was working we could turn it into permanent. If that is something that you potentially want you can use that.

Lisa thanks for coming back on the episode. If you want to learn more about Lisa you can go to episode 147 and hear her story. Thanks for being here and sharing some of the things I didn't know. Super cool.

Lisa Lewis: Of course, it’s always exciting to be here. If even one person listens and feels more empowered and excited and in control of possibilities we will have done a huge service. I can’t wait to hear what people think.

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How to Maximize Your Support System During Your Career Change with Rebecca Maddox

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With every big life change, we encounter challenges.

Sometimes, we’re prepared for them — as High-Performers, we like to make sure we have the majority of our bases covered before we dive head-first into the deep-end of our career change. 

But, sometimes we find challenges where we least expect them.

When we look at career change, we know that taking on this big life change requires a great amount of time, energy, maybe a bit of financial planning, and a solid support system to lean on when the career change process becomes overwhelming.

One of the least-talked about topics of career change is your current and ongoing support system.

Everyone needs a support system as they approach any big life changes.

We have people that care about us and they want to be there to support us in times of need — whether it is to vent about our career change obstacles, seek advice on what to do, or to be the distraction we need from all the mental strength we’ve been exhausting to make our change happen.  

As much as our core supporters want to be there for us as we make this career change, many of them aren’t really sure how to approach the issue.

This is where the challenge comes in (where you’d least expect it!).

Unfortunately, the reason many people stay in the same place in their career is often because of the lack of support they get from their core group of friends and family.

But, knowing  to have an honest and open conversation with the people closest to you about your career change (if you want their support) is key.

Being able to navigate those relationships in order to remain authentic to yourself and your career goals is just as important as the work you put into your actual career change process.

Let’s dig deeper into your support system and learn ways to better manage those relationships as you go through your career change.

THE SIDE-EFFECTS OF YOUR CAREER CHANGE — IN TERMS OF YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

The reactions of the people closest to you as you explain your career change decision isn’t something a lot of High-Performers calculate beforehand.

The wild card is always going to be other people’s feelings when it comes to your big career change. Why?

People are risk-averse

Everyone deals with change differently.

The majority of people see career change (especially if you don’t have a job lined-up in the immediate future) as risky.

Your career change makes you vulnerable. Ultimately leaving your supporters feeling vulnerable as well, as they care what happens to you as you make this life change.

IT’S AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER ALL-AROUND
  • Nobody needs to tell you that changing careers is nerve-racking.

After the initial shock and surprise people may feel as you inform them of your career change decision, people will become nervous for you.

They may then project that nervousness onto you, which is the last thing you want them to do.

  • Some people will look through their lens of perspective and unintentionally react in a way that this career change would effect them personally.

It is almost a natural reaction to immediately think about how your decision would change their lives – oftentimes, this isn’t a positive reaction.

  • People may react with anger and frustration.

They’ll comment with:

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Is all this trouble really worth it?”

Again, this leads back to people taking your decision personally and thinking in terms of how your decision will change their lives.

THE BIGGEST DISCONNECT IS THE LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Your loved ones want what’s best for you, but also may just be thrown off by this new change and can’t wrap their heads around it.

It may even be because when they think of you, they think of you in a certain way, and this change is completely out of the oridinary.

The emotional impact of others not understanding your career change can throw off your mindset and ultimately put the breaks on your career change.

Don’t let that stop you.

Knowing how your career change can effect your support system can help you be proactive in your communications with them.

WHAT YOU CAN TO DO TO BRIDGE THE KNOWLEDGE-GAP BETWEEN YOUR CAREER GOALS AND YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

If you need support to help you achieve your goals, move forward, or deal with anything challenging that comes your way, you need to:

1. KNOW WHO IS SUPPORTING YOU

2. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THOSE PEOPLE

3. CHECK-IN WITH THOSE PEOPLE

MAXIMIZING YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

Family and Friends

The family and friends that you keep the closest only want to see you succeed, so having the conversations about your new career intentions should be open and honest.

Be clear about what it is you need from them in support — advice, comfort during the hard times, respecting your plans to save more money, trust in your skills, etc.

If you’re struggling with some people that are having a hard time processing your career change, here is a sample script you can use to start that conversation:

Mentors

Whether it is your former professor, boss, or other professional in your network, a mentor is a great form of support during your career change process.

Maybe they’ve experienced this type of change before, or maybe they know someone that can share their story.

Your mentor is there to help guide you through your career and provide suggestions on next steps as they may know your skills, experience, and where you excel.

Approach them with the same straightforward conversation on how they can best support you.

Colleagues

Just like your mentor, your colleagues can help you expand your network.

They also know your work ethic and can understand what it will take to break through to something new.

Career Coaches

An outside perspective might be necessary to further your progress to your career change.

You may reach a point in your career change where you begin to feel stuck.

You can lose your focus, motivation, or let your mindset get the best of you.

A career coach is a great way to incorporate someone that is impartial to your work history.

A coach is someone that doesn’t carry any predispositions of you as a family member, friend, coworker, or employee.

Having a career coach by your side as you continue down your career change path will help support you with structured guidance on that dreded question of “What next?”

High Performers know that surrounding themselves with the people that encourage and support them and their goals is necessary to make things happen according to their values.

You don’t have to stop your career change when one of your core supporters reacts to change negatively. With a career coach and a community of like-minded career-changers, you can get the support you need.

Once you are able to step away from your current situation to regain perspective on what you need to do to continue with your career transition, you will be able to find the resources you need to reach your career goals.

If you’re struggling to find the way to your new career, Career Change Bootcamp can help steer you in the right direction, too.

Check it out.

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Scott Barlow: Welcome back to the Happen to Your Career podcast. I am incredibly, ridiculously excited today because we have an extra special guest. It’s not our normal guest. Its someone who has allowed us to tag along for the ride as she has made a huge career change. I’m very excited but even more so I don’t know all the details and I want to learn, so welcome Rebecca. How are you?

Rebecca Maddox: Hi. Doing well Scott. How are you?

Scott Barlow: Oh my goodness. I am so good and excited. Before we hit record and started the conversation we were chatting about what you do now and what happened for the change which is super cool. Congratulations again.

Rebecca Maddox: Thank you very much.

Scott Barlow: How do you describe what you are going to get to do. You haven’t started yet. You are in Sacramento studying for the California bar right?

Rebecca Maddox: Yes. That is right.

Scott Barlow: What do you do with that soon?

Rebecca Maddox: After I take the bar in August I’m looking forward to joining a firm in Fresno, California where I will be doing litigation and using the tools I learned in law school and putting them to good use.

Scott Barlow: Very cool. Prior to moving to Sacramento you were in the D.C. area. But not always there right? Let’s jump way back and talk about where this started. What prompted you to go to law school?

Rebecca Maddox: Diving back deep into the cobwebs. I decided to go to law school my junior year of college. No one else in my family had gone before. Before, I thought I wanted to go to med school, but then I took calculus and chemistry my freshman year and there is nothing like that to make you reconsider your life priorities. I don’t know if this is right for me.

Scott Barlow: That cracks me up. Why do you say that for people who may have not been through that?

Rebecca Maddox: I came in as a math and science person but after taking chemistry and calculus, which are pressure cooker classes, that weed out the “weaklings.” The people who are waffling. They are trying to bring out the dedicated people. I remember getting a grade on a test that was about a 50 average with no curve. This is insane. The average is failing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I reconsidered everything.

I took environmental science courses and policies, women gender classes, feminist jurisprudence. That opened my eyes - what if the law is something I want to do? I told my parents and they said “really?” I took the LSAT. I did an internship with a community group where an attorney represented the group in front of the zoning commission. I thought this was incredible. I went to law school because I found it fascinating you could use advocacy and arguments to achieve something for someone. At the end of the day I wanted to help people. That moved me to law school.

I went to law school at the University of Maryland. After I went to school I realized I had never been involved in politics. I realized I had experience with environmental organization in undergrad but I had never looked at politics but it felt like another factor. I’m in Maryland and D.C. isn’t far away. I have no kids or house what if it’s something worth trying.

Scott Barlow: I love that you asked if it was something worth trying.

Rebecca Maddox: I decided to start talking to a few people. Where do you start and go? What does this mean? I ended up connecting with an office in D.C. and worked there because it was 2013 and the recession was hard for lawyers. Because all of that people say I’m scrappy. You go see what is out there and see what you can get. That is how it lead from law to politics. Then I did that for a couple years.

Scott Barlow: Before you did that you talked to a few different people before connecting to that organization. Who did you seek out to ask about politics?

Rebecca Maddox: That is a great question. Coming from my family, extended and immediate, is filled with teachers and doctors. No one knew much about connecting with politics. I remember a friend at school was more involved in politics. There was an intern coordinator for political internships and my friend told me to talk to her. I found most of my internships and experiences through teachers saying you should be connecting. They acted as mentors. Getting into politics is a tough game. Everyone is coming in trying to prove themselves. It is a lot of networking. Meeting people for coffee and finding connections with their states and offices. It helps strip the green. It strips the greenness off.

Scott Barlow: Off of you quickly. No longer green. That is interesting. I think a lot of people don’t realize how much relationship building and networking is involved in politics. That is ultimately the way things get done or not in that world. As I know more people involved in politics I naively didn't realize that. Which is the same in every other area of life but it didn’t click for me.

Rebecca Maddox: It is an amazingly small world. There is a catch 22 if you want to work for congress. First, you need experience in politics, but then you say I need a job to get experience. That is where the politics comes in. Here is a connection and you realize the political world is relatively small. Everyone knows other people. There are even publications tracking who moves where and when. Everyone is very aware of what is happening.

Scott Barlow: I know that, because you and I had a conversation seven or eight months ago, the first time we met. You were less excited about being in D.C. and involved in the political arena. Is that fair?

Rebecca Maddox: Yes. During my time there it was exciting and interesting dealing with big issues and changes. You work with motivated and intelligent people. Some very diplomatic and great people but at the same time working at 50,000 feet hovering above ground, you start wondering about your impact and connecting with people and is it the best use of my skills. I remember people saying you have the dream. It raises a red flag when they say that and you see the truth but something feels off for what I’m looking for.

I think in that moment I started looking for a career coach because when you are in a position you have worked hard to get and put in a lot of time and you think this feels right I’m getting experience, a good reputation, it’s hard to talk to other people and know who to talk to about wondering if there is something else. Even saying to your family hey I’m not sure this is my forever fit or best fit for my goals. Everyone has their own bias. If your family supported you to get here they want to see you happy but don’t understand your thinking about leaving.

Scott Barlow: It’s the dream.

Rebecca Maddox: Granted there were great opportunities but thinking for me, my skills, and what's next, what are my options? Having an outside perspective and someone who can call you out and be accountable that is what I was looking for.

Scott Barlow: I’m curious, diving back for a half second. It sounds like you were having fun with some of it and there we are different levels of excitement at the time. What really started you down the path realizing it had changed or you wanted something different?

Rebecca Maddox: I started feeling disconnected. We would start working on an issue and something else would become more important. There were loose ends jumping around. What am I accomplishing here? I started feeling the disconnect. There is this fairness impact and the depth of the issue. When you are working on a higher level on issues you are trying to not dive too deep into the weeds but you also have to create something. I become a very versatile generalist. Looking at issues across the spectrum but diving into, running an inch deep a mile wide. Some people thrive on that and enjoy staying in the substance but more on the political forces. I found it all exciting but I’d love to dive deep and be more of an expert. Sink my teeth into it.

I started reconsidering my impact and ultimately how did I want my ideal office to look and how do I get my rewards out of work. Is it policy or one on one relationships with clients.? I think it’s the clients. I started piece by piece picking things off. When you are in the environment, when it isn’t working you know it’s something but don’t know what. It can be hard to hear your voice. On top of this my heart for my job was wandering and my heart was somewhere else. My significant other was out on the campaign trail and I thought how are we going to get in the same place. There was that coming into play. I’m trying to hold it all together but something is going to give eventually. What makes the most sense?

Scott Barlow: That is interesting on a variety of levels. You started realizing being an overall generalist and not getting to go deep was missing. You had needs and wants and life changes. How are we going to stop doing this long distance relationship? You were pulling in different areas. Its super cool you recognized the need for change. A lot of people will keep going. I see them all the time. Rather than act on the need or want the keep going. Kudos to you.

Rebecca Maddox: Thanks. When you're in the zone or doing this, especially if you have a lot of time and energy invested. It’s not all black and white, or a voice from God. The lucky people see a burning bush, but for me it’s the little itch and you say maybe, maybe, am I crazy? Everything else is going on let’s keep going. Maybe it's just me. I did that for awhile. I thought I need to make sure. I’m not handling this correctly. I need to go running and get my energy up. I need to follow up on mistakes, be accountable. You try to fix the other things.

There was a moment, for other listeners, a moment you realize something is off like you snap at someone and you didn’t realize you didn’t mean to and it goes beyond where you should it’s not where I should be something is wrong, listen to that. For me, it was a long time before I made my move out of D.C. My moment was when I went to the dentist office. They x-rayed my molars and the nerves looked like scrambled eggs. I’m not out of my 20s. I was clenching my teeth so hard at night from stress and was messing up my nerve endings. If I kept going like that I would need root canals for all four teeth by the time I was 30. It made me sit down and say something is wrong. Something is really wrong. I tried to keep swimming and going, keep focus, everyone has issues. But eventually something starts to give and something is off. I think the hard part for me was negotiating with my family and friends. Not just in the workplace because I’m trying to be a professional. Tyring to dedicate myself. But with family and friends telling them your idea and appreciating their support, that I think it’s worth a shot.

Scott Barlow: How did you handle those conversations? That is a real thing for nearly everyone even if you have a really supportive family. That is still a big gap. They want to know why. How did you approach those conversations?

Rebecca Maddox: The hard part when thinking of making a change is either - I’ve had several reactions, people are usually nervous and want to be helpful, loved ones in particular, but they don't know how to approach the issue. I’ve had ranges. Some people say go do what you love. That is broad.

Scott Barlow: Just do it.

Rebecca Maddox: Or I once had someone ask me what is the one thing you need in life. I had to look back and say I don ‘t know food clothing shelter. Where are we going with this?

Scott Barlow: Water obviously.

Rebecca Maddox: Yeah. In approaching that I had to realize that while I was feeling vulnerable in my search and thinking broadly others were also feeling off kilter because they want good things for you but think of you in a certain way. Having honest and open conversation is important. Some people truly didn't understand and were angry; which I’ve run into a few.

Scott Barlow: Really. We’ve seen a lot of that happen. It seems like there are a variety of reasons. It is something that most people don’t expect when going through this. It’s good you bring it up.

Rebecca Maddox: it's something that came up for me because it threw me off kilter in my job search. The emotional impact of others not understanding or being frustrated. There is validity there. I think my moment of wisdom was when someone very close to me said I think you are making a mistake why are you moving cross country. They may be mad at certain things if you are making yourself or others vulnerable financially. That’s something to put on the backburner. But I had enough in savings. I had saved up for this. The other thing is the logical support wanting support where I was. I had to say you are my friend or loved one, I love you dearly and your support means so much to me. I need to give this a try. If it doesn't work out I will be okay. I just need you to trust in me in my skills that it will be okay. If something else comes up we will troubleshoot from there. Here is my plan and where I’m going. I’d appreciate your support. That is how I went about it. Whether it is the best move or not it worked for me.

Scott Barlow: What you verbalized is a great script that we’ve found has generally worked. When you explain why you need to make the change and ask for support and even explaining that it will be okay for these reasons it helps people move from point A to Z. Many times it seems like that when you are making a big life change the people are looking at it through their lens of understanding and whether it would be good for them. Not intentionally. They have your best interests in mind but they are looking at it through what would be good for them accidently. That’s how our minds work. Of course those big changes wouldn’t be good for you Rebecca because it’s not good for me. Have you found that?

Rebecca Maddox: Yes and I’ve found it's not as much as I want it to be a clear cut straightforward moment. You imagine me in this way because of this one thing for you. There is never just one thing it’s an emotional process they have to go through. It’s difficult to explain to a bunch of people and exhausting talking about it with each person. At a certain point you have to know who your main support is. Talk to those people first and know to a certain degree it will percolate through. Over time it gets better. People ease off. Especially if it works out.

For me after I left, people have noticed little things. I’m laughing more. My hair is blonder because I’m outside more. Little things. People say maybe it’s not so bad. The idea of dropping things and moving to a different opportunity is risky and many people are risk averse and nervous. They wouldn’t do it. There are many hurdles of how people make their own decisions. Maybe they just wanted you there, they bragged about your career, they thought it was what you wanted, they don’t know you anymore. That is the untold story with the career change. How your support system works.

I would recommend, a piece of advice given to me, know who is supporting you. Surround yourself with them and check in. You need their support to accomplish your dream or move forward or do challenging things like losing five pounds or moving cross country. Check in with those people to know you are supported.

Scott Barlow: That is amazing advice and it's hot of the press because you have just been through all of this. Even I forget, I’m surrounded by it all the time, and have found these same things myself. Making multiple career changes myself I didn’t anticipate the emotional toll with the conversations and taking and explaining the actions and trying to get support. You never imagined it goes along with it. So many people stay in the same place because of this.

Rebecca Maddox: It is hard and risky. What is on the other end of the yellow brick road?

Scott Barlow: What if the wizard is mean?

Rebecca Maddox: You never know and take the leap of faith. Will the road lead to the canyon will the bridge fall beneath you? Will people be there to support you? You don’t know but hope so. For me I made the decision for where I was, when my job ended I didn’t have anything else lined up and that made other people nervous too. I was making this cross country move which is hard enough, but getting the time and space too is a luxury, not everyone gets that.

Scott Barlow: In order to be able to do it in a healthy way there are prerequisites. I’ve done the same thing with the same reactions. Really, you just aren’t working?

Rebecca Maddox: At that point of time having that cushion, financially, was my first line of defense to say we are fine. We will work it out. I’m working diligently on it. Everything is paid and good. During that time, because people are nervous and project it on you, in addition to your own insecurities about whether you can do it or not. The negative voices come. What was helpful for me during the coaching experience and along the way is learning it is important to give yourself some grace. I would recommend Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. Listening to her was helpful. This idea that you have a creative muscle and you need room to breath. During the process I felt pressure to find the job. I found pressure to find something justified as the bigger better thing. There is the idea of where is the job, the one. Are you moving up in the world?

Scott Barlow: Well you just told all these people you are making a big change. Own up.

Rebecca Maddox: Now you have to. People are depending on you. How is the job search going? O my gosh, stop!

I believe in cross pollinating ideas. When Elizabeth Gilbert was talking about artists who put so much pressure on themselves to create their whole career off their art that it kills their creative muscle. I felt the same way about finding a job. This is about finding what is my best fit for my skills, the next best step in my career to be successful. The average person might put in 100% and get 100% back, I might put in 100% and get 150% - 200% back because I’m doing what I’m supposed to. That is what I’m looking for. The advice to ease off, thinking if I have to have a bridge job for a moment, I can do that. It’s most important I find the next best step for me. Coming into a new place, there is a lot of networking, meeting with people understanding how they look at your resume and how to break through. That takes time. I’d recommend Elizabeth Gilbert.

Scott Barlow: I’ve had several people recommend that book. I’m curious as you went through this process and as you called it finding the next best step for you, how did you end up working with Lisa and what are the one or two biggest things you took away from those interactions?

About your next best thing.

Rebecca Maddox: Working with Lisa, she’s great and I loved working with her.

Scott Barlow: We are talking about Lisa Lewis and you can hear her story on episode 147.

Rebecca Maddox: She was great. I decided to start working with her because as I was diving into the bootcamp on Happen To Your Career I was trying to think broadly. Should I be a lawyer? I took the What Color is Your Parachute approach. I started to dig deep and laying a foundation. I started working with Lisa when I saw I was pulling some things out, strengths and interests, but it was murky and I didn’t know how to move forward. Not knowing where you want to go, some people see the burning bush and others don’t. I did not. How do I move forward and develop? I was hoping to get that burning bush moment but didn’t. That was when I felt stuck.

I called Happen to Your Career and decided to reach out to a coach that is impartial with no vested interested like my family. Not like people in my network that may see me in a particular way. Some people are so outside of the job search game that they have general advice but not what you need. It was helpful working with her because she helped me think about structuring how to talk to people about what I’m looking for and moving forward. There were moments when I would avoid an issue in my search and she would call me out and ask what I thought I was protecting by avoiding it. You aren’t avoiding it because you are lazy, my phrasing. What are you trying to protect yourself from that you feel vulnerable about? It was a great point and I had a breakthrough journaling about it.

She helped through the interview process, not just pragmatically like the baseline things, but the question of my inherent bias trying to find a job in D.C. As a lawyer in 2013 when there were tons of lawyers. You felt disposable. At that point having to scrape by for a job, I had an inherent tendency to try to form myself into the person I thought they were looking for in the interviews rather than presenting here is where I am and what I’m looking for. I’d love to work with you in the future if this works. I had a bias to get the job and do whatever it takes. In reality just getting the job can lead to a mismatch and miscommunication and assumptions. The employer doesn’t do what you want. There is desperation. It came through even though I had money to cover my bills. That was my inclination. Working with Lisa was helpful to strip down the extraneous and being more authentic. Without precluding the opportunity but being honest about where I’m coming from. It changed the interview process for me.

Scott Barlow: That is a massive mindset switch.

Rebecca Maddox: Huge. It felt bizarre at first. I felt naked in the room. I think Lisa called it radical authenticity and it feels really bizarre. There was one interview that I thought once I say this stuff this thing is done. I’m interested in the job but I don’t know how long given what the position is because I would outgrow it quickly. They had the same concern. But this would be my foot in the door because there are few opportunities. Talking to Lisa about it, I practiced, then went into the interview. I had practiced a line. And once I gave it, I would be interested in growing from this to other opportunities in the office, can you tell me what you are looking for. It centers your position of power. When I walked out of the office I knew I wouldn’t get a call back but I felt okay with it, which I wouldn’t have before. Before if I hadn’t tried to meet what they were looking for to get the job I would have let myself down for not keeping my options open. But I was being honest. They deserve to find someone who is the best fit and I deserve a job that works for me. I felt more comfortable. I was a shift in narrative that paid off.

Scott Barlow: It is so interesting but sadly not intuitive for people. You said it felt awkward to be radically authentic and vulnerable. It’s not the norm and scary. I’d say 100% of the time it creates a better result. It is super scary in some cases. I don’t think I believed that until one interview that I went into. I thought I was interviewing for one position and they started talking to me about another. I said I’m sorry but I’m here because I’m interested in this. He said we don’t hire people for HR manager unless they have experience or been in a role for many years. I said I’m sorry but that is what I’m interested in. He said why are you here then. We had a conversation from that.

It was scary and I remember thinking should I just get my foot in the door. They ended up offering me the position I wanted at a $20,000 increase more than I would have gotten. I’ve seen that hundreds of times. That same thing you are describing. It’s hard. Here is my question. Looking back at all of this at this point, you got the opportunity to work with Lisa, not everyone gets to. What advice would you give people as they are thinking about making a change? Maybe they are back in a place feeling that itch. They snap at somebody and realize that work is impacting their life in ways they didn’t anticipate. What advice for those at the beginning?

Rebecca Maddox: If you are at the beginning you owe it to yourself to give it some time. Try something. Look at your options. Go talk to somebody, talk to friends. Do you know someone who does this, I think it's interesting. Meet for a coffee, a five or fifteen minute conversation, saying hi I think what you do is amazing I’m trying to figure out what it means to do your job. It's worth it. It is no pressure. That is how most people find jobs.

If you are in that moment thinking you are so entrenched where you are and moving to a different opportunity is a joke, maybe you are right. There is a good chance you are wrong unless you are in an extremely niche field because skills are transferable. If it’s something hitting you hard and impacting those around you. When it goes beyond just you, it is worth trying the boot camp. Do a strengths finder analysis. Get a different perspective. Take a breather. If there are people in your life that say you get your job and stick to it. That is what you do. That is not the world we live in. It's a game of chutes and ladders rather than plant your roots and see how far they go. If people are telling you you have the dream but something doesn’t feel right, that is fine. Trust that. If people are angry they will come around. Especially if you know it’s going to make you and everyone happy, do the right thing.

Scott Barlow: That is amazing advice hot off the press. I have found zero things worth doing in life, that are big changes, are going to be incredibly easy. Very few are going to fit that. Very close to zero. Anytime you make big changes someone will disagree.

Rebecca Maddox: Definitely.

Scott Barlow: Thank you so very much for making the time and taking the time. This has been super fun for me because we got to talk way back when you were thinking of making the change and now getting to talk. Lisa has kept me up-to-date in the middle but I didn’t get the juicy details. This is super fun to find out this after the fact. Congratulations again.

Rebecca Maddox: Thank you very much.

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Overcoming Your Fears and Taking Action to Find Career Success with Cesar Ponce de Leon

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“WHAT IS IT THAT I NEED TO DO?”
“WAS THIS JUST A WASTE OF TIME?”
“HOW DO I MAKE A CAREER CHANGE WITHOUT HAVING THAT BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE?”

There are so many questions that plague people that have decided to take the bull by the horns and make a career change for themselves.

The ups and downs that they encounter before they make the official jump to a new job position, organization, industry, or business venture are sometimes glossed over once they find success.

But, people that find that success as they transition to a new stage in their career know all too well the hard work, the endless days and nights they were kept awake at night, and the energy it took to put in the work to get where they are today.

One of those people is Cesar Ponce de Leon.

We had the pleasure of working with him as he took on the challenge to move from his previous job in legal affairs to a role at an organization that spoke more to his heart and true life calling.

Cesar ran into a few stumbling blocks along the way, but with the right tools and resources he was able to find success in his career transition.

His story of hard work and non-stop effort is one to take note of, so we’ve put together an outline of his biggest challenges and the process that he followed to guide him through to reach his career goals.

Check it out!

CAREER CHANGE CHALLENGES

The biggest challenges that Cesar faced when he realized that he wanted to leave his job were:

1. Jumping from the legal sector as a paralegal to work at a non-profit organization in a role that helps people change their lives  — a completely different focus in an entirely different industry, but nonetheless his ultimate career goal

2. Figuring out where to start his job search to find that new role

Even with those  specific challenges in mind, Cesar was ready to get moving on his career change and did what most people getting back into the career search game do:

HE SEARCHED FOR JOB DESCRIPTIONS THAT SOUNDED CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHAT HE WAS AIMING FOR ON INDEED,
AND HE APPLIED, APPLIED, AND APPLIED.

BUT, just like the majority of everyone else getting back into the career search game, he didn’t hear back from a single place he applied to.

Nada. Zero. Zilch.

ANOTHER OBSTACLE —

JUST WHEN HE GAINED A LITTLE TRACTION BY TAKING THE INITIATIVE TO JUMP RIGHT INTO HIS NEW CAREER SEARCH…

Cesar soon came to the realization that maybe  he underestimated the whole new career transition process.

He was faced with the fact that his career journey wasn’t going to be as easy as he had thought.

Not only did he have no background experience in non-profit work, but nobody was returning his inquiries for the positions he had applied for.

Cesar began to hit some of those internal road blocks and mental barriers that naturally come along with the career change journey — don’t worry, that is normal.

Cesar was beginning to feel feelings of fear, detachment, anxiety, and stress about the fact that he had no experience in the field he was hoping to move into. He found himself stuck and unsure of what to do next.

REGAIN FOCUS AND PERSPECTIVE

He took a step back from being paralyzed by these new challenges and decided to become more proactive about his career search and went right back to the drawing board.

And, just like all High Performers, he refused to settle and realized that he couldn’t make this change on his own and began research on career coaching programs and stumbled on an episode of the Happen to Your Career podcast.

He decided to reach out to HTYC to help him reevaluate his career transition.

IF YOU’RE GOING THROUGH SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO SHARE YOUR STRUGGLES. YOU HAVE TO REACH OUT. DON’T KEEP THEM IN. IF YOU KEEP THEM IN MOST LIKELY YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE ACTION. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE PROACTIVE AND THAT’S JUST GOING TO DELAY YOUR PROCESS.

CESAR PONCE DE LEON

Cesar enrolled in Career Change Bootcamp and found that the program offered him the framework that he wasn’t able to develop on his own. He found the program helped him:

  • Overcome his fears by providing strategies to get over those “hiccups that he was going through“
  • Follow a step-by-step process that gave him the confidence to reach his end career goals
  • Target the specific jobs and organizations that fit his ideal career
  • Create a script to reach out to the right people at the right organizations
  • Supported him along the way whenever he lost motivation

HTYC gave Cesar a structured outline to follow that ultimately gave him the results he was hoping for.

Below, is a case study of the step-by-step process Cesar followed in order to make this career transition a success.

OVERCOMING FEAR

The biggest obstacle that Cesar had to get over before he could really move forward with his career change were the barriers that he created in his own head.

Cesar had him ask himself:

Will you do whatever it takes to get out of there?

Working with HTYC made him realize his own fears, get to the root of the cause, and accept those feelings as he worked through those fears and forced himself to take action.

Cesar began looking at his career change in a new light. He discovered that:

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO ACCEPT WHATEVER CHALLENGES COME.

Once you accept those challenges you have to be willing to fight for them.

With a different outlook on his career transition, Cesar went to work and learned to “do things with fear” to get the results he wanted.

I HAD TO COME TO THE REALIZATION OF SAYING, ‘OKAY, OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING, I NEED TO START TAKING ACTION.

CESAR PONCE DE LEON

IDENTIFY STRENGTHS 

Knowing your strengths helps you focus the lens of the skills and talents that you can offer an organization to benefit their end goal.

Cesar put in the work with the exercises offered in the CCB program and used recommended resources like the StrengthsFinder test to assess exactly what he could offer organizations as he continued his career search.

EVALUATE VALUES

Figuring out what you want, need, and value in your career (and life) will help you continue to hone in on not only what new position will fit the your new list of “must haves,” but finding those values will also get you more familiar with the type of organization you should be looking for to match your wants, needs, and values.

Cesar put a lot of thought into his values and what type of ideal job position would fit his (and his family’s) lives.

What he did to start was make a list. He wrote down his past job experiences and began thinking about what he liked about them and what he didn’t like.  He went on to further evaluate (based on the information that he got from looking into his past) and created a list of what he did want and all of the absolutes that his new role and organization would have to include and why.

CREATE IDEAL CAREER PROFILE

With Cesar’s new lists of strengths and values in hand, he was able to move on the the next step — creating his Ideal Career Profile (ICP).

This is where he took his list of values and prioritized which of his values were most important.

With this newly filtered information, Cesar was able to match his values with job priorities to narrow down the roles he was most interested in pursuing.

He also identified the non-profit organizations that were more aligned with his values.

Cesar was now armed with a targeted list of organizations and a solid understanding of the role he would like to have at any of the non-profits he identified. He also had a new sense of hope with the creation of his ICP.

By being able to identify and hand-pick the organizations he wanted to work with, Cesar understood exactly what he was looking for and wasn’t going to stop working until he got it.

REACH OUT TO ORGANIZATIONS

Cesar’s final step was taking that list of organizations that he identified and reach out to them.

His goal was to establish a relationship with the right people in these organizations and let them know who he was and what he could offer them.

Cesar used the HTYC script resources and tailored them to fit his needs to bypass a lot of gatekeepers within his top organizations.

I HAVE TO ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING PROACTIVE AND PRACTICAL TO GET TO THE DECISION MAKER.

CESAR PONCE DE LEON

He implemented the “Relationships Before Resumes” method of developing and fostering a relationship with one of executives of his top organization.

What is the Relationship Before Resumes method?

It’s the process in which you:

  • Establish yourself with the important people at an organization
  • Personalize the relationship you develop by digging deeper than asking for a job
  • Give love, to get love

Most of the time, the way you stand out in a sea of job applicants is by being human.

Cesar quickly discovered that the one thing that people want to see more than your skills is your character.

When you show genuine interest in someone’s life outside of work, they are more inclined to remember you for that and keep you in mind for things that come up in the future.

That is exactly how Cesar was able to differentiate himself from the rest of the job hunters.

IF I LET MY EMOTION DRIVE ME THROUGH THIS PROCESS, THEN I’M NOT GOING TO GET ANYWHERE.

CESAR PONCE DE LEON

Today, Cesar is four months into his job at the #1 non-profit organization that he had his eye on.

That’s not to say that’s just because he got lucky.

He put in the work.

He developed a relationship with key people at the organization that best fit his values. He volunteered at the organization to showcase his skills. He was given project after project, and finally once a position opened up. He was the first person they called.

He followed the process and not once did he try and rush through to land any job he was able to get.

In fact, during the process, Cesar received another job offer, but had to refuse as he was already working along his process and developing a bond with the executive at the organization that he now works for.

He didn’t even blink an eye when he turned down that other job offer. With his work in determining his strengths, realizing his values, and creating his Ideal Career Profile, Cesar fully understood himself well enough that he knew EXACTLY what he was working towards and why he was doing it.

His ICP helped him identify and guide him to the career that was ideal for him right now.

Cesar’s story demonstrates how overcoming your fears, hard work, tenacity, and resilience pays off.

It wasn’t an easy journey to switch career from one industry to another, but it is possible.

If you are willing to overcome your fears and accept your next career goal challenges, with a little help and guidance you can happen to your career, too.

You can find more information on our Career Change Bootcamp here. If you’re interested in more CCB success stories, check out Sarah Hawkins and Tanya Malcom Revell.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT TO THE EPISODE NOW

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Introduction 00:00
This the Happen To Your Career podcast, Episode 186.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 00:07
I guess that the changing factor for me was that, first and foremost, I didn't really have an understanding of values until that moment, which I look at some of the basics. And then HTYC reinforced it the process. You know what I'm saying?

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:28
This is Happen To Your Career, we help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and then make it happen. Whether you're looking to do your own thing, or find your dream job, you've come to the right place. I'm Scott Barlow.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 00:50
I knew I was looking for something. I could tell you exactly what I didn't want but I had a really hard time defining what I wanted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:57
This is Tanya, she came to HTYC looking for clarity she needed to move forward.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 01:03
So that I had this great structure that I could talk to because it was the base of who I was, with the additional piece of what I was looking for now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:12
Listen for Tanya's story later on in the episode to learn how she used career change bootcamp to help her finally figure out what fits her.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 01:21
It is the single best thing that I have done.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:28
This is Scott Anthony Barlow, and you are listening to Happen To Your Career. This is the show that helps you figure out what work fits you by exploring other stories we get to bring on experts like MJ Fitzpatrick, who helps people make decisions and give themselves permission to do just crazy amazing things. Or people like Eric Murphy who was in a job that didn't fit his values and made a drastic change to one that, not only did, but paid him more at the exact same time for doing what he loved in where he loved and something that lined up with who he actually is. These are people that are just like you, they've gone from where they are to what they really want to be doing. And they're people just like our next guest, Cesar Ponce de Leon.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 02:14
I used to work in the legal industry. And now I work in that nonprofit industry. I work for a large nonprofit company that helps people change in their lives. So that is what I do now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:25
And this is going to be a super fun episode, because Cesar was struggling in a not very fun place for quite a while. And he knew that he wanted to make a change. And he was Uber-frustrated. So he actually invited us to come along for the ride, because he knew that he needed help. So you're gonna get to hear his story today. But he did a few things that were particularly amazing, and also that you can do too. And I wanted to be able to share his journey with you. And he was so gracious to be able to come on and share it with you at the exact same time. Because I think that there's a lot that we can all learn from other people that have just gone through the process of where many, many of you that are listening, many HTYCers out there want to be. Alright, here he is, right here.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 03:13
I mean, there were ups and downs. And obviously, before changing the organization, I was in the legal industry for eight years, I was a paralegal, wanted to go to law school, and then realize that's not what I wanted to do. And then the question came up, what is it that I need to do? And obviously, in that process, you know, sometimes you just think, "Oh, I'm gonna just rock the world." But when you realize that is not easy, and that you need help, that's when you start looking for help. And that's exactly what I've done. That's how I landed into HTYC.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:40
Yeah, absolutely. And we'll definitely talk about that, too. I'm super curious, though. You mentioned law school, and I knew that about your past. But what caused you to realize that law school was not going to be good for you?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 03:53
For me, it was more than likely intentions, because, first and foremost, to understand, you know, what got me there, I guess we need to go through the beginnings of...

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:01
Let's go through the beginnings. Let's do it.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 04:03
So I landed at this job because I needed cash.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:08
Verifiable reason. Yeah.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 04:10
I started as a legal assistant firm, and then after that, I moved up to paralegal. And after being a paralegal, I went to office management. Okay, and obviously, as I told you a few seconds ago, the reason why I took the job is because I needed the money to really pay my bills. And that's how I landed in the legal industry. And for the first month, obviously, it was a struggle because you're learning everything, you know, from just doing intakes, right, to just doing a whole variety of things. And that is exactly what I've done. And obviously, it was hard. In my mindset, I thought I needed to persist, because quitting was not an option for me. And once I have learned all of the duties required by my position, I saw something pretty interesting that my boss was making lots of money. He was successful, and powerful. You know, just the fact that you tell somebody, "Hey I'm a lawyer." People automatically respect to you, you know, it's like you earn people's respect. And I've seen that and I kind of crave that at that moment, particularly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:09
Yeah, isn't that funny, though, we have so many associations with different types of titles, or opportunities or positions or anything like that. And lawyers, to your point, definitely one of them. And what's kind of cool, though, is that you realize that part of it was something that you craved in that moment. So why do you think that was for you?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 05:27
I don't know. I mean, I guess it was the fact that I wanted to, at that point in my life, okay, as I was growing up, yeah, I always wanted people to, you know, respect me. And to know that if I went somewhere, or did something that the lawyer title was going to come out, and people are automatically going to be like, "okay, now we have to bill."

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:45
Lawyer has entered the room.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 05:47
Absolutely. So that was kind of like the equation part of it, you know, at the moment, and then obviously, as people also picture, I think it happens to a lot of law school students. And by the way, I don't want to over generalize here, but I believe that with some Law School students, they see you know, the Hollywood side of law, you know, that you're going to go in, and you're going to have this huge case. But when they come to the reality of what the legal job, that the position may look like, they're like, "whoa," you know, I didn't know that's what it was, you know? And at least for my position, I was attracted to the power, the security that comes out of the position, which were attracted to the at the moment. But what led to the change, I guess, just to say, you know, is it really for me, I believe that I think it was my third year in law firm, once I actually got a hold of everything. And I moved back into my role. I guess at that point, I was transitioning from college, to the university. And something interesting happened in my life. And that was, I found my faith in God, which that kind of changed my perspective on seeing things, you know, and even my motives, to pursue law, I decided to get a degree in religious studies so that as I were going to law school, you know, I will get a liberal arts degree, to be able to go into law school and what happened, but in that process of studying religion, and just to understand my faith, my values and all of that, I realized "No, is law something really worth pursuing for? Like, if my motives were power before, and chasing high financials, can I do it only with law?" I guess what my major kind of helped me realize it at the moment is that, a law may not be for me, it helped me changing my view on values.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:27
Interesting in what way? I'm super curious about that. Because values are something we spent a lot of time discussing here on the show, but also with our students and clients. And I know you know that, but what caused for you some of the change and how you were looking at values?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 07:41
I guess the changing factor for me was that, first and foremost, I didn't really have an understanding of values until that moment, which I look at some of the basics, and then HTYC reinforced it the process. You know what I'm saying?

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:54
Absolutely.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 07:55
I thought that devalues were always the same. I thought that there were a standard that I had a follow at the moment. And for instance, everybody craves for power. Everybody craves with this. And because everybody craves for those things, I should look for them, you know. But when I really came to the realization of studying theology, and doing my religious studies, I started asking, "Who am I?" That's the question, you know, who am I? What is it that really valued reality? Because, am I just looking or chasing for something that is completely false, or completely something that may align to other people's values, but not with mine, you know, or with my core being. And so that was something that I kind of realized. And then obviously, in that process of realizing things, and just understanding the 'Who am I' part of me, I continue to do it. And I was going through a lot of difficult times too, working at law firm, which one of them was, I was always fighting with industries to get great results for the client. And a lot of the fights were the first three years you kind of get the energy, but after a long time, you energy, just take it as it used to. And then secondly, I guess, part of my big issue is that you work so hard to get good results, right? As you're in the front lines. But your clients were unhappy with the results that you get.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:11
Yeah, I remember talking to you about that, too. And for you, if I recall correctly, in the way that you had identified, you needed to be able to help people, you had to have some of that positive reinforcement in a variety of different ways, or that positive type of feedback for it to be truly fulfilling for you. So it kind of like mashed oil and water a little bit.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 09:32
Yeah, what happens is, you know, like, even we know with the thing of going to law school, I envision disease or pretty much speaking to people, you know, arguing for the case, and just going for it, you know what I'm saying? Later on I realize that helping people is something that I want to do, right, but I want to actually help people change positively for the better. You know what I'm saying as opposed to a legal issue going through, you know, the legal process to be able to solve that issue, I want to be able to help people in order way, which I think is what I'm good at, which is to influence people, encourage them, helping them grow. And I realized that as a result of the why question that I had with myself at that moment, because obviously, if I work to chase money and power, and those things that, they are not bad in and of itself, I mean, we all need security, we'll need some self of knowledge, we have to not be naive about things. But if you paid and you tied those things, and you are not even sure that they fit with what you really value, then you're chasing the wrong things. And that's what happens to a lot of people in America.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:38
What you were saying about values is super interesting to me, partially, because I'm embedded in this stuff every single day. And we spend a lot of time teaching this stuff. However, it's interesting to see it in action. And it's most interesting, where you kind of made this progression, almost, where initially, you're looking at, hey, here's what everybody else is doing. And obviously, everybody wants these things. So we think that everybody wants these things. So we should be doing it too, right? So you kind of went from that point. And that part of the reason why you were initially interested in law school, and by the way, some people like never get to that level of honesty with themselves their entire life. So first of all, kudos to you. And then second of all, after you made that mental transition, and started looking at, hey, here's some of the ways that I want to help people, here's what's really incredibly important to me. And here's what lines up with my values. I'm curious what you began doing after that point. How did that change your daily life after you had some of those realizations?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 11:43
Well, for me, again, just weighing the pros and cons of deciding what was really making me happy at the moment, oh, and I realized that at law firm, I was not as happy. I was fighting all the time, it was a lot of toxicity, you know, just getting good clients that were ungrateful for the hard work that you've done for them. And I was doing a lot of case auditing and case management, which was okay to me at some point. But it was not how I wanted to help people. The legal part of it, it's amazing, because you help people through it, you know what I'm saying? But I guess when I came to the realization that, why did I really wanted to, when I was honest with myself, and realize that maybe it wasn't too much of the power, maybe it wasn't too much of the money, but it wasn't the influence. And then I came to realize, okay, how do I want to influence now? Is it at the courtroom, fighting for cases and defending clients and what have you, or with something that I'm great at, and that's where HTYC came, so helpful to me, because it kind of helped me define what my strengths, what I'm good at. And not just that, you know, because obviously, HTYC, you know, kind of gives you the platform for it. But I also went out and seek out for confirmations for other people's, which it came to the point that those were my strengths. And now I don't know what the true North Point looks like. I don't know what it is, I kind of know what it looks like.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:03
Yeah, and for a little bit of reference too, for everyone that's listening, first of all, that's awesome. And second of all, what you mentioned, there is one of the things that we'll often have people do through the career change bootcamp program, where you're actually going out and seeking out some of those validations. And we have people do that in some really specific ways. But, and it sounds like you were hearing back and getting those types of validations about your strengths and what you were great at from other people. Is that right?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 13:33
Yeah, yeah, that's what it was, you know, obviously, people were saying, "hey, you're this, you're that, you know, these are your strengths, you're very good with this." And then I was like, whoa. It's crazy because obviously, without them, telling them what the process was with HTYC, I was like, I got those plan. And it was amazing to just hear those confirmations from others. But this is at the level of HTYC after I made the decision to get to HTYC. But before that, I kind of knew that my thing was influencing, okay. And then you know, weighing the pros and cons of continuing in the law firm. I said, "You know what, I'm going to move on" because obviously, I came to the realization that love may not be exactly for me. And after that, obviously, I did some research on personality tests. I think I took them all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:21
I remember you emailing me and saying that, like, "I think I've taken all of these."

Cesar Ponce de Leon 14:25
Some people may not your audience, I went through like Myers Briggs test, and I don't even know how many to the disc profile and whatever you want to name it. Okay, so once I got this results, I'm like, "Okay, great. So I get the results. Now I start applying to every job that I can. And I started applying and applying in the conventional way, right that people do it all the time, right? Go on indeed.com. I'm gonna go to all these websites, and I'm just going to start applying to all of his jobs. And what that did for me, it actually was more frustrating because I wasn't getting any responses. I think I only made it to one interview and then that interview, which I was not prepared for, that they never called me back, I understandably enough, you know, I wasn't prepared for it. So they didn't call me back. So I spent most of my evenings applying to different jobs and got no results. And that kind of made me anxious. And a little bit upset, to say the least, because I was like, you know, I'm applying to all of these jobs. And I'm doing all of these things, and I'm not getting any responses whatsoever. And that's what actually made me feel stuck. It made me you know, kind of lose my confidence on but I was actually starting to believe of myself. So I was like, you know, I'm a great influencer and this or that, but started losing my confidence. I was like, you know, what, maybe I'm not good enough. I started feeling stuck. And what a lot of people go through is that when you read those job descriptions, if you want to be this or work for this position, right, you have to have five or 10 years of experience in doing this, this and that. And I'm like, I think I just graduated from college like two years ago.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:02
It's fairly demoralizing, or like, even if you've got 17 or 19 years experience, or I don't know, 10 years experience, or whatever it might be, like, it always seems like no matter what role you're looking at, it's like, "Ah, that's ridiculous. Why do I need 15 years of experience for that? Why would you ask for that? Like, I can totally do that." And then yeah, it's depressing. So that's where you were then, it sounds like before you came to us, and you've gotten all of this information about yourself, you've gone through every assessment under the sun. And then you've gone on the demoralizing sending off application train. Was that the point where you began to look for help? Or what happened after that?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 16:43
To answer the question, yes. But first and foremost, that's when I came to my... to the realization that I was like, "You know what, I can't do this alone. I can't do this alone. Because obviously, one of my biggest fears at that moment was that I've been working in the legal industry for such a long period of time, eight years of my life, I invested in this to not do it anymore. You know what, I wasted eight years. How am I going to transition to a new career when I have no experience in that career? How am I going to switch into a new job opportunity or even industry when there is really nothing to give? And I think that a lot of HTYCers right now, in that moment, but let me tell you, let me give you an encouragement that that's just a mental thing. Okay, once you pass that mental barrier, which that's what we discuss in the bootcamp, right. Once you pass the mental barrier, okay, you're able to do those things. Now, I'm not gonna say that you're just automatically one day in the morning, going to wake up with no fear, because one of the things that I did was doing things with fear, okay, but I did them with fear. And that is what got me results.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:43
That is such a great point. And I think for some reason, we all have this impression, I'm either going to be able to do these things, and I'm going to be 100% confident and I'm going to be able to do them with no fear or I'm not that type of person, so I just can't do them almost. Some reason we don't allow the latitude for the in between which is reality, which is exactly what you just said, like, you are scared, it is scary. And you also have to do the things, whatever the things are.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 18:10
Absolutely. Because obviously, you know, people have this assumption that okay, you know, if I stopped people right now, I'm not going to have the symptoms, okay, it's like a scar, when you have an scar, your scar ain't go and be gone tomorrow, okay, your scar is going to be there until it fully heals. But regardless, you know, you have the scar or not, we have to continue moving, we have to continue using your arm and moving forward. And that is something that I kind of learn at that moment, or going through the process that even if I'm scared of calling companies, calling you to hiring managers or whatever how to get it done. But before we get to that, the question was, you know, how you got to HTYC because at that mental barrier, huge mental barrier that we're talking about, did not give me peace, it gave me a lot of anxiety, stress. At one point I was so stressed that I was almost... I felt like I was detached, you know from society. I remember my birthday last year, to my birthday dinner, had to step away and go to the restroom. Because I was so afraid and paralyzed at the moment that somehow I started feeling detached. And when I started seeing those things in myself afterwards, I was like, you know what, I need help. This is obviously what's causing me all of these problems, staying stuck, paralyzed, you know, it's affecting my health. And I need to take a proactive step. Now, obviously, with that, I went ahead and researched you know, for a few coaching programs. And then one day I was in my car in that Friday, and I said, I think I search for how to change careers or wherever. And that's how I landed to your podcast. And it was so amazing. It was such a blessing because I feel like you were very real. Okay. And you had very good knowledge of the situation. You knew what you were talking about. And not only that, you know, I felt that I could relate with you and the team. And that was amazing because after that, I was like, I need to subscribe to this podcast, listening, listening, listening. And then at one point, I was like, you know what I think I need to communicate. First and foremost, one of the things that I always tell people is that if you're going through something you have to share, you know, your struggles, you have to out, don't keep them in, because if you keep them in, most likely, you're not going to take action, you're not going to be proactive. And that's just going to delay your process. And I think I needed to tell my problem to somebody who has experience in it. And that's what I did. That's how I reached out to you, I think I sent you a pretty long email, which God bless you, if you read the whole thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:39
I read the whole thing twice.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 20:41
That is something that I want to tell people is that one of the things that immediately got me more interested in going with you is that not only you took the time, because anybody could say, "Hey, thank you for your email, give me a call, or I'll give you a call. You know, when you have a few minutes." You actually responded, you actually broke down that email into small segments and recorded a video explaining the situations and that video was specifically designed for my situation, which that blew my mind. Because quite frankly, I've never seen anybody doing that before. And that actually got me motivated. Because I'm like, first and foremost, this guy, Scott, is taking his time to really hear my problem to understand what my problem is. And he's actually offering solutions on how he can help me transitioning from where I really like to be in the future. And that's why I decided to go and sign up with HTYC to help me making that transition.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:37
Well, I sure appreciate that feedback. And that means a lot to me, it's something that we are very committed to doing in a variety of different ways, we are very committed to making this really challenging process, I'm going to call it a process. Sometimes it's more like a bit of a hell than a process. But we want it to be personal because it is personal. And I'm super, super excited that you found a way too. Actually we're going to hire more people, because we get so many of those types of emails now that I'm finding it difficult to respond to those on my own. And many of our other team members are have been helping out. So it's a cool problem to have as the company in the podcast and everything has grown over the last number of years. So I'm so glad you found it that way. But I was super curious, though, because you went through this. I mean, just like you said, a year ago, you had your birthday dinner, and you felt completely detached at that point. And now you've been in this role for months. So in between, what do you feel like was one of the most difficult parts for you in making this transition and actually doing the work? Let's start there.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 22:47
Well, sure, I'll share some with you. One of them was overcoming fear, because obviously, even going through the process, I think that I guess with HTYC, you get certain weeks, you know, where you do different tasks, which by the way, are amazing tasks. But even when it's time to do the work of calling, hiring managers and getting a hold of people is, you still have the fear, you're like, oh, you still have it. And that kind of like pushes you to do other things. And to me, that was a challenge, overcoming my fears. But as I mentioned to you a few seconds ago, at one point, I had to come to the realization if I let my emotion drive me through this process, then I'm not gonna get anywhere. I had to come to the realization of saying, "okay, objectively speaking, I need to start taking actions and follow Scott's advice and recommendation and a need to be in communication with him to let him know what's going on." Because you did something great, okay. You overcome fear with good and the good that you have done is provided strategies to help me overcome those hiccups and issues that I was going through.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 23:59
I knew I was looking for something. I could tell you exactly what I didn't want but I had a really hard time to finding what I wanted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:06
Tanya struggled with what she wanted in her career and her life.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 24:09
It really came down to my need to find a career in which I, a: could be proud of, b: could develop myself and grow more with.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:21
Career change bootcamp helped her realize what she really wanted. And she went to work on figuring it out.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 24:26
Because you're going to get so much more out of it, based upon what you put into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:31
Tanya now had a plan to take action.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 24:34
It has brought me from a place of not knowing, a place of not being competent and being able to bring myself to others and to explain who and what I am.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:46
Having a great plan wasn't the only thing she gained from career change bootcamp though.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 24:50
Being able to present myself to my peers and having that confidence to be able to do that in a manner that resonated.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:58
Congratulations to Tanya on finding work that she loves with her dream company Wanderlust. If you also want to figure out what work fits you and find that fulfilling career that lights you up and gives you purpose, find out how career change bootcamp can help you step by step, go to happentoyourcareer.com and click on career change bootcamp. Or text MYCOACH to 44222, pause right now and we'll send over the application. Just text, MYCOACH to 44222.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 25:28
I can honestly say that I would not be where I'm at today without the HTYC crew.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 25:36
First and foremost, you understand that once you come to the realization of what fear does, okay, you get too stuck and paralyzed. And when I realized that was a problem, I decided to take action. Action in following you know, one of the strategies that you recommended, at least to me was, okay, you need to actually go to the hiring manager, or even the executive of the companies to be able to understand more of the position or to get your foot in the door and things like that. They don't even respond to my resume on indeed, how are they going to take my call. But the reality is completely different. But it was the fear that was blocking me. But once I said, you know what, I have to actually do something proactive to be able to get to the decision maker. And that is exactly what I've done. You provided amazing scripts, which people will know that because, you provide everything, brother, so that's why I am so thankful. And then obviously I tell her that script according to my needs,, and you know what, it went really got me the opportunity to bypass a lot of gatekeepers and get to the hiring managers or the decision makers. And that's how I landed at my job. I had to go to the decision maker of the company, who was, you know, the Chief Operations Officer, and let him know, "hey, by the way, I'm interested in your organization, I'm interested in the company. And obviously, I don't know too much about the industry. But I want to know, and I want to get to learn more of it" and keep it and say, "Hey, great! Thank you for letting me know." And then he asked me questions. "What is it that you like about the company? How did you get to even this decision?" He asked me very deep questions, which, by God's grace, I was able to respond to those, and then, Scott, you know what he did, he started following up with me and started giving me small projects to large projects. And that ended in a job, but I guess overcoming the fear of saying, "okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call the higher ups and just try to get myself through it, and talk to the people that make the decision."

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:33
So many people get stuck in those fears. And I definitely hear what you're saying about once you got to action, like that was the thing that helps with the fear, ultimately. But I'm curious, what was an example of one thing that worked for you to be able to take you from that place, you know, they're not even returning my calls, when I'm going through the regular process all the way to making the calls from them, and moving through that fear so that you could get to that action at least one or two times. Because after you started seeing that, hey, this is working. But there's... it seems like sometimes there's a big gap in between there. And I know it's different for everybody. What was one thing that worked for you to force yourself to take action, if you will?

Cesar Ponce de Leon 28:15
Well, first and foremost, I guess it was a process. You know, I wouldn't say that it was one thing particularly, but I know that when we were going through the bootcamp, we talked about relationships before resumes, right? But in order to send your resumes, I think that there is a step. I don't know if it's before or after that, but that was select an ideal companies that you'd like to work for. Okay. And establishing a relationship with those companies. And to me was, okay, how am I going to do that by send them an application, and they're just gonna throw it away? How can I stand out in a way that would be different, you know, unconventional, if you will?

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:56
Yeah, absolutely.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 28:57
What I've done particularly in that situation is based on your advice, right, was to get their email address, get their phone number, bypass the gatekeeper. To me in that situation, particularly, I actually attended a non profit organization. And I volunteered before but not as a high level volunteer. I never know who the execs work for the company. So I had to actually find out, we don't ask the questions to people, who is the one of the execs here and that's how I got to the Chief of Operations, who makes the decisions for their organizations. And so I had established myself, I had to introduce myself to this person, I had to start building a relationship, you know, asking him questions, personal, and that's something that I want to tell is that we have a corporate mindset that we have to ask, what do you do because it's all about personal love that's what it is. You have to be able to give love in order to get some love. And I think that's one of the things that I mentioned before in one of the comments for the HTYC bootcamp, in order for you to receive love, you got to give love. Okay? And love is authentic. You don't just go to somebody and say, "Hey, I love you. Can you please help me out with this?" I established that friendship, because this is actually one of the organizations that I love the most. And that's the one that I needed to prioritize, I then went ahead and told the person, "I've been attending and coming to this organization and done some volunteer, but I really love it. I love what you guys do to help people. I love the fact that you, I genuinely care for people, and that is something that I am very interested. And I don't know how that's going to happen. But I am here available for whatever you guys need." I didn't really say I'm looking for a position, but I said, I'm available for whatever you guys need. And I know that for some people, that's a hard thing to do. Because if they actually go up the ladder, and you reach to a certain level, sometimes you have to come to the realization that you may have to step down the ladder to be able to potentially get back up in the right field. Okay, but not a lot of people are willing to accept that. And that's what the question does sometimes, sometimes you may need to bring you down here to potentially get you up here in the field that feeds you particularly. So what I've done in this situation, I told the person, look, whatever you guys need me, I'm here, and I'm available. And guess what this person did, keep it in just this base me and say, "Okay, get away from here." He said, "Really, I thank you so much." And then we kept in touch. And then I told you that I was going to the Middle East for vacation. And I was intentionally thinking of him. And I went, and based on our conversations, I got him a small souvenir that was very meaningful. And then obviously, when I came back, I said, "Hey, I went to the Middle East, and I got these gift for you, I hope that you appreciate it, that you value it." And that gift obviously came as a result of listening of the things that this person told me. And he said, "Oh, thank you so much." And then he actually started following up with me and give me a small project. And here's the key, okay, he told me, "even though you told me that you're interested in even knowing that even volunteering the company, I still don't know you as much. And I want to get to know you. So we're gonna work on some projects together."

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:23
Very cool.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 32:23
A lot of companies, not only they look at your strength, but they also look at your character. Because character means a lot. I think that a lot of people see that 20% on top of the iceberg, but they don't see the 80% that goes underneath. And the 80% that goes underneath has to do with a lot of hard work. And that hard work is called character. If you have the character to be successful, you're going to be successful. And I guess that's what they were trying to see, you know, because you remember Scott, I volunteered for like three or four months. And then at one point, I was like, I'm just gonna just dump it of the truck, because I was already getting drained. But it was that volunteering persistence of being available for anything that landed to an opportunity. Now when people say, what did you do? You know, with those five months, I did everything, Scott. One day actually had me direct traffic outside. Okay. I was like, how can I help and they were like, "okay, just get a jacket." Okay, and no directing traffic outside with my orange sticks.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:23
I love it.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 33:23
At that moment, I was like, you have to be kidding me. Like, it's cold. I'm here directing traffic, I thought I was meant for more. But it was at that moment that I had a realization that maybe one of my issues was pride. And that in order to be able to succeed, I needed to be more humble in the tasks that were given to me. And that was a big turning point. Because after that, I said, okay, I'm just gonna... even if they haven't washed dishes, I'm going to go ahead and do that. The optimism that I'm doing something great, you know, and even if this opportunity doesn't work out, at least I pop or something that was meaningful, and beyond yourself. And I had to come to the realization of being optimistic about it, and know that a better opportunity was gonna come in spite of whatever the outcome was gonna be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:16
You know, what's super cool about that is, one, your point about finding for something that is meaningful to you, I think that I've seen so many people succeed, and so many people never even get close to opportunities, because they were or weren't willing to fight for something that was meaningful to them. And I think that looks completely different to different people. Now, I think that part was absolutely super cool. And I think the other parts, I just want to clarify, because I think there's danger here that some people can look at your situation and say, "Hey, do I just need to go and volunteer? Or do I just need to get out orange sticks and go drive traffic for some organization or something?" And people I think would be missing the point which is, that you were not just willing to fight for something that was meaningful for you. But also, you were willing to invest the time and energy into building a relationship with people that you wanted to be around.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 35:11
Yes, that's the heart behind. The heart behind this story is to let the audience know that if you want something, you have to be able to be willing to accept whatever challenges come. And secondly, obviously, to fight, because if you're stuck, and you're paralyzed, and you're going through the process, believe me, there were times that I wanted to quit, there were times that I did not really follow through the schedule, there were times that I was like, you know what, I want to clean my room, because that looks more appealing to me than doing what I'm supposed to be doing. But at the end of the day, do you really want to get out of there? And will you do whatever it takes to get out of there? And that's the heart behind, you know, just you have to be willing to do and like you say, right now you don't have to deal with traffic, you know, you don't have to do any of those things. But you have to be willing to accept some challenges, especially if you're trying to get into a huge company, or change of organization, or whatever it is, okay, or even start your own business, you have to come to the realization, there will be challenges, and you have to be up for them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:12
Yeah, absolutely. That is so cool. I am delighted as the right word, I don't use delighted often, but I'm so delighted that we got to, one, have this conversation, and, two, you got to share your story with the HTYC audience. At the beginning, you were talking about how just a little over a year ago, you found the podcast and you were flipping through it on your phone and everything like that, and then ended up subscribing. And now a year later, just a year later, you're on the podcast, and you've been in your role for four months. And that is such an amazing story. And I appreciate you taking the time and opportunity to actually share it with us.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 36:45
Yeah, I'm so excited right now. I mean, because I've never thought that would be in your podcast. Like being able to share my story, you know, and obviously, right now I'm into catalyst. I'm not going to say that I got to the perfect place, you know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:57
I don't think anybody gets to the perfect place necessarily. It's a continual revision.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 37:01
Absolutely. But what one thing that HTYC did help me is to affirming those values, you know, affirming the strengths, affirm on what is it that, you know, I'm looking for NBA season, because obviously things change. As you heard my testimony before I was in law school of power and things like that, you know, you had think that your values change over time, okay, and depending on your convictions as well, and what HTYC gave me is hope, to say, "I will be okay, that it is possible to change from one organization to another" one of the things that I was actually doing in going through the process, and I think I don't know if I told you this, we were in the process of buying a home with my family as well. And there were some conflicts, you know, in the whole transaction, and whatever. But I also got an offer as a marketing consultant for a large communications job, which when I got the job offer, the manager told me, "we know that you have zero experience. But one thing that we really loved about you was the fact we were able to relate with you, and that you are teachable. Okay, because there were other people coming with mass marketing degrees, and some even master's degree applying to the position, but we really like your personality." So to me, that was like mind blowing, because I was like, wow, but because of what I was going through that process, I had to turn it down. And I was volunteering with this other organization, which to me, that was my priority. But it is possible, okay, to change of industries, even if you don't have the degree, even if you don't have the major. A lot of companies are looking, for instance, the company that I'm working for was looking for character. Now this other company was looking for one of the characteristics of character as well, which is teachability. Are you going to be able to learn? Are you going to take on tasks and be willing to be okay, with, you know, the responsibilities? You know, are you willing to be molded into what they want to mold you to afford that position, particularly? So that's another one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:53
That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. And yeah, you did share that with me. And I totally actually forgot about it up until this moment. So that is behind the scenes, actually, I don't know if I've ever told you this. But one of the ways that we measure success, behind the scenes, for our students and our clients is, can we get people to the point where they have the capability to get job offers, and they also understand themselves well enough to be able to turn them down. And that is something that has happened so many times, when people go through this process, it boggles my mind. But at the same time, that is super cool. And that makes me happy, because that's one of the ways that we evaluate success for ourselves. So awesome job, and congratulations again.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 39:39
Thank you so much. Thank you for helping me. You and your team were very, very huge part of it. And I always tell people, when you go through situations, don't do it alone. Always seek for counsel of somebody who has experience and in this situation, you have experienced if you're, you know, just listening to the radio show, you're thinking oh, you know, I can apply, I can do this, you know, myself, you know, I'm just going to look for a couple of inspiration things from Scott. Call him, okay? Because you don't know, he actually works in strategies of helping you succeed through this moment. And he will hear you, and he'll go through the process with you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:14
I very much appreciate that. And I'm so glad that you trusted us to be able to take along for the ride and help throughout that process. And, hey, thank you so much, again, for taking the time to share your story. This is just super, super cool. This is gonna make my entire rest of the day.

Cesar Ponce de Leon 40:30
Well, he's making my day, by the way. I love helping you, thank you so much for helping me. And obviously one of the things that I like to say that I love to, you know, keep in contact with you. And obviously, now you know what I'm going to do every time you know, there's a time to transition to the next space, I know who to contact, and I'm going to keep you on speed dial.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:01
Hey, we put together a case study of exactly what Cesar did, to be able to make his change. And you can actually go to happentoyourcareer.com/186. And be able to download that case study along with the transcript of this podcast for this episode. Everything right there happentoyourcareer.com/186. And you can get every little thing that he did to be able to help him out and be able to make this change because it's pretty amazing change. Gotta admit that, right? So head on over there happentoyourcareer.com/186. And we have so much more coming up for you next week on Happen To Your Career. I want you to take a listen right now, for what we have in store for you.

Rebecca Maddox 41:45
Well, I came in thinking I was a math and science person coming in the college. And then after taking chemistry and calculus, I mean, these are pressure cooker kinds of classes, because they're meant to beat out all the weaklings. And then I say "weaklings" with quotation marks too. This was to weed out the people who are just, maybe you're waffling, and they're trying to just bring out the people who were completely and totally dedicated. And I remember getting back a grade on one of those tests. And it was I think, 50 something average and there was no curve. I thought, this is insane. Like average on this test is failing. I don't know what I'm doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:29
All that and plenty more next week on Happen To Your Career. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, go ahead and do so just hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you're listening to. And also, thank you so much. We have had even more people go over and leave us a five star rating in review. This one comes to us from iTunes, and this is Evangelia, she says, "Scott and his team and guests provide premium value in this podcast. There are so many great episodes here. And I tune in to sharpen my own side as a professional in the Career Development space." She's a career coach. And she says, "I recommend this to many of my clients, and to listen to this podcast and even send them direct links to those that I know are relevant. There are great people on this podcast and working behind the scenes for it." Thank you so much, Evangelia. Really appreciate that. And really appreciate all of you that have taken the time to share feedback with us in the rest of the world and left us five star ratings and reviews. This helps so many more people find the show and we get to get more people to work that they love, which is kind of the whole point here, right. All right. We'll see you next week on Happen To Your Career. Adios. I'm out.

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Get Unstuck, Find a New Career Path with Kathryn Minshew

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THERE ARE WAYS TO GET  UNSTUCK

KATHRYN MINSHEW

Starting the career search process can be intimidating, especially since the first thing any job search website asks for is WHAT? Like you’re supposed to know what job title you want in the first place?

When you don’t know what career path you want to take, the process is not only hard to get started, it can be paralyzing when you don’t have all of the answers. Just thinking about a career change causes stress, anxiety, frustration, and fear to rise inside many people because the majority feel stuck and unsure of what to do first.

But, there’s a way to get unstuck.

You have to be willing to change your mindset and approach your career change differently than you have before.

If you’re willing to do that, all you need now it to make the time and energy to get you through the journey.

Below, we’ve outlined tips from Kathryn Minshew, CEO and Co-Founder of The Muse, a career discovery platform that “puts the human at the center” and helps over 50+ million people a year in their career search.

Now, pull out a notebook and let’s get you started down the right path to get you unstuck and find your new career path.

HOW-TO GET UNSTUCK

Also known as getting out of the Figure It Out Limbo

STEP ONE: Layout your list of values

Ask yourself what you value most in a career.

Do you value your independence, creativity, management-style, flexibility in schedule? Or maybe you’re the type that values prestige, compensation, stability, or career advancement? Whatever it is that you value, write it down and make a list of what is most important because this will help you get closer to determining your new career path.

STEP TWO: Look to your friends, family, and co-workers for their honest opinion

Ask five friends/family/co-workers for their professional observation of when they have seen you at your happiest? What kind of work have they seen you do that absolutely lights you up?

The people closest to you only want to see you succeed and it could be anything from planning and scheduling parties with friends and family, to executing and leading projects.

Getting a more distant, outsider opinion in what kind of environment you thrive in will be beneficial in putting together the framework of your next career.

STEP THREE: Research and assessing the variety of paths against your values

You’ll want to take your list of values from STEP ONE and the opinions that you’ve gathered in STEP TWO and do some research to come up with a list of careers that best match your findings from STEP ONE and STEP TWO.

This part is similar to the scientific method.

Take your theory of career paths and test them against the career values that you’ve listed in STEP ONE and see how well they work. Your goal is to be able to approve or disprove the career paths that you’ve narrowed down for yourself.

The important part of this step is being able and willing to disprove the potential careers that you’ve chosen for yourself.

Once you’ve gone through the steps, you’re now able to take a closer look at the career path that best fits your needs and your values.

Now you’re ready to move on to the “Test Drive” method.

STEP FOUR: Test-Driving Potential Career Paths

What does is mean to “test-drive” your career path?

Essentially, you’re just dipping your toe in the pool of the career you’ve got your heart set on before committing to high-diving into the the deep end.

HERE ARE EXAMPLES OF “TEST-DRIVING” A CAREER FROM KATHRYN (FROM MOST INTENSE TO LEAST):

1. An internship – Whether you’re just getting out of school or are in-between jobs, an internship requires at least a 3-month dedication, but you’re in the trenches at that point getting to know the job position (hopefully at a company and industry you’re looking to get into)

2. Volunteering – Like an internship, you can volunteer your skills for a certain period of time to get that “on-the-job” feel at an organization of your choice. Volunteering is a great choice, since most organizations will let you do the work if you can outline your skills tailored to their needs.

3. Informational Interviews – This is your chance to ask all of the questions about the job. Ask the good, but also ask about the bad. Ask about the parts of the job that are mundane, tedious, and not so glamorous.

4. On-the-job Shadowing – If you can find an organization that gives the green light and you’ve got the time, shadowing someone throughout their daily routine is a great way to see it in action. Ask those questions and get all the information about the position as you can!

YOU FEEL LIKE IF YOU SWITCH CAREERS, YOU’VE LOST EVERYTHING – LOST EVERYTHING YOU WORKED FOR, YOU LOST THAT EXPERIENCE, [LIKE] IT WAS WASTED […..] NOT IF YOU FOCUS ON WHAT I HAVE LEARNED, WHERE HAVE I GROWN, WHAT SKILLS HAVE I DEVELOPED.

 KATHRYN MINSHEW

The career search process is more of an endurance run and not a sprint. This is a BIG life change that we’re talking about.

Once you have done the work of laying out your values and following the steps that Kathryn has mapped out for you to narrow down your new career path, don’t be afraid to test it out. When you’re looking for a new career, it’s definitely something that you want to be sure that you can sustain.

If you need help getting your career search started or need a little more direction before you start testing out your potential career paths, we’ve got the solution for you! Just apply for our coaching and we’ll set you up with one of our career coaches that can help you highlight your experiences and frame them in a way that will lead you down a more structured career search.

Head on over to www.happentoyourcareer.com/coaching to work with one of our coaches and figure out your new career path!

At the end of the day, if you know deep in your heart that this is not the right path, it is easier than ever before to change to a new path. NOT easy, but easier than before and possible.

-Kathryn Minshew
Guest: KATHRYN MINSHEW

TheMuse.com

https://www.kminshew.com/

The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career

Social Media
Twitter: @kmin
Kathryn on Linkedin

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Scott Barlow: How do you describe what you do these days?

Kathryn Minshew: That is a great question. The main thing I do is work on The Muse. I like to describe The Muse as people’s trusted and beloved place to navigate your career. I started the company five and a half years ago and we serve over fifty million people every year across the United States. Over 700 companies use us for employer branding, hiring, and to reach great people. The idea for The Muse was what if you created a career platform that put the human at the center that helped people figure out what they want to do and go get it; the job, promotion, or negotiate the raise. Then help them succeed in the career they have, be more fulfilled, acquire skills, and develop relationships at the office. After several years working at TheMuse.com my co-founder and I decided to wrap it up into a book which comes out on April 18th.

Scott Barlow: I have a copy and have read through most of it. I really enjoyed it. I cherry picked some of the parts that I was particularly interested in and was pleasantly surprised. We will get into all of that. I’m curious about your career first and want to dive into it because you have an interesting story of how you got to here. You have The Muse now but it wasn’t always that way. Right? You started your career in a drastically different place. You thought you’d go some other directions but it didn’t turn out how you thought. Where does this start for you?

Kathryn Minshew: I grew up in Washington D.C. We moved there when I was eleven. I decided quickly that my career was going to be in Foreign Service or international relations. As I grew up I was absolutely in love with the idea of being an ambassador, Foreign Service Officer, an international women of mystery. I don’t know if you watched the show “Alias” but Jennifer Garner played this badass heroin that spoke a bunch of languages and that was as comfortable kicking ass and working for the CIA as she was at a high end cocktail party. I remember thinking I could do that, that could be my career. It didn’t work out like that which I am grateful for.

After studying political science, learning French and Turkish, and traveling I had an opportunity working at the United States Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus on the Regional Security Team. It was an incredible experience but not what I expected. I realized that the idea of a Foreign Service career didn’t match the reality. It set me into a massive period of career exploration. I thought about different paths, skill sets, and functions and spent a lot of time on job boards. I ended up taking a job at McKenzie Company as a consultant. I learned a lot but it wasn’t the right long term path. As I was thinking about what was next it struck me how insufficient a lot of the existing career tools were. Here is one example from when I was thinking about business strategy jobs. I went to a major job board. They all start with a giant blank search box which is frankly an intimidating place to start.

Scott Barlow: It’s depressing.

Kathryn Minshew: Exactly, because unless you are exactly sure what title you want it’s a terrible place to begin. I had no idea what to type in the box. Business strategy director is what I entered. The first job that came back was “assistant store manager” at 7-Eleven in Secaucus New Jersey. I remember thinking, you have got to be kidding me. This is ridiculous. It’s from that experience and the whole host of experiences that I started thinking about the concepts and ideas that would become The Muse. We didn’t get it right the first time, but my co-founder Alex and I essentially started a project that eventually become a company. It was a career advice related community, a blog platform for professional women. It didn’t really work out and it was ten months that was some of the hardest of my life but we learned core lessons. When we launched The Muse, Alex, Melissa and I, in 2011, we were ready. It’s been a wild ride. The timing was perfect because people were looking for what we were offering.

Scott Barlow: Let me ask you a few things. Let me go back to Cyprus. What were some red flag indicators that happened while you were there that got you thinking it wasn’t what you were after?

Kathryn Minshew: I was aware intellectually that a lot of Foreign Service work is fairly bureaucratic. There are a lot of people involved and progress is measured in inches. The reality of that set in while in Cyprus. I loved my co-workers and boss but they kept saying this field requires incredible amounts of patience. I realized I’m very action oriented. I like trying, experimenting, and failing and you can’t do that in international diplomacy. It’s challenging to try and fail because the consequences are on a large stage and trust is built over decades not just years, months, or days. Something else that struck me were the possibilities for advancement based on age. When you look at the State Department for example, if we are negotiating a trade deal or policy agreement or defusing an international crisis with counterparts in the United Kingdom, Russia, wherever it is: What would the perception be on the other side if you send a twenty-five, twenty-eight, or thirty-two year old in a senior position? It might not be good.

It was frustrating because I realized it doesn’t matter how smart, or talented you are, or how hard you work there are certain positions you won’t be able to serve in especially in a front facing capacity until you are a certain age. Not because your abilities or the intrinsic desires of the State Department but simply because if another country is going to make an assumption based on your age that has to be taken into consideration. I could go on but I had colleagues telling me, look you seem smart and driven don’t join the State Department right away. Do something else first. Go join the private sector for ten years then come back in your mid-thirties and you’ll have a great career here then.

I remember thinking that is great advice, thank you. It makes sense and I realized that there are a lot of places you can climb, move, or take on positions more quickly. Age is a factor, because there are times still, and I’m in my early thirties, where people say I seem young. Certain fields have structural challenges, more than others. That was one that might be a challenge for me.

Scott Barlow: You looked at yourself and said okay, some of these things aren’t lining up, a few are missing. You chose to pay attention to that. I see and have talked to so many people that know that and are aware of it. You’ve even sent us many people from the muse, many are listening right now and they haven’t acted on that. Question one is why did you chose to act on that, maybe because you are action oriented, any other reasons? What can other people do to not ignore that?

Kathryn Minshew: I’ll take them in reverse. I think a helpful activity is to look ahead at your boss and your boss’s boss. People that are in your path three, five, ten years down the road and ask yourself do I really want that job and am I willing to do what it takes day in and day out to get there. That can be eye opening because the career can seem glamorous from afar but when you are in the trenches you aren’t sure it’s where you want to end up or if the day to day requirements are worth getting there.

For me personally, I think I was fairly willing to accept that maybe I’d been wrong. Many people fall into that trap. They want something so bad, they work hard towards it then they finally get it and realize it isn’t right. What is hard is you feel a little like an idiot. I know from personal experience. I’d been telling people it was my goal. I had scarified and got to step one and there was a clear path ahead of me and there are voices in our culture that say you owe it to yourself to keep going or it would be embarrassing to stop now. I’m the kind of person that ignores those and says it’s better to get off the wrong path now. You feel like if you switch careers you have lost everything you’ve worked for, you lose the experience, and feel that it was wasted. People have said that to me, like aren’t you afraid you wasted all that time, especially when I was in the thick of it.

The experiences have informed so much of what I’ve done. You focus on what have I learned, where have I grown, and what skills have I developed. It’s not a loss, but it’s still hard.

What we wanted to do with the book “The New Rules of Work”, and themuse.com is to help people feel more supported and comfortable making those big changes. It is scary but if you know it’s not the right long term path it’s better to make a move sooner rather than later. The exception to that is if you can say, if I invest two more years I can get to x point and that will generally allow me to make a lateral move to y where I want to go. That is reasonable.

In the book we encourage people to look at your values, not what your parents and friends want you to do. Does the path line up? For me there was more I wanted from my career. It wasn’t an easy process. I sat on my coach for hours with books, papers, and charts. I was trying to get structure around the decision. I cried a couple times. At the end of the day if you know in your heart that it isn’t the right path it is easier than ever before to change to a new path. Not easy, but easier than before, and possible. That was part of the experience for me that made me passionate about helping other people make the same change.

Scott Barlow: Here’s what I love about that. And a little behind the scenes. Kathryn has been such a trooper because her voice is waning and she is still pushing through. You said in the book, “One of the new rules you prescribed is your education and skills gave you the experiences that brought you were you are today, but your past is a platform to spring forward from and not a ball and chain.” The opposite side of that is that many of us say if we change now that we are losing everything that was put in place that we worked for, that we have emotion invested in. When I read that I thought of sunk cost theory. All the emotion that goes into that causes you to make decisions that aren’t necessarily good for you going forward just because what has happened in the past or what you perceived you put in. I love that you are releasing us from that versus trying to say you must keep going down that track.

Kathryn Minshew: Absolutely. Sometimes it just helps to have someone tell you there is another way. It doesn’t make it easy but it is possible to take a foundation of experiences, learnings, education, goals and change to another path and goal. Leverage what you have learned and use it and look back in five or ten years and say I don’t know if I’d be as good as what I do now if I didn’t have those experiences in another field that others may think are tangential or wasted.

Scott Barlow: Let me ask you a little about the going forward piece. Like you I spent hours and hours sitting with books, charts, and excel spreadsheets. That is the type of person I am. We have that in common. What can someone do if they are really struggling? How can they get started if they are in this figuring it out limbo?

Kathryn Minshew: This is the focus of the first third of the book. I’ll try to summarize it. First start to layout a list of your values. We have a process called The Muse Method. At its core it’s about what do you value? For example, a person who values autonomy, independence, flexibility, and creativity will have a different ideal path than someone who values prestige, compensation, and stability. All of these things can be good but you have to ask what is most important to you. You can use your friends, family and colleagues to help. I love suggesting finding five people you respect, at least two to three you’ve worked with closely and ask them when they have seen you most focused and happy. What sort of activities do you feel I enjoy and lights me up professionally? You don’t have to worry about a path.

I loved reading about international relations, history, and discussing politics. But those aren’t the functions you play in a day to day job. Is it interacting with others, having control of what I do and when, or diving deep into numbers and coming up with insights from the analysis others haven’t seen? You can start thinking about yourself but also getting outside input to understand tasks and functions you enjoy and values that are important.

We help people run through a method of researching and assessing paths against those values. It’s basically the scientific method. You have a hypothesis and you have to go collect information to prove or disprove it. You have to be able to disprove. You can say I want to be a branding consultant. But using Alex as an example, she wanted to do this but when she sat down with someone at a major global consumer package goods organization they talked about how the team had spent time deciding between twenty shades of blue and she realized that would drive her up the wall. It’s not that the other person loved that part of the job but they could deal with it.

I think there is a theory that the good things are good generically but you want to think about the bad parts. What is the negative part that you are okay with? That you say it’s not my favorite but I get it versus what would really hurt and hold you back. There is a more complicated process in the book. I hope those tips help people see there are ways to get unstuck.

Scott Barlow: I’m curious about the values piece for you. What are some of the biggest values for you as you’ve progressed through your career even back in Cyprus or as you made progression doing some of the projects, and had growth where it didn’t work out as you anticipated? What values did you learn about yourself? What was most important to you along the way?

Kathryn Minshew: First, my day to day matters intensely. It’s not necessarily true for everyone. Some of the people I worked with at the State Department or World Health Organization in Geneva were able to be fixated on the larger mission of their work and organization that could obscure day to day frustrations. For me, I am action oriented, and I love to feel like things are happening moving and being pushed forward. A startup is a good fit for that reason. I love to feel like I’m constantly learning so when I do the same thing over and over again it starts driving me up the wall even if I enjoyed it in the past. I valued a career where my day to day would vary, where I would be constantly pushed and stretched, and made a little uncomfortable. I really value autonomy and control meaning that I will work ninety hours a week without complaint for The Muse but I like to know that I decide when I am working. I’ve been frustrated in previous roles when someone said I’m going to need you to stay in the office until this time or when I thought I was going to get out early and someone else arbitrarily decided I needed to stay late. It’s one thing when I decide or if the work is important and needs done. That is very easy, but I’m probably less patient than a normal person at feeling like someone else is trying to control how I spend my time and energy.

Scott Barlow: So no, “I’m going to need you to come in on Saturday” for you?

Kathryn Minshew: I can make myself come in on Saturday but it’s hard to hear it from your figurative Office Space style boss.

Scott Barlow: I’m the same way. It’s probably how I ended up in CEO roles in the past too. I can identify with that. A couple other things. You mention in the book, I’m flipping to the page, you mention test driving your career paths and I wanted to dig into that a little because I think it’s incredibly important. We get this hypothesis and people latch on to it like it is the thing and I’ll be awesome but they get there and are depressed because it wasn’t what they thought it would be. A different approach is required. You prescribe that too so what do you mean by test driving and how do people start doing that?

Kathryn Minshew: it depends on the career path but there are different ways to dip your toe in the pool before you face plant into the new career. It’s so important because once you are in it, it is harder to make a change. Not impossible but it’s better to know ahead of time. Let me start with the most intense to the easiest paths. On the more intense spectrum, if you are a student or at an age or place where it still makes sense, interns can be useful because they are temporary. No one will look at you like you were there too short of a time because it’s expected. It’s a low risk way but you sacrifice some comp. I encourage people if they aren’t sure to go that route because you get a trial period.

Similarly one of the stories we tell in the book, one of our friends was interested in moving into social media, she was active personally and thought it might leverage a lot of creativity that she didn’t have in her current job. She started by finding a small business or nonprofit and asked if she could work with them for three months on their social presence. She showed examples of what she would do. Someone gave her the chance. Put out a picture for a business on how you can help them. She found doing it nights, weekends, and on her lunch hour that some things she found were unexpected that she didn’t love. At the same time if she did decide to pursue it she has experience while not quitting her full time paying job. That is an intense way to test drive a new career.

Some less intense ways are informational interviews. Sit down with someone in your path and ask what they do during a day, what sort of people would love the job, who would hate it, and what are some of the worst things they deal with. What does it take to overcome those? These interviews can be valuable but you have to focus not just on the positive but on the grind and tough stuff. The right person will help you. When we started profiling employees on themuse.com and company profiles I wanted to get the feel of taking an informational interview online. If you are looking for an example, say you want to switch into sales or engineering, we have thousands of employees profiled online and you can listen to their videos if you don’t have someone directly to talk to. The combination of in person and online research can give you a sense of what a career is like. Go past the high level and hear about, for sales, the day to day rejection and decide if you are okay with that.

Some businesses will let people shadow for a day or week. If you have flexibility do that and step into the shoes of a future career. I know it seems like a lot of work and not everyone can do it. It depends on your current role, financial situation, and where you are in your career. One of the reasons I encourage people to think about it is the time spent up front - a week, couple days, a few months - if it saves you making a wrong move it’s a good thing.

Scott Barlow: I really appreciate that. We spend a lot of time on our show and company teaching these pieces. That is phenomenal. Two more quick questions. I appreciate you practicing what you preach even when it is hard, losing your voice and all. Kudos for practicing that.

Kathryn Minshew: I hope people know I don’t normally sound like this.

Scott Barlow: You still sound decent. No one would probably know if I hadn’t said anything. That is a dovetail into the next thing. The book is “The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career.” There is good stuff in it. One off the wall question. I know you have seen a lot of changes in terms of what work even looks like, and will look like, and with that we’ve seen how you go about getting work and how it changes and the new rules of work. How long do you think before these rules continue to evolve?

Kathryn Minshew: I honestly believe they are evolving every day. There are major changes with each new technology. Google Hangouts and Skype are used differently today than three or five years ago. As the next things develop and generation Z enters the workplace it will change. My personal take is generally within a three year window, there is 80% consistency because people are resistant to deeper change. You can assume that if something held true two years ago, especially around human to human interactions, there are at least 80% of the bulk hold truth today. It is important to be aware of how things change. It’s interesting. As we looked at collecting the wisdom, stories, and experiences from the last five and a half years from The Muse and putting it into the book, a single point in time that people will sit down with on their couches, we had to be cognizant of that. My plan is to update the book regularly and we have the website to keep up to date. Anyone that thinks the rules of the workplace are changing isn’t swimming with the tide.

Scott Barlow: Yeah. Completely agree. I love that you are making those plans to update the book and have other methods to help people keep pace with it. Way to go. Virtual pat on the back because you are in New York and I’m on the opposite end of the country. Go check out the book. I’ve read through a bunch of it. I cherry picked but what I read was awesome. I highly recommend it. Where can people find it and find out more about you and the muse?

Kathryn Minshew: The book is “The New rules of Work”. It’s a modern book to navigate your career. You can hopefully find it everywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Project Indy, or your local book store. If they don’t have it ask for the manager and ask them to carry it. Hopefully they will. That is a great way for book sales so if you do it I will wave and high five you from New York. We are launching nationally and expect to be at every major retailer. We have a page on themuse.com/newrules that has excerpts, worksheets, and more information. For me I am on Twitter @kmin. Go to themuse.com and we would love to hear feedback, have you engage with the site, and leave a review for the book or email me. So far the feedback has been good so crossing my fingers and toes. Some of the best things we learn are from the people who read The Muse and the book and push us on our thinking. I’d love for people to engage and let me know what they think.

Scott Barlow: I really appreciate you taking the time and making the time and coming on the show sharing everything from test driving to figuring it out and everything in between. Thanks so much Kathryn.

Kathryn Minshew: Thank you. I’ve had a lot of fun and I’m glad we could do this.

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What is debt holding you back from?

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Alyssa joins Scott on the mic to give us a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what the road to freedom from debt was really like for the Barlows.  Scott and Alyssa paid off over $130,000 in debt over a period of 3 and a half years.  They take us through their journey, from accumulating the debt to what finally sparked them to make a change.

Think you don’t make enough money to get out of debt?

Can’t seem to see how it could be possible for you?

Alyssa says it’s all about setting your sights on the bigger goal and keeping that goal in mind when times get tough.  There will be sacrifices to make and tough decisions along the way, but if you are pursuing what’s meaningful to you, you will do what it takes to get there.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:
  • How easy it is to fall into debt in the first place!
  • The importance of aligning with your spouse on common goals when working your way out of debt
  • The power of knowing what you want – you can accomplish anything once you’ve got clarity in your goals!

For more information on finances and career:

For more information on how to ask for (and get) a raise at work:

Also mentioned in the episode:

How to Pay Off Six Figures of Debt – Alyssa’s post on Classy Career Girl

Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey – one of Scott’s top-recommended career books!

GET IN TOUCH WITH US!

Email Scott@happentoyourcareer.com

Come join us over on Facebook in our Work You Love OneStop group!  Get the support, information, and encouragement you need!

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Scroll back to top

Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!