Making An Amazing First Impression (On Purpose) With Vanessa Van Edwards

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Studies show that people make a first impression in less than 7 seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to make a great impression – especially when you are having a job interview.

So what can you do to use those 7 seconds (or less) to your advantage?

Vanessa Van Edwards, author of “Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication”, shares exactly how you can do this.

What you’ll learn

  • The importance of knowing what first impressions you’re making
  • How to give off the right cues to show charisma and trustworthiness
  • The science backed research that Vanessa uses in her new book
  • First impressions and how your LinkedIn profile is perceived by others

Success Stories

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Vanessa Van Edwards 00:01
And the way that I want you to think about cues is like recipes. So there are 96 cues, it does not mean that you should use all 96 of them. In fact, that would be like trying to put everything into the same dish. It's actually much better to think about, what cues are you already naturally using that you want to leverage or level up or pump up, or reason or purposely great? Those are your staples.

Introduction 00:28
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:52
You're on Happen To Your Career. We've had hundreds of episodes, about how to set yourself up for success during the career change process from way before the actual interview to where you're leveraging psychology, to where you're doing test drive conversations, and everything that happens in between all the way to negotiation, you have one good chance to make a wonderful impression, at least the first time around. In fact, studies show that people make a first judgment in less than seven seconds. That doesn't give you a lot of time to make a great impression. So the question is, what can you do to use those seven seconds or even less to your advantage?

Vanessa Van Edwards 01:38
In those first few milliseconds of someone seeing you, they are getting very quick, but very simple cues, just looking at your picture, looking at your gestures, your expression, your posture, your colors, but they're also very quickly looking at the first few words of your headline. So just like we talked about the verbal cues for your first 10 word editor mouth, you also want those first 10 words in your headline to matter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:59
That's Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa's the lead investigator at the science of people and is renowned for teaching science backed people skills to audiences around the world, including at South by Southwest, which I've been to in the past and love, MIT, CES, not only is she a speaker and researcher, but Vanessa is also a national best selling author, including her newest book "Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication". In this book, which I've read, I love, she talks about the tiny signals we send to others 24/7 through our body language, facial expressions, word choice, vocal inflection, and how they have a massive impact. And how we and our ideas come across. Our cues can either enhance our message or undermine it. So today, let's dive into the conversation with Vanessa. Here's her describing her early career trajectory.

Vanessa Van Edwards 02:58
It seems like if you look at the trajectory of my career, it seems very random. But when I look back, I know there were specific reasons what I did each thing that led me to be able to do what I do now, which is weird. Like, I have a weird, weird job. When I was asked, you know, in elementary school, or even in college, "what do you want to do with your life?" You know, YouTube wasn't a thing. There was no such thing as YouTube, there was no such thing as like writer meets vlogger, like, it just wasn't a thing. So I didn't realize that I was actually building lots of skills that got me to here. But the biggest one is when I always have had a natural inclination towards language. So in high school, I took Spanish and French and it seemed very easy. For me, math and science were okay, but wow, I just love those languages. And then in college, someone said, oh, you should take the hardest language.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:47
Well, hold on. Why did you feel that was a good idea at that time?

Vanessa Van Edwards 03:51
Why? That's it. Why did I think that was a good idea? Because someone was like, oh, you know, "if you are able to add Chinese, Mandarin to your repertoire, you'll get a job anywhere." I thought it would be great to get a job anywhere. So I enrolled in Mandarin classes and loved it, like immediately loved it. So I ended up majoring in Chinese International Studies. I actually think the reason I was supposed to do that was because I ended up meeting my husband studying abroad in China. I study abroad in China, and I met my husband. He was also studying abroad from George Washington University. We fell in love, 15 years later, you know, we're still together. We have a baby. We got married five years later. So I think that path was like a romantic path. But here's where I think the language piece ended up being important is I was very good at languages, and at this time, I was also very, very awkward. And it was that horrible time in your career, where you're going on tons of interviews, you're trying to network, you're doing those information sessions, you're trying to make long lasting friendships, like, at that point, I was doing the most people in everyday that I've ever done, and I was quite bad at peopling, I'm a recovering awkward person. So it's very hard for me to process lots of social information. I also have a problem where I misinterpret neutral cues as negative. So I always would, like, my joke with my husband, I come home from a party and I'm like, "Is she mad at me?", "Does everyone hate me?", "Did I do something wrong?". He's like, "No. What are you talking about?" So because of that, and this was in 2005, I remember specifically, I watched a very big interview at the time, which was Larry, on Larry King Live, Lance Armstrong went on saying that he had never doped. Now, of course, we know later that he definitely had it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:29
We all know how that ends.

Vanessa Van Edwards 05:30
Massive and open skin. I remember watching that interview. And he tells this massive lie, right, like huge lie, and then lip presses– presses his lips together. And I remember watching thinking, "what was that?" No, I didn't realize the time that was the very first cue I ever consciously spotted. And I thought, as I started doing the researchers, as I start looking into like, you know, nonverbal textbooks and body language research, and I was like, "Oh, it's a lip presses." Lip presses, kind of, seen as a universal sign of withholding or holding back. And I wondered, "What if I could study cues like I study foreign languages?" You know, in foreign language, the very first thing you do is you learn vocab words, and then you begin to put them together. And so I thought, "Well, I don't speak people. I speak English, but I don't speak people." I really have a hard time misinterpret facial expressions. I don't know what to do with my hands when I talk. I have no idea how to submit...present myself as confident. What if I could look at confident people, and catalog all the cues they use down to the gesture? And so that was the start in 2005 of this research, where I slowly started to catalog every cue that humans send. And that's what a cue is a social signal. Little did I know that 17 years later, I would have a book called "Cues". And that would be my entire career. That was a very fast forward, I'm happy to dig into, and that was sort of the seed that accidentally got me into this path.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:50
What else happened along the way that really helped to cement that for you that really helped to confirm that you were on that right path?

Vanessa Van Edwards 07:00
I think pretty early on, I had distinguished there are two kind of types or buckets of cues, there's positive cues that highly charismatic, compelling people use. And there's negative cues that whether they're athletes, or politicians or business leaders, they have these negative cues when they're lying, or they're hiding something. So okay, very simply, I want to show less negative cues, and I want to show more positive cues. So I took a video of myself giving a presentation. And I was like, let's see, look at the cues I use, and let's see what language I'm sending. And it was so interesting, because it was like my little transcript. I had a little transcripts, and I was writing down all the cues next to my transcript. I'm very scientific really guy, I learned in a very black and white way. So I had a transcript of my talk. And then I was writing the cues in the margin. And it was like, negative cue, negative cue, negative cue, negative cue, positive cue, negative, negative, negative, negative negative, I looked at this sheet, and of course, it was color coded, because, you know, that I like color coding. It was all red. By the way, that is the reason why cue is red it's because I had too many negative cues. And I had no idea. I had no idea that I was sending all excuses. I worked really hard on that presentation, right? Like I had prepped the perfect slides, I had great answers. I had great statistics and didn't really matter, right? Like even I had this perfect presentation, I was giving away all of my, I didn't know it at the time, I was giving me all my competence. That was a big aha moment for me to realize, I need to take control of my cues. But there is no accidental, right? And that's a lot. That's a big mistake of people who are very smart, is they show up, they think my ideas can speak for me, right? I have such good ideas, my ideas will speak for themselves. And then we get into the room and we wonder why people are on their phones. We wonder why we don't get called back into the interview. We wonder why we're interrupted or not respected or not paid enough. I know, it's because we are accidentally sending cues that don't serve us.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:50
We'll talk about that for probably more than a few minutes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 08:55
I'm ready.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:57
Here's what I'd love to focus in on. I can't tell you the number of conversations that I've had over the last 20 years working as an HR leader, working in recruiting, going into interviews myself, you mentioned interviews and as an example, a very visible example that I think almost everyone can point to in some way or another where it's a situation where you don't necessarily get immediate feedback. Sometimes you do, sometimes you have other people's cues. And sometimes you have, you know, someone expressing their intentions immediately. But a lot of the times, it's a we're ending it and we're gonna find out. And that creates somewhat precarious situation where you don't necessarily know how you did or why you did and so many people I've encountered over the years are surprised when they think something went really really well. And then lo and behold, you know, they came in the second place, or they came in, not getting the job at all, whatever it might be. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see in, let's just say that type of situation, that type of personal interaction where you want to allow people to like you because people are basing a decision at least partially, maybe subconsciously on that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:12
Yes. Okay. So first of all this has happened to you, you are not alone. So this happened to you were you think that date went great, that meeting went awesome, that interviewer went well, and then all of a sudden, you realize you didn't get the job, they didn't call you back, they didn't write back, you are not alone in that. And the biggest mistake that I see actually is a mistake that smart people make, very successfully make this mistake, which is they under cue, they under signal. So here's why this happens. You have an interview and negotiation pitch, okay? And you're really excited, you prepare, you know, you prepare answers, you script out stories, you prepare for the hardball questions, you remembered the good questions, you remember their name, right? You think a lot about the verbal and verbal cues are important, right? That is one area of cues. The problem is, is when you are so focused on the idea, when you are so focused on delivering answer, especially like agenda, I think a lot of very smart, organized people, this was me– I had an agenda in my head I had to get through, right. And so you walk into the interview, and you're so focused on the agenda and some of the memorization and memorization can actually kill charisma, that you're just like deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, which means you're under signaling with your body, you're under signaling with your face, you're delivering with a vocal power that's memorized, right? So if I have a memorized answer, it's going to sound scripted, it's going to sound inauthentic, even if it isn't, because you've rehearsed it so many times, you rehearse the emotion out of it. So a myth that people have is that to be powerful or impressive, they should under a moat, they should be stoic and hide all their cues. That is so far from the truth. Highly charismatic people are actually very expressive. They're just purposefully so. They know how to express warmth and trust, they know how to express competence and productivity, they know how to express a disagreement or underwhelmed with them something they don't like. And so that is the biggest thing you will make is they under signal because they don't know what to do with their signals.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:00
That's really interesting. And I gotta tell you, this has been really kind of fascinating. I read the book in the last three days or so here.

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:07
Whoa, cool!

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:09
It was wonderful. And I will tell you, first and foremost, that my favorite part was actually, here's a little teaser for everyone because we won't have time to talk about everything. But the part where you decoded the Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. And that was fascinating, partially because I'm a fan of, you know, Leonardo da Vinci's work and some fact, yeah, let's be honest. Also, it was really, really fascinating to look at it in a completely different light. But the other bigger reason, this has been interesting for me is I got a concussion last Sunday playing ice hockey. So I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. But what has happened is because my brain is healing, all of the cues that I do on autopilot on a normal given day are actually more challenging. So it was really interesting to go through the book, and then in some ways, relearn many of the things that I've been doing for years and years, and now they're actually hard. My wife and I went to a group dinner last night, and it was a struggle for me to do some of the cues that I would normally do on autopilot. So here's my question for you, you know, as people are beginning to pay attention to this, maybe for the first time, maybe after a concussion, I don't know, whenever they need to, how would you advise them to start practicing this?

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:31
It's interesting, because I wonder if that almost gives you a little bit of a blank slate, right, like to retest and retry cues is kind of like an interesting way to think about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:39
It's been a weird experiment.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:40
Yeah. Like that's like a very cool experiment and went great timing with the book, not horrible timing for a concussion.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:47
It's never a great time to get to that concussion, but if that would be, you know, about that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:52
So there are 96 cues in the book. And the way that I want you to think about cues is like recipes. So there are 96 cues, it does not mean that you should use all 96 of them. In fact, that would be like trying to put everything into the same dish. It's actually much better to think about what cues are you already naturally using. So hopefully, as you're reading, and this is what people have been telling me as they read, which is so great is "oh, I didn't realize I was doing that cue and that was serving me." What cues are you're already naturally using that you want to leverage or level up or pump up, reason or purposely great? Those are your staples, right? Like those are like the favorite things, your favorite foods you like to cook with. They tend to be a lot of your dishes. Great. The next thing we think about is, like, what are the dishes that sound really good? So what are the cues as you're reading, you're like, "Ooh, I like that cue. I want to try that." And slowly start adding it, trying it on, right, like see if you like the flavor. The first time you might not love it, right, the first time we try it any cue, you can feel a little uncomfortable, a little bit foreign, but I want you to try it in three different types of scenarios with three different people. And that's because some cues, like, I use some cues a lot more with my daughter and my husband than I do professionally, right? Like, one's dessert, one's dinner, you know, if we're going to keep going on the food metaphor, I like food, you know, we should think about that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:08
We'll see how far we can push this food metaphor.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:10
I want to keep pushing it. It's almost lunchtime, I'm gonna keep pushing. So like, you're gonna figure out what goes in which scenario, which made me change for places. There are going to be some cues that you do not like, right, you have food allergies to those cues. And that's also very empowering, because I don't want you to do cues that are inauthentic. So start this cue by cue. First, getting very purposeful with the cues you already use naturally, those are the best. Second challenge yourself, I want to try a cue a day or a cue a week, I want to try it on. And the other way that we can practice this is spotting all 96 cues. So seeing in the next few weeks, can you spot cues on your friends and your colleagues on reality TV, in movies, that's also training a very specific part of your brain? So they've actually identified that we use very specific parts of our brain to identify cues, there's an area of our brain called the fusiform face area, this is a specific area of our brain that we use to decode facial expressions. If we are not used to doing this, if we've never done this before, it can literally feel like exercising a muscle for the first time, right. So you're gonna have to start with like smaller weights, right, and then work your way up. So even just learning to spot the cues, is also when you can sort of begin to try them on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:22
First of all, I really appreciate that. Because long before I knew anything about cues, I had a variety of mentors that made me watch a video of myself over and over and over again, it was so painful at first, let's be honest.

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:35
It's horrible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:36
Like, at some point it is not that big of a deal anymore, but it was painful for a long time. And the benefit out of it was that I got to see all of those parts and pieces, those different cues in action when they worked well, when they worked, quite frankly, terribly. So I appreciate those other ways to look at it too. And the point that, hey, it's not a case where you need to master all 96 cues. But instead, it's choosing what you're going to bring into your repertoire.

Vanessa Van Edwards 17:06
Yeah. And I think another thing that you can look for. So I think it's, oh gosh, if you can get a video of yourself presenting or speaking, something important, like not just like a little update, but like presenting or sharing something, it's so helpful to code it. Another thing you can do for yourself is I think everyone should know their own nervous cells, right? Everyone should know what tick do you have that, kind of, who your anxiety leaks in that way, when they're different for everyone. There's some typical interesting cues. I talked about this in the book, but what do you do when you knew you were anxious? Right? So you can find a video of yourself where you knew you were sweating it, right? Like during that particular question, or you were really nervous delivering that story, or you even knew you were deceiving someone. Pay attention to what you did not only non verbally, but verbally vocally, like, for example, there's some studies that look at liars and their patterns of their lies. And not every time but they often find that liars will use words like to be honest, to be frank, they'll actually call out honesty, even though they're about to lie, which is a very odd behavior thing. So even pay attention to the type of verbal signals you might be giving out. I think that's a really empowering thing to know about yourself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:15
Let's talk about some specific places where our listeners might be able to apply it. How about this, let's take a real example that one of our clients is experiencing right now. So she's in the process of identifying her next career move. Right? And, yeah, it's a wonderful opportunity for her and for the most part she's having a good time with it. That said, she's in this space where she's now trying to identify what roles are interesting to her and where she wants to spend, you know, the next number of years. And she's going through this mini career experiment that we call the "Social Goldilocks", where she's scheduling a whole series of super short calls with people that have roles that she might be interested in. So in this case, she's doing a lot of zoom calls, a lot of video chat, a lot of like, what you and I are doing right this very second, right? Yeah. So here's my question. I know that you break down charisma into warmth and competence, right? So how can she during those video calls build both warmth and competence very, very quickly?

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:22
Okay. So I'm going to give a really specific formula here, like this is pre video calls that are specific cues we need to see to be able to diagnose someone's warmth and competence. So these are crazy specific, but they really work. First thing is, you need to make sure if you're doing video calls that you are honoring space rules. This is called proxemics. It's a very important aspect of human behavior. And the biggest mistake people make on video is they get too close to their camera so they are all up in their cameras like their face is super close like this. I want you to make sure, I want to measure the distance between your nose and the camera, and I want you to make sure it is at least 18 inches away. Okay, it's the very first thing. And the reason for that is because if it is closer than 18 inches, you are accidentally triggering someone's fear response. When someone comes into our intimate zone too quickly, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's like a digital close talker. It makes us feel like we're being threatened. So, one, right from that very first impression, make sure you are in the sweet spot, which is 18 inches to three feet away from your camera, sounds very silly, but that's how far we want to be in the person that we're talking to. So that's number one, before you even get on that video call, take some measurements. And at my home setup, when I'm in my home studio, I have very specific setups in my room to just set me up for more charisma. Like for example, I have to sit today cuz I'm in a boring conference room in my publishers office. But normally I'm standing, not everyone has to stand. But I have noticed it changes my vocal power. When I'm standing, I just can deliver with more breath. So second, decide if you want to stand or sit, like, decide– do a couple experiments– where do you sound like your best self? Is it standing or sitting? So that's even before you hop in the call. Second...or actually third, and the moment you come on camera, I would love for you to do a nonverbal greeting. So we love this as humans and in person, we know this instinctively, right? We know intuitively when we see someone we reach out, we high five, we handshake, we cheek kiss, we hug, we have some sort of nonverbal greeting. On video that awkwardness that can happen the first seconds in the video it's because our brain is like, "what do we do? What do we do? We can't touch them, what do we do?" I mean, we're trying to, like, think we can't handshake so it's so weird. So instead, I want you to in your head replace the handshake with an honorable reading. My favorite is just a wave. So the moment I hop on video, I go "Hey, good morning. Good to see ya." And I give a little wave, "How are ya?" Right? On YouTube, every single one of my YouTube videos, I start with a double handed "Hi", both sides. So third is some sort of nonverbal greeting. And the last thing I would say is we've dismissed verbal a lot in this interview. But verbal does matter. Of course, words matter. And this is the third area of cues. There's body language, vocal, words, and imagery. Words, also really important, especially your first 10 words. So in your video calls, I want you to think about the first 10 words out of your mouth. Oftentimes, they are accidentally negative. So people will hop on a video call and they'll be like, "Oh man, the weather, those COVID numbers. I'm so tired. I'm so stressed. I'm so busy." And it's like we just default to it. We don't even think, "Can you see me? Can you hear me?" That's actually the base engine is when you say "can you see me? Can you hear me" and you're leaning in like this, it's like a double way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:34
It's like the double entendre.

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:36
It's like a horrible space, no greeting, terrible start. So I want you to think about before you even hop on your call, what am I opening with? What's my opener? And this can be very simple. "Happy Monday." "Happy Wednesday." "So good to see you." "I've been so looking forward to this. Thank you so much for having me." "Hi, team" It's not like you have to start with a speech or a toast, it's just something small positive that you can add.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:00
I love that. And thank you for going specific. That is incredibly helpful.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:06
Okay, good. And it's this checklist. I mean, this is how I learned charisma, I am not naturally charismatic. And so I have to think about what is the formula and there are social blueprints, there are blueprints for how we like to interact. And if we know how to read those blueprints, we all feel better. Everyone feels better. It's a win for everyone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:22
It does, it impacts everyone. You know, one of the parts that I loved in the book you had made the point about it becomes contagious, if you are expressing cues that, one, indicating happiness or indicating anything that's positive, quite frankly, then the other person therefore feels more positive. And consequently you feel more positive as well. So, it really is. Like it is all linked together.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:52
And I think we...this is like a gift we can give to the world. Like I know that sounds super cheesy, but you know, we are desperately needed connection– now more than ever. And our cues are contagious, right? So if we show up as our warmest, most competent, most confident self, not only does that make us look good, which is great. That's a happy side effect. But we're also infecting other people to feel like their warmest was almost a competent self. And this because of very specific neural feedback loop, which is when we're with humans, we cannot help but suddenly mirror them. Now the more we like someone the more we mirror, the less we like someone the less we mirror. It's a little bit harder on video that's still done, it happens even more in person, actually, even happens on the phone. We tend to mirror the vocal patterns the person we're talking with. This is a natural response because, as humans, we want to feel as the other person feels. So if we're with someone and let's say that they're sad, they're having a hard day and they're pinching their eyebrows together and they're rolling their...they're pulling their mouth onto a frown and they're worried and they're anxious, we will subtly begin to mirror pinching yourself or pulling our mouth down so we can feel as they feel. And so if you show off with really confident, powerful verbal and nonverbal, other people are more likely to also mimic our competence or confidence and then feel better and more confident themselves. This is a way that I think we can act that is like giving gifts, right? You're giving these gifts of competence and confidence. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for others.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:16
A long time ago, I heard someone say that, you know, one of the best gifts we can give is listening to other people. However, I would argue that, to your point, one of the best gifts that we can give is not just listening to other people, but maybe even in how you listen and interact with other people. So very much appreciate that,

Vanessa Van Edwards 25:36
And like adding the engagement, right, like we can't listen actively or passively. But if we listen actively, we're actually creating contagion, which is super cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:44
Yeah, I like it. You mentioned imagery. I'm gonna change topics on you here for a moment. Because, I'm fascinated by the imagery side. And literally right before this, I always have this routine where, you know, anybody who I'm going to be talking to, I will click on their LinkedIn profile or their website or something else, like just to get a picture in front of me. So I can, you know, imagine the conversation that's about to take place. That said, I clicked on your LinkedIn profile, and you had this post about a launch party that you were doing. And one of the pieces in there was, hey, you know, you want me to take a look at your LinkedIn profile or the picture in there. And I was curious about that, in particular, because I think that is something that many people don't give a second thought to, that was actually the imagery side, but partially, you know, LinkedIn, which is becoming more and more and more widely used every day. So tell me a little bit about what we should be looking for or could be looking for. Let's say that we want to convey confidence and likeability in a LinkedIn photo, for example.

Vanessa Van Edwards 26:44
So what's happening and I think you're absolutely right is we are forgetting that we are very rarely getting a true first impression anymore. Why? Because everyone is googling us for clicking on our links. So our first impressions are actually happening digitally, right? If people have searched you beforehand, which is a lot of the time, right, like a lot of interviews, a lot of meetings, even like I'm now meeting colleagues digitally, before I'm even meeting them in person, you want to make sure that your digital first impression is exactly how they want to come across in person. And luckily, this is actually easier, I actually think it's easier to maintain a great static digital first impression, it's harder to do it in person, we have to make sure that they align. The biggest mistake I think a lot people are making nowadays is they have this amazing digital first impression, and it doesn't match up with the real self, or they have a terrible digital first impression doesn't match their true self. So we want it to be accurate, that's very important. And we think about imagery. So there's a couple, there's two kinds of cues that we're sending in our digital first impression. In those first few milliseconds of someone seeing you, they are getting very quick but very simple cue. So they just looking at your picture, they're looking at your gestures, your expression, your posture, your colors, but they're also very quickly looking at the first few words of your headline. So just like we talked about the verbal cues for your first 10 words out of your mouth, you also want those first 10 words in your headline to matter. It's usually it's a very quick snapshot, but I don't want you to do is to go sterile. That's the mistake actually see verbally on impressions as people use either buzzwords or they use really sterile words like they're just their general title, or company that used to do this workout. Is there a way that you can set yourself up for success by using the kind of words you want people to associate with you? So think about what is your ideal first impression? When people meet you, what do you want them to say about you? Collaborative? Trustworthy? Competent? Powerful? Consider using those words in your headline. Remember, people are very triggered by those cues that associate you more likely to associate with those words, if they're true, they always want to make sure they're true. So think about using words that carry more power that are purposeful in the first few lines of your headline. On the imagery side, you have lots of choices. So we're constantly sending out imagery cues, that's the colors we wear, the props we hold, the props we wear, the props behind us. And so I think instead of making those sterile, a lot of people have, you know, white background today, unfortunately, I have a background.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:06
You have the red.

Vanessa Van Edwards 29:07
Yes. So that I knew I was like, "Oh, I'm going to be in a really horrible conference room. So I'm wearing red, friends. I'm wearing red today." Because I knew I had to balance out the boringness was behind me. So I want you to think about, you know, if you're going for a traditional corporate professional goal, yeah, you want to wear a business suit and a tie. If that's not your vibe, if you want to go more casual, if you want to be more in a team easy going natural setting, take off the blazer and put on something more casual. Your background, if you want to be in a traditional setting, you want to show a traditional setting, but if you want to be doing something more adventurous, more exciting, a little bit different, consider using a more exciting, more interesting background. So I think that we have to match all those cues, like, people often think, "Oh, it's a good picture of me. Therefore it's good enough." It's not just about being good or flattering photo. It's a contextually good photo, so you look good and like yourself and your context what you're wearing, what's behind you, what's your holding is also on the money.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:05
I feel like that is a lens that is very commonly asked, like, I think about questions that we've been asked over the years, and most of them are, "Hey, what's good versus bad." However, I don't find that that's a particularly useful way to look at anything for that matter whether we're talking about imagery, whether it's photos, whether we're talking about headlines, it doesn't matter.

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:26
You're absolutely right. It's not good or bad. And that's a really important distinction. In fact, I'll give a very specific example for a prop. So I have a student who wants to pivot his career from corporate leader to politics. He's in a new phase of his career. He wants to be an activist. So when he was in the corporate part of his career, he wore a business suit and tie, right. So we were talking about, okay, well, how are we going to signal this change? Right? This is a massive change in your careers, and you're gonna be blasting your network, you're gonna be fundraising, you want to signal this. So what's a very easy way, I'm going to give you a little pop quiz here, let's see, can you think of a really easy way to signal... I'm running for office. What's the prop? Can you think of it? When I say, you're gonna be like, "Oh, of course."

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:08
I would say something in the background, or you're at a White House looking or... Tell me.

Vanessa Van Edwards 31:15
So you could totally do a monument right behind you. Absolutely. But a flag pin.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:21
Obviously!

Vanessa Van Edwards 31:22
I mean, when you see someone in a room, and they have a flag pin on, you're like, "So politics?" Like, we associate that small, tiny visual cue with either political ambitions or a strong stance. And so we changed the picture, we took off his time, because he wanted to be a little bit more, you know, the people, he's much more civically minded. So we took off the time, and he's still in a business suit. And he added us a little bit, a little US flag pin. And that was a completely different signal or visual cue that spoke for him. Now, his first impression is much closer to where he wants to go. And it's a really, really small, subtle change. But if that cue is helping speak for him, I think that that's why I'm so glad you mentioned good versus bad, is your cues can work for you. Right? Like if you want to signal something ahead of your first impression, or without you even having to say anything, those visual cues can help you with that– a flag pins is one of them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:14
So do you feel like you have to, since you have an entire book on cues, do you feel the pressure when you're at something like this to have all the cues that you want to? Tell me about that. What goes on in your head?

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:27
I feel free, finally, actually. There was many years where I was trying on the 96 cues myself, right? Like I was like trying this one. I'm like, I have some that I like that I don't like, like, for example cue, I don't use this the thumb pinch, right? Like this is a favorite of Barack Obama, he has a fist and he puts his thumb on top. And that for me, I don't know, just like, am I holding a wand? Like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:47
Harry Potter's.

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:48
Yeah. Like, you know, it's like Leviosa. Like, I don't know, it doesn't work for me. So there was many years where I was trying on these cues, and then when I would find one that hit, I want to talk about it. But because I didn't have this, you know, language, I hadn't cataloged them yet, I was sort of like I discovered this recipe that I couldn't share. So actually, no, I felt so much relief now that we're all talking about these cues. Because I feel like I can be myself, I can use the cues that I find natural. And when I don't find one that's natural, I can be like, "Oh, that was weird. I don't know why I did that cue". And so in a weird way, I'm really happy that I can have this shared language with my partner, with my team, with my colleagues, like, my interviews are more fun now, because we can talk about specific things that work and don't work for us, for me, for you. So now it's been so much easier. Actually, it's been so much easier.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:06
That is fantastic. What advice would you give to people who really want to get started mastering, not all the cues, as we said earlier, but really identifying what is going to work for themselves and then get going on it if they had to do just one thing? Well, just one action or activity, what advice.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:01
It's kind of a weird piece of advice, but I think it's the one really specific thing you can do, which is... there was a specific study I mentioned the book, such a funny, funny study. They had speakers come onstage and give a short presentation. Then they had speakers, think of Steve Jobs, and channel Steve Jobs and give another presentation. Just this exercise immediately improved the speaker's performance. They stayed on stage longer, they felt better about their presentation, they use more dynamic gestures, they had better vocal power, like everything got better simply by just thinking of Steve Jobs. So what I would say is everyone should have like a speaking or a charisma role model. I love The Rock. Okay, I think The Rock is super charismatic. I had a breakdown. I'm just accusing my YouTube channel because I wanted an excuse to watch eight hours of interviews of The Rock and I found that when I channel my charisma role models, my own nonverbal, my verba,l my vocal changes and I can try on cues. So very simply, over the next few weeks, I want you to channel whoever your charisma role model is and see what you know, what you do. You know, are you trying to use in different gestures? Are you using different vocal cues? Does that make you feel more empowered? Those can be the first few cues you can try to add to your repertoire.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:10
That is fantastic. I very much appreciate you taking the time and making the time. And by the way, the book is "Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication" small signals, incredible impact. And thank you for coming on and giving us so many specific examples. I appreciate it very, very much.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:29
Oh, my goodness. I want to thank you so much for having me for letting me share all this work. For anyone who's listening if you're a recovering, awkward person, and you're trying to make your cues work for you, remember, one cue at a time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:44
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and taken the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamored with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team and we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. The really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that scheduleaconversation.com, and find a time that works best for you. We'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamored with, Hey, I can't wait to hear from you.

Speaker 3 37:06
As I've noticed that I get a lot more meaning out of the work that I do, out of the people that I hang out with, out of the experiences that I have, when there's less freedom ironically, within which I get to choose from. So I think, to me, freedom means the appropriate boundaries and constraints within which to play with full freedom.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:26
All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Don’t Worry, Be Happy: How Success Looks Different For Everyone

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As humans, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to one another. This is a bad idea, especially when it comes to measuring success. My measure of success may not be the same as yours. And that’s OK.

That’s because success looks different for everyone.

After working with thousands of people, we’ve observed that when you worry about other people’s opinions (even if it’s family or friends), it could negatively impact your potential success.

What you’ll learn

  • Why you need to define success for yourself
  • How outside opinions negatively impact your success
  • What you need to do to get out of your own way
  • How to finally stand up for yourself

Success Stories

"When I started I was afraid of making the wrong decision! My career was incredibly important to me and I didn't want to screw it up or waste time making a move I wouldn't enjoy! Scott helped me learn what my strengths are and what is most important to me… but more important than that I learned about what I can't stop doing that I have to have in my work to make me happy"

Rhushi Bhadkamkar, Senior Consultant, United States/Canada

Scott has been a tremendous help in bringing focus to my business. Scott enlightened my path towards concentrating on my strengths and doing what I love. I recommend Scott Anthony Barlow to anyone who wants clarity about what they should be doing, and the next step to make your business successful.

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I greatly appreciate your help in bringing this along because I wouldn't have had the confidence to negotiate and to be where I am today without the help of a lot of other people. You played a really significant role in it. I'm not going to be that everyday person that hates my job, I'm going to stretch and I'm going to aspire to be better and I'm not going to make that everyday salary. Thank you Scott for putting this out there for all the people that are trying to do a little bit better and trying to go a little bit farther. This is awesome. I love this. This thing that you do, the whole HTYC thing, from the paperwork all the way down to the podcast and just helping people understand that there is success out there and it is attainable but you've got to work for it.

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Scott, and Lisa and the whole team it's been a pleasure to work with you. I’ve been talking to everyone about your program and think the best of the work you do and the tools you put out. It took me a few months to look for outside help. That was the thing I needed. Particularly as someone who has been successful it was hard for me to say I could not do this by myself. I’m a smart person I should be able to figure this out. As soon as I had my first career coaching experience it completely turned around my approach to find a new job. It completely gave me the power back and the tools I needed. If you know exactly what you want to do, you probably aren’t listening to this podcast, but if you don’t know there are a lot of tools, and resources, and people out there that can help you. For me that made all the difference.

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Celena Singh 00:01
What if I won the lottery on Friday? And somebody in the meeting said, "Hell would freeze over, it would never happen." And a week later, I put in my resignation for work, and the subject line said, "I won the lottery." And the main line said, "Hell froze over and what that meant, and I will be resigning in two months."

Introduction 00:27
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:51
As humans, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to each other more than a little bit. Sometimes this can be a great thing. It fosters friendly competition, setting goals to achieve. But many times this is a terrible idea, especially when it comes to measuring success. My measure of success probably is not the same as yours. And that's okay, as it turns out, and that's because success looks different for everyone. Now, I think that we all know this, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier. And after working with thousands of people, we've observed that when you worry about other people's opinions, it can negatively impact your potential success. And this is true, even if it's your parents.

Celena Singh 01:34
And their advice was, you know, "Keep your head down. Do your job. Don't, you know, make any trouble and, you know, don't get yourself fired" because we are, you know, my parents migrated from another country over 50 years ago. And that was the mindset that they came here with. And I was like, "Okay, well. I have to do, you know, what my parents say, and, you know, do all the right things."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:55
That's Celena Singh. As a child of immigrants, she had the privilege of growing up with two different cultures– the one her parents brought over from their old country and the one here in the United States. The difficult part of this is that she didn't want to disappoint her parents. So she ended up staying in her job way longer than what she wanted to. But spoiler alert, if we fast forward, Celena actually just recently joined the HTYC team as our book project leader, which is pretty awesome. So there's a great end to the story. But listen as my conversation with Celena begins, you'll hear what led her on this journey in the first place, how she transitioned and I want you to pay attention to some of the really what many people might look at and call "extreme decisions" that she had to make in order to get where she wanted to go. Let's first go back to over 25 years ago.

Celena Singh 02:55
I started my career at Hydro One around 1997. Prior to starting at Hydro One, I really wanted to become a sports broadcaster, and I went to school for about a year. And then I had an opportunity to purchase a house at a very young age. And I purchased the house with my parents' help and sports broadcasting was like a dream after that. So I had to find a job where I felt that I could make some money and my parents would be proud of me. And I was able to, from a resource, I was able to find out about this project that where this company was hiring and long story short, I was able to secure a job with Hydro One and I thought "life is made" my parents were like, "Okay, you've won the lottery. You've got up for life." Yeah, exactly. Woohoo. You know, like, "Hey, little old me, I found this great job." And their advice was, you know, "Keep your head down. Do your job. Don't, you know, make any trouble and you know, don't get yourself fired" because we are, you know, my parents migrated from another country over 50 years ago. And that was the mindset that they came here with. And I was like, "Okay, well, I have to do, you know, what my parents say and, you know, do all the right things." And I started 23 years old at the company that I worked at for 24 years, and I made a lot of changes in the company, meaning changes in roles. I truly never felt like I belonged in any role. I started at the very bottom as a call center agent, and I moved into billing, I moved into metering, I moved into supervising, I moved into managing teams that I had no idea, I wasn't an engineer or any of those careers where people were normally managers, but I had something and I didn't really quite know at the time what it was because I just did whatever I was told and shifted where I thought, you know, where people told me I needed to go. And COVID, I will say, and you know, beginning of COVID, something shifted for me. I think it shifted actually a couple years before for that, but I really wasn't listening to my inner mentor, so to speak, my inner... myself, like, what I really truly wanted, I was doing what everybody else wanted me to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:09
When you say something shifted several years before COVID, what do you feel like it was at the time that you were not listening to that shifted, or what prompted that shift?

Celena Singh 05:20
Experiencing some not so great employees at work. And because I worked in a unionized environment, I was being kind of told to do, you know, my job, which I was trying to do, and then was kind of getting in trouble, which I was not used to ever getting in trouble my entire life. I was getting in trouble for doing my job. And I started to better understand, it took quite a few years to understand what a unionized environment meant, because I grew up on a farm, you know, my parents have had a farm for a very long time, and you did everything on the farm, and you didn't complain, everybody worked together. So I went from that environment to doing what I was told, and then getting in trouble for doing my job. I had, you know, grievances, like everybody gets these things. So it's, like, but I took them very personally. And it just kept happening. And I think it was 2018, the shift actually happened when I was sitting in a meeting in another mediation meeting with guarding an employee and just something that happened. And the mediator brought me into a room, and it was just her and I and she said, "I probably can get fired for saying this. But I'm going to say this to you." And she said, "This is going to continue to happen to you if you don't make a change." She said, "I would highly recommend you either find a different company that is not unionized to work at or start your own business" because she said "you are a badass, and you need to do that. And this is not the place for you." And she said that I was clinically cold, but not in a bad way. Like she said, it's not a bad thing. She says, "You hold your composure." At first, I was like, "What did she say?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:01
"What do you mean?"

Celena Singh 07:02
Yeah. And she said, I was clinically cold. And she said, "You've held your composure for all of these years." And she goes, "I don't know where you've put all that stuff, but you need to do something else and deal with that." And I went, "Okay..." and then I'm like, "Am I gonna get fired?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:19
What happens next?

Celena Singh 07:20
Yeah, so anyways, it actually made a huge shift in my thinking, I thought, "Oh, my gosh, nobody has ever said something like that to me." And I thought, you know, I was doing all the right things, I was working hard and working overtime and changing jobs, and, you know, sacrificing my health and my marriage, and who knows what else and all of a sudden, it's like, you need to run as fast as you can from here. And it wasn't the company, it was, what my limiting beliefs, my beliefs that I was programmed into, all kinds of things. My parents are amazing, and they have taught me a lot of things. But some of the things I feel for myself and for the next generation is important to shift that thinking. And that's kind of where my thinking shifted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:04
I think that's always a really fascinating and also difficult time for many people where we start to realize that what we grew up with, maybe has served us well, or certainly potentially served our parents well, but is no longer serving us well. And I'll only speak for myself personally, however, that was definitely and continues to be very, very challenging to even, one, recognize where it's happening, and two, to be able to change those pieces. So kudos to you for beginning to recognize at that point in time that that was happening, because many people will go through their entire lives without recognizing that that's at play. What were some of the biggest takeaways that you began to realize, or what were some of the biggest areas where you realized that type of thinking was no longer serving you?

Celena Singh 08:55
I started seeing the people I was hanging around with, you know, it made a difference to me, like I would be talking to some friends like on the side of my corporate role, I studied to become a yoga teacher, as well as I studied to become a holistic nutritionist because of my health issues that I was, not struggling with, but I was noticing so many things. And so when I was hanging around with people in yoga and hanging around people from a nutrition side, not everybody, because that has its challenges, too. I was seeing like I was a different person and I didn't know what imposter syndrome was, but I felt like that's what it was. I mean now I know that's exactly what it was is, I can be myself and my, you know, the areas that I really enjoyed and then I have this more than one mask at work and it was like "okay, this is not right" like all of these things that people are telling me is not right and as I was kind of changing like standing up or, like, standing up for myself and others for different things, all of a sudden, I could see people... I don't know if they felt threatened or maybe they felt intimidated because I always just used to do whatever I was told and then it was like, "I don't like myself like this" like, it's now it's like time for me to look in the mirror and say like, "what were my actions in some of these things that happened?" And it's hard to do that because it's like doing, like, a 360 interview on yourself, or something like that on yourself, right? And asking other people, and I was asking people in environments like, you know, in my yoga environment and my nutrition environment, because I felt like people would be honest, but not mean to me. And it didn't have to be mean, like being honest. It was great. Like, I love the honesty. And I started taking courses on emotional intelligence. And we actually had to do exercise as part of our emotional intelligence program to ask eight people some questions about how do you manage your emotions? How do you react? Do you respond? How are you in different things? And I was terrified to do that. And I did it. And then I was pleasantly surprised of how, well... I was pleasantly surprised about the feedback. And then again, I was like, "Celena, you're so hard on yourself all the time. Of course, everybody thinks you're amazing. Like, why don't you?" And that's where I had to start down on bit of a journey of really getting to know myself better, and what I like and what I don't like, and really what I want to do in life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:11
Do you remember one of the first times where you began standing up for yourself? I heard you say earlier that, "I had always just done whatever people had asked me to do or told me to do and that began to change" it sounded like as you started getting more comfortable with what you wanted, and yourself. Do you remember one of those first times? And what happened?

Celena Singh 11:33
The first time that I can, I mean, there's many but the one that really, as soon as you asked me that question, it was last year on... I can remember the date, it was last year on around March the 6th, and I was in a meeting with a few people. And it was only have like, say, less than 10 people. And I was asking for some support on some, it was actually COVID protocols that I was working on which, you know, pandemic happen all the time so I must know how to do this work. And I was asking for some support, and I wasn't receiving the support that I was asking for. And I felt... because I asked a couple of people before the meeting, does this feel like a reasonable ask? And then all of a sudden, I ask, and it was like crickets. And so in the meeting, I asked a question, because someone was like, "Oh, you can do this" so I'm like, but there's 10 other people I can think of like right away that could help with this. They have the skills, they want to do some of this work. So why not, you know, give them the opportunity? And they kept saying no, kept saying no. And so I made a comment, and I said, "What if I won..." it was on Wednesday, let's say and I said, "What if I won the lottery on Friday?" And nobody said anything. And they said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "What if I won the lottery on Friday? What would you guys do? Like, I know all... I have every COVID protocol in my head. I've documented some of them. And what if I won the lottery on Friday?" And I said, "Okay, what would you do?" And somebody in the meeting said, "Hell would freeze over it would never happen." And I said, "Oh, you don't think that could happen?" And a week later, and it wasn't because it was I had any bitter feelings, I just did some work. And I put in my resignation for work, and the subject line said, "I won the lottery." And the main line said, "Hell froze over and what that meant." And I said that "After 24 years, I've decided to do heart centered work, and I will be resigning in two months." And that was probably the first time I ever felt like I was my true self. Because I felt, like, so good about it. I have no, absolutely no regrets. And I will add that I had actually signed up with Happen To Your Career on the day that I made that or week before I made that decision. And I knew that Happen To Your Career would help me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:49
I don't think I entirely realized that those were so closely intertwined. So tell me about that decision, because that is, by no circumstances, a small decision. It is by no circumstances, a lightweight decision. And also, I had just heard you say that in making that decision to leave this organization in which, it sounds like for 24 years never really found a fit in any way whatsoever. I believe that's what I heard you said earlier.

Celena Singh 14:19
Yeah, that's correct. I never felt like I belonged.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:22
Yeah. In doing so, it also sounds like that was the first time that you ever really felt like yourself. So what led... take me through what it took to make that type of decision?

Celena Singh 14:33
It was really sitting down and when I read through, okay, I'll just say this, that when we read through what the Career Change Bootcamp would do, I was like, "Okay, you know what? This is what I want. Like, I need to go through this to find myself, to understand..." You hear companies and I'm not just talking about the company I work for, I'm just in general, about core values and know what matters to you and my core values or my personal values have never lined up with corporate. And so I feel like no matter where I went in corporate because of this, you know, the corporate I was used to, the corporate that when my parents came to this country, that's what corporate meant, was I wouldn't belong there, because I just didn't line up with a lot of those things. So if someone's going to say, you know, for example, "We're one company." Okay, what does that mean? That means something to me would mean something different to you. So how do we... I want to work, I think that for me, I want to work somewhere where I feel like, when someone says, a core value, we're not using it as a, "well, that's a core value" it's just blended into your everyday, right, what your values are. And I feel like after 24 years, and looking at what the company, you know, this company gave me opportunities, and that they gave me the opportunities, or did I create opportunities based on working, you know, and the roles that I was at, I mean, it was just... I was thinking about how my parents get, like, "what my parents gonna think if I decide to do this?" And my husband was extremely supportive, and we had been talking about it, you know, on and off. And I feel like he knew how loyal I was to the company. I think he just kind of thought, "Well, we'll have a plan" as we normally do. I'm a planner, and it may not happen. And I, you know, was seeing, like a therapist, and just some, you know, just some help, just trying to just talk to some people that were not, you know, close to my life, like they would be, you know, unbiased. And so there was, again, my emotional intelligence coach, and just a few people and they weren't making this, like, I wasn't looking for someone to make the decision for me, which was amazing, because they were not, like, they were not there that says, "Hey, I'm here to talk to you, and let's, you know, do our thing." And it came down to, I want to do better for the next generation, I want the next generation to do better and how... I felt like a hypocrite, you know, if I didn't do this. Like, I'm like, okay, I have this cushy job, and I can do it for the next seven years, retire with this amazing pension. And then I have, you know, five nephews and three nieces who I love, and some of them already doing some of these things that I want to do, you know, at my age, and I'm like, "I have to do this." And it's like, okay, so when I talked to the pension coordinator, and when they gave me all the information, it was like, it really didn't matter about the money, it was the person... the pension coordinator said, "I cannot believe that you're doing this, because it's just nobody does this." He goes, "I have so many people who have these conversations" I think you were in HR, Scott, people talked to you about it in the past is that, you know, "I want to do this, this and this, and this." And then he goes, "99% of people don't do it." And I said, "Oh, I'm gonna do it." Yep. After you... since we just talked, I said, "I'm good. You send me the paperwork of what we just talked about." And within an hour, my husband had half an hour notice, and I sent out the email. Because I knew it was the right thing to do. Everything was lined up, I had a plan to, you know, look at my career going forward. I didn't have to really worry about, you know, money, which you know, how many people can say that, I didn't have to worry about money. I'm not rich, but I have enough that I can do what I'd like to do in life. So that's kind of where I have a long way of saying how I got there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:14
You know, I think that there's so much in here that you just mentioned. If we're peeling apart the layers, first of all, let's acknowledge that you are a planner. I think you've done a really nice job creating a situation for yourself to where you could make this type of decision. Because you've done a nice job with planning and with money and other things like that to where that decision becomes possible. And you've built a foundation for yourself to make different types of decisions for your life, which I think is amazing. And a lot of people don't realize that that has to, in many ways, come first. And the second thing is, two, and I'm not just talking about money, but I'm talking about prioritizing what is most important to create a foundation for other things, too. And another example of that is something else that I think you did really, really well here. At some point, you started practicing prioritizing what was more important to you. And it sounds like you've done such a great job practicing that in small ways as you began, you know, attending yoga and other things like that. You were bringing those tiny pieces into your life in much smaller ways that then added up to you be able to make larger, more declarative prioritizations. And that's something that is not easy to do. And also on the outside, I think everybody else on the outside when you hear that type of story, it's like "Okay, well, just one day we decided to just like do the thing" but there was so much leading up to that that'll allow you to do the thing and I just want to say first of all, congratulations because that's super cool that you've made that type of decision for yourself. And second of all, I just wanted to unpack for a moment, like all that you said up till now that led up to you being able to do, like, do the thing, which is amazing.

Celena Singh 19:57
I think the way that you just do and the other people say it too is, "I don't think I, you know, I give myself, and I think others, we don't give ourselves enough credit for saving our money." I mean, I started saving money when I was 10. And, you know, working on the farm and my little envelopes. And like I said, it's not just about money, it's just about, you know, so many other things like, you know, so then what are you going to do? And how do you want to be? And, who do you want to be around? How do you want to spend your time? You know, all of those things and not, you know, setting some boundaries because it's really about, what is it that I want to do, and not, again, what does everybody else want me to do with this stage of my life now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:34
Yeah. And I think that what's not obvious to so many people, especially as we talk about stories like yours on the podcast, and how people made one type of change from one to another, or left a role, or in your case, a whole series of roles that were not a fit over a period of time, it's not always obvious what are all those parts and pieces that lead up to it. And I really look at career change of any kind, or defining and developing and finding each of our ideal careers as a continuous process, as a continuous refinement process, where you're just building the stage to the next level of refinement to allow you to thrive. And I think that, on one hand, as I think about your story, there's little tiny elements of that there. But on the other hand, too, I am really very curious about when you look back, what do you feel like was most difficult for you to get to the point where you made that decision? As you think about everything that led up to it, you know, 24 years of career as you look back, what were some of the most difficult pieces?

Celena Singh 21:45
I think getting out of... number one is getting out of my own way. And that self doubt and the fear, because I really didn't talk to a lot of people about it beforehand, which in the past, I would have probably talked to so many people, and again, that just introduces so many layers of okay, well, this person said this, and this. And again, I think COVID helped with this by working from home as I was home, like, all of the time and I had meetings, but it did kind of take away from the environment where you had to make small talk with people. So it was more like you could focus on, like, other things like, oh, "You know what? I really like, you know, not getting... I like getting up early, but I really liked fitting in my workout in the morning, instead of working out, you know, later on in the day." And so I think it's getting out of my own way, not thinking about what everybody else would think, thinking about wow, like, if I do this, like I would be the first person in my family to do something like this. And you know, in my family, it's like, you know, my father started working very young, my mother started working very young, and they still work in their 70s, which is okay, it's good for them. And there is a balance, and we didn't have that. And that's where I was thinking, "Well, they're not gonna understand, like, they're gonna be like, what do you do? What are you going to do all day?" And I think it was just kind of going, but that's okay, that they can feel that way and other people can feel that way. And it really was, "What do you do? What do I think? And how do I want to live? And, what examples do I want to set?" You know, and again, going back to the next generation of... and even just like, what does Happen To Your Career talk about is meaningful work and really embodying that, right, is doing things like... in order to do things that mean something, it doesn't mean that you have to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's actually probably you're working less and gaining so much more. And so it was just kind of a shift in mindset and really all the things I was learning, whether it was yoga, meditation, all types of things that I was learning, it was really embodying that and not just going, "Oh, I have all the knowledge. Now I know what to do." It's actually embodying and practicing all of these things consistently. And that's what really led up to the decision.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:52
When you think about what helped you along the way, I heard you say earlier, getting out of your own way, but also I heard you say, try not to worry about or try not to think about what other people are thinking. And certainly that has influenced a lot of your choices in the past and a variety of ways, both good and maybe potentially less good for you. However, in this case, you were able to move past that and focus more on what you wanted and being okay with the situation if someone else thought, "Hey, that's not the right thing for you." So what helped you move past that? It's really what I would be interested in understanding because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it.

Celena Singh 24:35
Setting boundaries was one thing with a lot of people. My parents thought I was crazy. They said, "Can you go back? Like, can you retract that email?" And I was like, I don't want to. And I said, "I can, actually" and I gave myself actually two months, not just because I was going to retract, it was more I wanted to make sure I felt like I owed the company that two months to, you know, transition all of that good stuff. And it was like, I had to set some boundaries with my parents, I had to have some really hard conversations with them because I live right beside them too. So it's like, you know, they're like, "You can't do this, like, you know, this, this and this." And I went, and we there was all like, they're amazing people, it's just that was what they believed, now you just keep working. And, you know, what about your pension? You're not going to get all of this. And I'm like, "I know. I know that I've worked all of these years. And those things, they, you know, money, you know, when we have to live and all that good stuff. And I want to enjoy life." I said both my parents started working very... have been working since... my dad was six when he started working, my mom was like, 12. And I said, "I want you to be proud of my career, and all of the other things you don't even know that I can do that I want to improve on." And they're like, "But what do you mean?" And I'm like, "Did you know that I'm going to start, like, I would like to start a podcast?" And they're like, "what is that?" You know, they're like, "How much money is that going to pay you?" I'm like, "Well, that's the thing. Like I've set my life up to..." so I explained them "I set my life up. So I don't have to worry about that. And that I can shift. I don't need to you know, all of these things that I used to think that made me happy, I don't need those things anymore. I want you both to see that the hard work that you've put in and sacrifices, now that I don't have to work as hard. And then the next generation doesn't have to work as hard." It definitely helped having that conversation. At first they were looking at me like I had three heads. And I said "Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can be in a normal mindset to do it. I mean, you definitely need to be in a mindset where it's okay what everybody else thinks. But you don't have to do what they say. It's okay. Thank you for your feedback. And be very conscientious of who you're asking for feedback from" because, yep, some people in my life would have talked to me for hours about why this was the wrong decision. So my circle of friends really changed after I made the decision. I had many, many people sending me emails, asking me what lottery I won.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08
I didn't see anything on the news.

Celena Singh 27:10
Yeah, exactly. Saying I won the lottery of life made no sense to most of the people I worked with, because that's what I felt like, I felt like I won the lottery of life. So that I heard on a podcast, I think it was just on Monday that you had with Liz, and she was talking about the book, the second mountain, I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's a book that I read in 2019." That it was such a major book in my shift, as well as that book. And there's a book called "A Choice" and the "Gift", like all of these books, there's a little piece of it that helped me to make, you know, that change and going okay, leaving, I felt like it was in that valley. And now I'm coming up that second mountain and now I'm, like, just like, "Hey, you know what, the sky's the limit." I didn't think there was any other company or any other place I could go, you know, with my age. And just because I spent so many years in a company and the culture that, frankly, it's just very difficult to break that mindset that you may not fit in anywhere else. I didn't fit in there anyway. So it's okay, I will fit in somewhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:15
I think that that is definitely something that I've heard many times over in conversations with people that, you know, what if I don't, and then whether it's fit in, or any number of other things after that, like fill in the blank here. And it's that line of thinking that is really normal for us as humans, it is built into how we're hardwired. And it is a big component of human psychology. And I think the studies that I've seen on how we evaluate loss, and much, much greater and we give so much more weight to that potentially, even loss that isn't even a real thing, like you said, you know, "I didn't fit in there anyway." So the fact that you are perceiving that you might lose something that you didn't even have, is still getting time and attention. And that's normal for us as humans, however, being able to move through that is very, very difficult, and being able to understand that that's what's at play, and again, I just want to say congratulations on that one, you began to recognize that and we're doing something about it the entire time. And also it leads me to the next question of you afterwards, after you left, began experimenting, it sounds like with a variety of different areas. And I'm curious, would you be willing to share some of those experiments? I know you did start a podcast and we'd love to hear more about that. But also what other ways have you experimented and also what have you learned about what creates a much more fulfilling career for you?

Celena Singh 29:39
One interesting thing when I was working with Alistair is we did the design experiments and I really love doing that. So, you know, I started doing informational interviews, I reached out to a few people that, you know, through other contacts and I really enjoy talking to people about you know, their career, not just to careers, but just getting to kind of know them and what they're doing now and so I really enjoy doing that, the informational interviews and I apply for a job, a role actually, with my favorite sports team and which is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:13
Wait, hold on. How have we not had this conversation? Have we had this conversation?

Celena Singh 30:17
I don't know why.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:18
You're a Leafs fan?

Celena Singh 30:19
I am a Leafs fan.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:21
Ah, very cool. We are huge hockey fans here. Seattle has given us the Kraken which personally are having a mediocre first year ever, but we'll get over it. Either way.

Celena Singh 30:33
I'm a Leafs fan. They haven't won in 54 years.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:35
Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. Who's like the Boston Red Sox of the NHL? Yes. Pull off the curse. Okay. All right. So you're a Leafs fan. I like you even more now. And also, at the same time, you accepted a... or you applied for a role.

Celena Singh 30:52
I applied for a role, which was a... it actually posted, like shortly after I retired from my job and it was at almost like an apprenticeship to work with a team and they had a coaching apprenticeship and a management. It was like mentorship or apprenticeship geared towards diversity and inclusion, that was part of their diversity inclusion and one of their initiatives was to hire two people either, who are African-American or indigenous or part of a marginalized group. And my husband actually sent me the posting, and he said, "You totally need to apply." And I read it. And I talked to Alistair about it. And, you know, I actually ended up saying this on my podcast, I talked about it, it didn't work out. I mean, but going through the process of applying, they asked to do, not just send your resume, they actually also asked you to do a video, or a cover letter or a slide deck on who you were, like, personally. And so I did a slide deck. And I had no idea what Fiverr was until Alistair told me what Fiverr was, and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:58
Context, Fiverr is a place where you can go and like... I've used Fiverr many times, you know, when we needed to get some graphic design done, when we need to get a project created. It's a place where people with different skill sets can post jobs or what they call gigs to be able to have people that have those needs meet up with the people who have the skills to be able to do them, kind of, like an Upwork or similar.

Celena Singh 32:23
Kind of like to go for Bolton boards, right, like they used to put stuff on job boards. So now it's like this. So I actually hired, you know, worked with somebody on Fiverr to put my... I actually did a slide deck and I put pictures in it of my, like, who am I and how I connected with the Maple Leafs, like when I was three years old. So like around 1977, because of my dad. My dad started watching hockey, my dad, you know, came to Canada, as we're from in 1970. My parents originally from Guyana, and my dad wanted to, you know, be the best Canadian ever. So he you know, loves hockey, loves, you know, we have a baseball team. And I will always, you know, wanted to be like dad, and connect a lot very closely with my dad. So I wanted to know everything about hockey. And so I put a lot of that in my presentation about me and you know, my connection with my dad and the team. And also where I grew up, I was the only, well, everybody in my class was white in first eight years of my life. And so knowing about hockey was everybody talks about hockey. So I mean, I was pretty popular because I knew all the stats, and I was really great at sports. So then people stop teasing you or bullying you because you're like everybody else. And I was actually better because I was really great at sports, like I was amazing at sports. And still am, like I still love sports. And so I applied for the job. And I was not the successful applicant. And I was okay with that, because I received a really amazing letter from the General Manager. And it was you know, they basically just said that they really liked my presentation. And basically, there was a better fit, and I was okay, because I really enjoyed the process more than anything. Like, I would have done that job for free, or what I would have learned there. And I think I feel like I had something also to offer, not just what they would have given me, I had something to offer. So I think it would just been a great thing to, you know, tell my, you know, my nieces and nephews, kids when I get older, you know, another thing that I did, which is pretty cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:31
That's amazing. What do you feel like you learned out of that experience?

Celena Singh 34:35
I learned that there were just so many opportunities out there that I was not aware of, and that I have a lot of transferable skills, I have a lot of life experience that it means something and it didn't feel like it ever meant something before so and I feel like every, you know, whether it's roll on my podcast or whatever I'm doing, I feel like I'm worthy of it and I belong with, you know, with the things that I'm doing now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:00
Why do you feel, from your perspective, because you've lived this a little bit, but what do you feel makes it so difficult when you are in the same organization or same role or same anything for a long period of time to be able to see what else is out there? Because I just heard you say two things that I believe some of the biggest challenges. One, I heard you say that it was difficult to just flat out didn't know all the things that could be out there. And you're right, there's so much out there, and even things that aren't actually out there can be created too. And then the other thing I heard you say, too, is that, well, it sounded like it was difficult to understand what the skills actually transferred outside of the environment that you'd been in so long. So on one hand, what do you think that makes it especially challenging? Why? Where did you see that for yourself? And then on the other hand, I'm curious what helped you begin to see that.

Celena Singh 35:53
I think you get very comfortable when you're in an environment where you can stay in your job, you can, you know, go in other jobs in the company, and you just, "Oh okay, so I've got all these things in place, you know, I've got the pension, yay. My parents are gonna be happy, I've got this, I've got that." And then this comfort, you feel comfortable. And the thing is, when I thought I was comfortable, actually, that's when my health would bother me more, because it was inside was going, "no, you're not comfortable." That's not what comfortable means. Like, that's not the only thing that you need to be comfortable later in life. And that's where I was like, "I really need to start paying attention to what is my body telling me. I mean, I love to exercise and I listen to my body that way. But I wasn't listening to my body when it came to these messages that you know, these signs that were coming to me through my health going, no, that is not what being comfortable feels like." And that's where the shift happened is when I was talking to people outside of my corporation, who I was friends, working with Alistair and I think with all the coaches, you know, you have your accountability team know what happens when things get hard. And not one person on my accountability team was somebody that I worked with, like, and because I wanted it to be... because I knew this was going to be something different, so I already knew I wanted to leave that environment, that corporate environment, and I thought, "Well, I don't need somebody saying no, you need to stay here." So the accountability team members that I had were either people who were self employed, or who had done something, maybe a different story, obviously different story than mine, maybe didn't wait as long as I did. So that really helped me to kind of see like, "Okay, so these feelings that I'm feeling they're actually true, like other people are saying, like, yep, you need to listen to those things." And I learned some skills on how to do that, whether it was meditating, or understanding better what is fear, like fear was a big thing, self doubt was a big thing. Who's gonna want to hire me after spending 24 years in the company? You know, I had to work hard for those roles and interview for them. But I knew exactly what I needed to do, where, you know, it was getting out of my comfort zone and doing things that, you know, getting into the areas that I really wanted to and going, "Yeah, I can totally do this if I want to. And I can learn things. I have transferable skills, and I'm really good at learning things quickly, adopting really well, I love... I didn't realize how much I like change until I left my company" because we talked about change all the time and I think it's that fine line that people want change. But then when it happens, it's the... it's like, "oh, my gosh, all this change", right? So I got into that kind of, you know, habit of going, yeah, we want all these changes, and then when they would happen, people wouldn't like them. And it was be, like, "No, but this is amazing." And how do you sell that if people like around you are just so used to change happening take so long? And I was just like, "Oh, we can change this really quickly. Let's do this and this and this." Like, oh, this is how people spend 25 years in the company, and walk away with a pension and then go, "I really don't know what I did", like, that should make a difference. You know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:53
I think that's fascinating that once you remove yourself from that environment, that you realize that "Oh, I actually love change in so many different ways" it sounds like you didn't fully know about when you were there. That's really interesting.

Celena Singh 39:09
I was afraid of change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:10
Yeah. When you think back, I want you to go and put yourself in the shoes that you were in three, four years ago, when you started getting inklings of, "hey, this is really not right for me. And it's not been right for a long period of time." And you started... just were starting considering, "Hey, maybe there could be or should be, or might be something different" because I think that's where a lot of people are at in one way or another where they're just considering "Hey, should I make a change?" And you know, quite frankly, a lot of people would consider this type of change a pretty, pretty large change, right? So what advice would you give to those people that are considering "should I make this change? Should I prioritize something different in my life?"

Celena Singh 39:52
The advice that I would give is, I think it's really hard to do this and I really feel like people sat for 5 or 10 minutes and thought about, you know, instead of looking at, like you're looking at a menu and think like, there's so many things on the menu and go, "Okay, I've only picked the same thing every day or every year for how long." And there's so many things on there and think about, like, "What other things do you want on that menu?" And you don't have the solution it, it's really like, "What are your values? And what is it that you want? And do those things actually match up?" And it's good, and knowing that and surrounding yourself with people who... a very small group of people, who will be very unbiased with whatever you want to, you can talk to people, but I think having that conversation with yourself and saying, "This is what I want. This is what I don't want. How am I living my life right now?" And then, you know, looking at solutions, like possible solutions, I think, but doing those exercise, like that exercise, it seems like it's easy, it's not simple, or simple, it's not easy in doing it, I feel like it will make that shift, of course, this makes sense. I need to do this. And it'll help to take away the fear and the self doubt. And like you said, it doesn't happen overnight but it's taking that one step towards, you know, what you really want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:15
That's amazing. I love the idea of thinking about it as a menu and then asking, "Hey, am I okay with what's on the menu right here? Or do I want there to be more on the menu? Or do I need to go into an entirely different restaurant? I don't know."

Celena Singh 41:27
Exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:29
Yeah, that is a fantastic way to think about it. I know I said this earlier, but I just wanted to say again, really, really nice work here is always very difficult. Because when I get to have these conversations with people like you, Celena, who have done such a great job prioritizing different things than they were prioritizing in their life, and continuing to prioritize those pieces and parts that are most important to them going forward, we can never represent all the things that had to happen and all the work that had to be done in order to get there. It just seems as if it can be so easy and it is not easy, and I know that. So really, really wonderful job. And congratulations again. I appreciate it. I was super curious about when you said sports broadcasting earlier, was that tied into some of the reasons that you love the Leafs and hockey, and so many sports, what caused you to be interested in sports broadcasting?

Celena Singh 42:22
I watched sports from, you know, the time I was three years old, until when I started, I did sports broadcasting for a year, I always saw men doing it. And I thought I can do that. I know the stats. I know all this stuff. I never played, unfortunately, my parents couldn't afford, you know, for me to play. And I just... I was so good at the stats. And I just loved just when I would watch, like, there's a lot of great broadcasters out there that I would like to listen to, and I would like, "I would love to do that." Just to, maybe get more females interested in sports, right? Because they're, you know, my mother could care less to watch hockey. And the reason that you know, when I said I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, originally, she got it, because I used to drag her to the, you know, the local drugstore to buy like a... I don't care about my age, because at the time I was like, I don't know, 9 or 10 years old, it was like 25 cents for like the Saturday paper. And I love to cut the pages out, like, the pictures out and make scrapbooks. And then I would write little things about what I would say if I was a broadcaster. And that's really why. And I think that's why I started my podcast because I can do that now. And you know, I don't talk about sports all the time. And I love being in front of, like, watching you on the mic there is just... or just hearing you on the mic, you know, on your podcast, I was like, "I want to do that. I think it's so cool." And it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of fun work because whatever I put out there I put, you know, use a sports, you know, I put 110% into it and more. I put my heart and soul into that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:51
That's amazing. And I think it's so fun to see how little tidbits of the... like once you start paying attention to what you want, again, a little tidbits of the past start to pop up these little indications. So that's really fun to see that happen in that way for you. That's awesome. Anything else that we didn't already talk about or cover that you think would be useful for our audience to know? And if there's not anything that's totally okay, but open mic time, Celena.

Celena Singh 44:18
I just want to thank, you know, have you read the book "Playing big"?

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:22
I have had it quoted to me so many times that I feel like I've read it but I have not actually read it.

Celena Singh 44:28
I just started reading it two weeks ago and the person who told me to read this was... I was saying to her that "I was feeling some self doubt about where to take my podcast next. I want to start interviewing people." And she's like, "But you're so good. Like you sounds pretty good. And you know, when you're speaking yourself. So what's going on?" And I'm like, "I just found this self doubt that I'm not going to be good at it" and she goes, "Who's good at it?" Llike she goes, "Have you heard some of those?" And I said "No, that's true." And in "Playing Big" they talk about how fear is defined in two ways and how this actually helped me even with this podcast today, you know, this interview is there's two types of fear– one is the what if, worst case scenarios. And the other is what happens when you're in a place where you know, it's bigger than you expected. So expansion happens or energy gets better, or you actually connect to with your true self. That's a different type of fear. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I was totally feeling the other type of fear. And I had no idea. I thought it was the what if that, oh my gosh, what if this happens, you know?" And I don't know, it's something about me that I've learned. And I think that, you know, it's important for people to really look at both of those types of fear and know that there's different ways to navigate them. It's not a one stop, you know, oh, just get over the fear, go get some, you know, hypnosis or something. No, it's more of, like, allow that fear. So sometimes when I meditate, it's like, there's some fear that will creep up. And that's why I listen to the music that I listened to after because it really helps to, it really, truly grounds me to go like, "No, I can do this." like, ground. And then yeah, I can do this. And it's the inner critic versus the inner mentor, they call it, which is amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:11
I love that.

Celena Singh 46:11
I love it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:19
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and taken the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamored with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team and we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. The really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that scheduleaconversation.com, and find a time that works best for you. We'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamored with, Hey, I can't wait to hear from you. Until next week, adios. I'm out.

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Trusting The Career Change Process: Holding Out For “Amazing”

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Changing careers is hard. Waiting for the right role can be even harder. 

It’s often easier to just settle for a “good enough” role – especially when the process seems to be taking a long time. While a good job isn’t necessarily a bad thing, what if you end up missing the amazing opportunity that could lead to lasting career happiness?

It took Eric a whole year to find the right role. Along the way, he had to learn to ask the hard questions and say “no” to many “good” opportunities.

What you’ll learn

  • How having patience and trusting the process can lead to an amazing career
  • The benefits of learning how to say “no” a lot in the career change process
  • How Eric used networking and persistence to make his career change
  • Not settling even when things get tough – how to keep going

Success Stories

They went from a total comp package of $165K to $359K. Wow! Wow! Wow! I’m over the moon right now and really in shock! They reiterated how I was worth every penny and said “You can find anyone with technical expertise, but someone with your disposition and DNA is hard to come by! We can’t wait for you to join the team and are so glad we could make this work for us.” I can’t thank you all enough for your coaching, encouraging support during these last few months! I’ve landed the role of my dreams along with the comp I wanted and knew that I deserved.

Jessica , Chief Learning Officer, United States/Canada

My favorite part of the career change boot camp was actually having some of those conversations and getting feedback and positive feedback about strengths. And to me that was key, because in that moment, I realized that my network not only is a great for finding the next role, it also is helpful to… they help you remind you who you are and who you will be in your next role, even if the current circumstances are not ideal.

Elizabeth , Digital Marketing Analytics Strategist, United States/Canada

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It turned out to be the best fit possible they had all the tools and all the resources. It helped me to approach the job search in a completely different way. It allowed me to put myself out there in a vulnerable way (even in the interviews) and it allowed me to get exactly what I wanted.

Margaret Fredrickson, Philanthropy Consultant, United States/Canada

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Eric Rosen 00:01
Career change isn't just about a title or about tasks. It's really understanding you and yourself and what you want and what you enjoy, and what you want to be part of. And when you do that, and you find the industries and companies, you can continue to focus and you'll get to a good spot.

Introduction 00:27
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what it does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change. Keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:51
You might not know this about the HTYC podcast. But before I hit the record button with our clients to share their story of how they changed their career, I almost always share the same thing. I tell them, I don't want to misrepresent what career change is. It can be wonderful. Also, sometimes when we get a snapshot in time in the form of a 35 minute long podcast episode, you don't always get the full picture. So I asked our clients to share not just the great parts of their career change, but also what was hardest about it, what were their challenges, and what was different than what they thought.

Eric Rosen 01:28
So my name is Eric, I'm a senior software and content program manager.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:32
Things are great for Eric now with his new role at Tonal, but his career change was far more challenging than what he thought it would be.

Eric Rosen 01:40
The challenge is that when things are bad, you don't expand that further into organizations that don't quite fit that but sound like it could be okay, or maybe that's role, like, you start to creep a little bit outside of it, because things are going tough, and it's hard. But if you can maintain that Uber focus, you'll get to the place that you want to be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:06
Eric had been working in management consulting for years and loved, well, parts of it. Sales, as it turns out, was not one of those parts. Eventually, he realized that if he was continuing down the same path, sales was going to become a larger part of his life, not a smaller part. And while that's great for some people, it wasn't what Eric wanted. He finally realized that he had to make a change. During this career change process, Eric began to identify what he really wanted in his life and his career. After helping thousands of people with their career changes, we've seen that when you're making this kind of change, it often takes more than three months, sometimes even more than six months. For Eric, it took an entire year to find the right role. Along the way, he had to learn how to ask the hard questions and say 'no' to many good, but not great opportunities.

Eric Rosen 03:00
My background was mostly in management consulting, and I really sort of found my way into that. And after my various degrees, just because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, I enjoyed the aspect of being able to work on challenging problems and being able to do them with a variety of clients in a variety of industries. And so the consulting industry allowed me to do that. And I always thought it would be a way to figure out what I wanted to do. Looking back, it turned into just me staying in that, and just doing that until I got to the point where I realized it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable, because the only way in that industry to grow in terms of level and stature was through sale. And that's just not what I'm natural at from a professional sales. I would say, I am the type of person where I can talk to people about products and things of that nature, then I might sell it. But I can't walk into an office and sell a multimillion dollar ERP project. It just doesn't sound natural from me. And that was really what was holding me back. It was holding me back so overtly. And then at one point, it held me back overtly. And realized that that just wasn't a sustainable long term career growth for me. And so I wanted to find something that allowed me to take what I liked about it, but put me in a position to feel successful, completely successful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:22
That's fantastic that you recognize that. And I'm curious, what were some of the pieces that you did like about it, that you didn't love about it, that you wanted to bring along with you later on?

Eric Rosen 04:33
Yeah, I think it was a couple different things. One, it was about challenges. It was always about rooted in finding ways to solve challenges whether it was through technology, or there's through process or was it through collective group of people. The other part of it is that it was mostly team based. It wasn't sitting alone and thinking about something and then pontificating on high, it was about working with a group of people either in the company, at the client side or a mixture of both. So fostering those types of relationships to work together and to create something lasting and impactful. Those were kind of the things that I wanted to continue to maintain something where I would have challenges to solve, puzzles to solve, if you will, and relationships to build with people.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:18
When you had that realization that sales was probably the path that you would need to take to stay where you're at, but that didn't really align with what you wanted, was that how you knew it was time to leave that area? Or leave consulting? Or was there something else that occurred along the way that caused you to realize, "hey, it's time to leave."?

Eric Rosen 05:41
I think there were some other things as well, I think there was, you know, moving around to different companies to try to find a place that felt more natural and more at home. Once I realized that I was continually moving, I started to think was it because the companies that I were at, and I wanted to move, or was there something bigger going on here that I needed to reflect on some more. And then also, as I started to do more work in my later parts of my consulting career, the types of work that I was doing, and the types of problems we were asked to solve, and the relationship we had with the client started to change some that it wasn't the same as it was earlier, it seemed to be less valued and more commoditized. And it's not that I didn't want to feel like I was commodity but it started to feel like it was more commoditized. And that was just something to do and check off versus taking in some of that information and expertise and bringing it into the organization. And that didn't leave me feeling very good as well. And so I think those other things were going on, but I realized that if there was a path forward where I could get into leadership, then maybe start to change some of those relationships that have made it work, but then that's when I realized, you know, it's sales that are going to do that. And that's just, I was never going to make it there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:06
When you were recognizing that you had that experience where it was, you called it "felt more commoditized", do you remember any instance in particular where you had that realization? Or led that to that realization? Or what was the first time that you really felt that in the back of mind? Take me there, if you remember any of those moments.

Eric Rosen 07:28
I think for someone projects were either through leadership or through the client themselves, where they were just looking for things to be done. So it was just send me a checklist or just give me a timeline or just put together a list of tasks, and it was less about understanding why they wanted to do that or understanding what the impacts would be or getting some more information. It was more about, just give me those answers and don't worry about anything else. And that's when it became the best things that you could almost Google, you can almost figure out how to do that yourself, you don't need me to tell you what a timeline looks like, or a task looks like for me to help you understand why you're doing it, and what are the consequences of doing it. And are these things that you should be doing? Or are you asking the right questions? Are you thinking about this the right way before you get into the action part of it? And those types of things started to happen when then I was just asked to not think that way and not ask those questions and not do those things, just give what was asked of you. And that doesn't always work well for me. I'm not a person that you just kind of say, "Don't think, just do." Because I'm always thinking, and so it's hard for me to turn that part off.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:39
That's what I've always found fascinating. That situation that you experience right there, where you are doing the things that come much more naturally to you, and quite frankly, as I've gotten to know you a little bit, I think you really enjoy that. When you say problem solving earlier, I think that rolls up for you into one of the ways that you solve problems where you're asking questions, and you're thinking about it, and then using that information to be able to help someone and add value in that particular way. Like I see you doing that actively and I don't think people could pay you enough to really stop doing that. Like you'd have to really suppress it. And I think that that's such a sign, like when you get to that point, and you realize that, to be able to be successful in this environment, this situation, this role, this organization, whatever it is that you're having to suppress a part of yourself, like then there's definitely time to move on. So how long do you think it took you once you started recognizing that there was parts and pieces that you're like, "Yep, that's just not me. You're not gonna be able to ask me to do this.", what took place from there? How long did it take?

Eric Rosen 09:40
Well, it took a long time and looking back, an uncomfortably long time, because I tried to find other ways to solve it besides attacking the problem, right? So for me it was about, well, maybe this other company would do it better. And then no, it didn't. Well, that's twice, well, maybe a third time, maybe there's other companies got to do it better. And then you get into that, where it's easier to find, try to find something analogous to what you're doing, and maybe hope the environment in which you do it, will help solve some of the things for it, as opposed to taking a hard look and realizing that it's not necessarily just the environment, it's the actual types of tasks that you're being asked to doing, which aren't changing that much, depending on the company. And that took a long time for me to realize, because that, I think, is the scariest part of it, right. And you get to a point where I was, I mean, this wasn't just post college, and this was postgraduate degree too, like, you start on this path, and you start to... you wake up one day, and you look around and you're like, you know, it's scary to say that, "maybe I made a wrong turn. Like, maybe I made the wrong..." and I continued, and I doubled down on that path. And I'm way far away from where I should be. That doesn't make it right to ignore that. And it doesn't mean it's wrong to be scared of it. The challenge is to then realize, do you want to do something about it or not? And I think I was lucky enough to have an out a way in which that I could be scared of that. But still find a way to softly make the correction, instead of making a hard turn or an exit.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:15
Tell me about that.

Eric Rosen 11:17
And I was able to do that, and that I found myself also wanting to give back in a way and using that, that you talked about, like really thinking about things and helping solve challenges. I wanted to solve some of the challenges, and this is gonna sound very high in the sky, but I wanted to solve some of the challenges I felt society was facing, and we were going down a path and I wanted to find a way to get back. And I didn't want to just write a check or build a house or pack a lunch. And those things are all critical and vital people need food, and people need shelter, and there's great organizations that do that. But that wasn't what I wanted to do and what I meant. And I found a fellowship, which were looking for people like me who wanted to serve a year in city government and work on strategic challenges that government is facing around racial and social equity by providing innovation and providing thought and providing counsel. So for me, it was a way of saying I can do some of the good things that I liked about consulting and marry it to making an impact, and then find a way to use that time to realize what is it that I wanted to do and be? So it was more of a softer turn than just saying, "I'm done with consulting. What am I going to do?" I was able to morph into this pseudo consulting type role and use that time to just say, "What is it that I want to be now?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:36
I think that is fantastic for so many different reasons. You've heard me talk about designing experiments. And I think that for you, this was such a great opportunity to be able to really conduct an experiment that was completely outside of your, what I would call normal, you know, some of those past organizations, it really sounds like we're changing the names and the faces, but the same type of situation overall, in many, many variables. So I think there's a really fantastic way for you to be able to get outside that environment, shake it up and be able to do so in a way that mattered to you, well, being able to pay attention at the same time. So kudos to you for experimenting in that way. That's a courageous decision in the first place. What caused you to feel like that was the right decision for you at the time?

Eric Rosen 13:27
Well, at that time, I had been let go by the consulting firm that I was with. And I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And it was very easy looking back, you know, it would have been very easy for me to say, "Okay, what other consulting firms are looking for people? Consulting firms are always looking for people." And so there's a ways to do that, right? I can't go back and say, "Okay, well, you know, XYZ firm you do consulting, this is what I do, is there a way that we can work together or you're looking to grow this party practice?" But something inside me just realized that that wouldn't have been as exciting for me. And it just happened to be a chance encounter that I got a LinkedIn message from this nonprofit that wanted to at least see if I was interested in talking about this opportunity about helping and that had been going through my head anyway. So it just was a good opportunity for me to do things, as I said softer, right. It wasn't completely being unemployed and figuring out what I wanted to do. It was giving help in a structured way that was set for a year, it had set goals, there was a small stipend, so at least I felt like I was, you know, still, quote unquote, employed, but I was going to then use that time as doing two things: as helping society in the way that I wanted to, and then taking a moment for me and saying, "Who am I and what do I want to be?" I didn't pretend to think that government is where I want it to work. I was open to it, but it wasn't a reason to take it. It was more of, it would give me the opportunity to use the skills that I had in a new way and find the time to figure out who I want to be. So that when I then look for what's next for me, I'm doing it from a place of, I'm not just looking for the next consulting job, because that's easy. I'm looking for the next career move for me so that I can have a more structured career longevity, and the career that I'm putting myself on the right path. It was almost like a moment in time where I could say, "I'm stopping on this road. I don't know what road I'm going to be on next. But I know it's going to be another road. And let me look at all the maps that I can find and figure out what road do I want to be on next, and put myself onto that road."

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:38
I vaguely remember the first conversation you and I had, I told you, I love some of the analogies that you're coming up with and, you know, I think this is a great one. Because, honestly, this is the equivalent to instead of just like keeping on driving anywhere, and just like feeling like you're making momentum, but really, you're not, this is the harder thing to do in so many different ways, like pulling over to the side of the road and saying, "Okay, hold on. Let's pull up the map. Where do we actually want to get to here? Okay, what's the best way to get here?" And it's a courageous decision, quite frankly, I don't think that that's always acknowledged versus just keep on the same path. Keep driving. So really nice job. I'm also curious about looking back on that experience, after you went through the fellowship, what do you feel like were some of your biggest takeaways about what you wanted in your next step and beyond?

Eric Rosen 16:27
I think it reinforced that there were aspects of working on strategic initiatives and challenges that are done outside and being a consultant that there are ways to do that, and there are opportunities to do that. And those are the tasks that still got me excited and still had me want to go to work every day and want to do those types of tasks. I still was able to understand more about how I am as a person in terms of building relationships, right? Like, you think you're good at that, and then consulting, you're artificially put in that way, where you're building relationships, because you're working on the same client, and you're doing something together. And I always thought I was very good at that. This allowed me to come into an industry like government and do the same thing, but not from the same starting point. And I was able to reinforce that that is something that I'm very good at. And being with people and working with people and bringing people along on the journey, and pulling insights and thoughts from people are all things that I do get excited about and want to do. So it reinforced a lot of what I thought about myself, but it also gave me the opportunity to spend time, as I mentioned, like really thinking about, "but what does that mean?" you know, what are the other things? What don't I know about myself that I could use this time to find, and then who can help me with that and just spend the time to do that sort of stuff?

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:50
I just had a conversation, before you and I got to talk, I had a conversation with Celena, the podcast is actually going to air on next week after this episode. And part of our conversation was about, when you spend a lot of time in the same area like in your case, in consulting, and you have been surrounded or maybe siloed by that as the appropriate word, it's hard to recognize what's actually valuable outside of that. So I think that your point that you just made about you got to be in a completely different situation, different environment, different industry, we'll call it, and validate that what you knew how to do in one environment was actually so useful, and another one, and some elements of it you really enjoyed and wanted to carry through like that is invaluable in so many different ways. And it's also so hard to see, like almost everyone we talked to, I will tell you, in any capacity, the emails that we get they undervalue how transferable their skill sets are and what might be possible for them in a different situation that they actually want. So that is so cool that you took away that. And I am curious about what you said, too, just a moment ago about how you recognize that there might be so much more for you out there too, and there were some things that you didn't necessarily know. What do you feel like at that point, you still needed to figure out after completing that fellowship?

Eric Rosen 19:11
I think it was figuring out how do I position myself as someone who can do those things? And what do those things equate to in industry? Right. So going back into the private sector, you know, what are the roles? What are the groups of the organization, the departments, the titles that I should be really looking at or investigating more through conversations? Because it's not the same as in consulting, right? So what are the ones that are important to me? Or what are they call the things that I know how to do? What are they called in industry? Currently, things change all the time. So at that moment, you know, what was it called? And what is it actually looking at?

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:52
So let's fast forward for just a second here. You ended up with Tonal which I believe is a pretty amazing organization. I think they're doing a nice job. with not just one thing, but a lot of different things. And that said, how do you tell people about what you do now? What's your position called? And just give me a couple tidbits about what you're doing, what you're spending your time on now at the moment.

Eric Rosen 20:14
Sure. So I'm currently a senior software and content program manager. And so what I do is for large strategic initiatives that the company is looking to investigate prototype build out for the offering, I lead the cross functional work. So thinking about bringing teams together to solve whatever is the problem that we're asked to do. So usually, it's all stuff that isn't released yet. So we're working on new sort of ideas, we're kind of building them out. And my expertise would be ones that involve some sort of content creation for it with software support. So I don't really work on the hardware side, I'm not about building anything on the hardware side, it's all about the associated content and software.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:04
You know, I think it's super fun about that is that we started this conversation by you saying, "Hey, I really learned through all my consulting experiences that I absolutely love the working together in teams, and that type of collaboration, and that type of cross functional collaboration" like that's really fun for you. And then, you know, thinking about how the strategy of how the different things fit together. And now fast forward to the end, you get to do a whole bunch of that in your new role. And that is really wonderful. I think that's reinforcement that you made a wonderful step for yourself. Also, at the same time, you and I had a conversation before we hit the record button here at that it was not always easy along the way, there was a pretty substantial amount of time for you, was it about 12 months in between the fellowship and then where you accepted this opportunity?

Eric Rosen 21:52
Yeah, my fellowship ended and then it took me a full calendar year to accept an opportunity to join totally.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:59
So what was that like? First of all, I asked, you know, "what did you plan on? Or did you plan for it to be that long?" You're like, "No, not at all. My intent was to get a role that was right for me as soon as possible." But in doing so, what was that like for you? What were the hard parts? And what caused you to continue to keep moving forward?

Eric Rosen 22:23
You're right, and I'm glad this is a podcast not a video, you don't get to see my facial expressions when you're talking about how long it was. Yes, it was challenging. I think, there's a few things that I think looking back on is that one, you can only control what you can control. And there are far more things that you can't control than you realize. You can think about there's certain things that you can't control, but there are significantly more, and of the things that you either can control or not, the ones that you can't control are going to give you the most heartache, the most heartburn, the most consternation throughout it. And it's so much easier for me to say now, you know, looking back and reflecting on it than it was during that time, because at that time, every setback was felt catastrophic. It just did. And it's just because of the state you're in when you're going through this process. And I don't minimize in any way, it is very difficult. And I think what kept me going is the fact that through the fellowship, at least, and looking back the time, just consultant but especially through the fellowship, I realize I could do good things, not anything, and I don't mean to toot my horn or anything like this, but I just realized that I am capable of doing good thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:40
To the way, sir. To the way.

Eric Rosen 23:43
So my real realization is that I have to keep going. Because whatever it is that I get to do next, it's going to be doing something good. And I should be in control of where I do that. And it may take a long time, but it's going to be worth it in the end. Because at the end of the day, if I follow the path, and I stay true to what I want to do and who I want to be, then I am going to do good things for a good company and feel good about myself. I'm just not gonna feel good about myself during the process, and that's just the way it is. And I think that, but I think there's things that you can do to help it get better, right? But from time to time, having that big picture book, pulling yourself up from the weeds and realizing that you're going to get somewhere, you just will. It's going to take a various amount of time to either be quick or short or long and you don't know, but you're going to get somewhere and at the end of the day, you're going to be where you want to be and that's a very powerful place to be. So taking time, looking up and saying "Okay, you know, I'm gonna get there. I just don't know when that time is..." gives you a little perspective of just slowing down and it's going to be okay, and then you dive back in. I would didn't even ask this specifically, but some of the things that I would do besides taking that big holistic picture is I would spend time actually actively not looking for my next opportunity. Doing something else, it could be daily, or it could be weekly, but doing something else, whether it's, you know, we talked about this before, like, I play ice hockey, so whether it was playing ice hockey, or whether it was working out, or whether it was just going to get a coffee physically out of the house, going for a walk, a skateboard or something, just doing something else to clear your brain, but making sure that you do that it does do wonders, it does change your mood, it does give you something else to do and focus on. Because if you continue to focus on what is negatively happening, it reinforces, and it puts you in a downward spiral. And I do say that, you know, you don't always control the downward spiral. There's lots of things that help you get there. But you can control when you get out of it by changing your mental state a little bit by just doing something else. And it can be something simple. It doesn't have to be something complex, which is doing something else. And it'll break up the days, it'll break up the weeks, it'll break up the months, and it will make you feel a lot happier in certain moments and celebrate those moments.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:16
That is fantastic. And I appreciate you sharing what worked for you as well. Because it's one thing to go through that and say, "Well, you just need to hang with it. And eventually you're going to get there." But it's another thing for how do you actually do that, and what might work for someone. So I really appreciate you sharing what worked for you. And also when you think back over the last, and now it's been about 15 months or so, but when you think back over that 12 month period, what do you feel like was much more difficult than you would have anticipated?

Eric Rosen 26:47
I think the biggest challenge really was the networking piece. It wasn't really the conversations. I was getting the traction, I was getting the conversations, I think and this goes back to what you can control and what you can't control. You can control what industries you want to pursue, what companies you want to pursue, what people you want to target. What you can't control is their reaction, and their willingness and their ability to meet you where you want to be. And I mean that in a simple way of want to have a conversation, just explore what they do or explore the companies from the industry, you can't control how receptive they are to it. And that's the challenging part. And I had a lot of moments where I would use a lot of the learnings that I got from you and Mo about how best to reach out and how best to structure your reach out and plan your meetings, blah, blah. And I would make headway in terms of getting connections and people that would want to meet. And then all of a sudden, they probably decided they didn't want to do that anymore, and never heard back or never heard from them, or had a meeting and then didn't show up and then never heard back. Right. That's so frustrating. And that puts you went to some of that downward spiral from before, right? And that goes back to you can't control that, because you've done everything right. And it's hard. That was the hardest part is then you... it's not meant to be personal. It's not that someone is saying, "I don't want to talk to you at all." But it feels that way, it feels that because you're the only one that asked, and you're the one that set up meetings. So it feels that that's what they're doing. But you know, people are have different motivations. And people use tools for different things. And so if you find yourself in a way that you're getting people to say "yes" to connecting your LinkedIn and then never hear from them again, or saying responding to one message in a positive way, and then never hearing from them again, it's hard. But it's one of the things that happens and understanding that people's motivations are different. And you can only control asking, and then you can control the environment in which you have the conversation. But there's very little else that you can control about that and finding a way to have comfort in that, the positive was that person did say yes, at one point in time, that's a positive thing, celebrate that and realize that if that gets replicated that next person maybe then will follow through and have the conversation with you. So trying to look back and find the positives, and what happened in a very negative situation is helpful. But that was the most challenging part of the whole thing

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:23
I can definitely see. And I have felt where that challenge can happen. And you said something that is really very interesting there that I think changes the game for people. I think so many people when they think about making a career change as an example, I think people equate that with, I need to make a company change or an environment change or an industry change or something like that. However, I think it's far, far, far more than that, in some ways, it is also behavioral changes along the way and you've referenced some of those. But then the other thing that often people don't think about is how do you actually produce a desirable situation that is a really positive outcome on the other end. And what I heard you say earlier is that you're focused on those people or organizations or industries or companies or whatever that you actually are interested in, or that you do want to spend your time around. And if you're putting your efforts in a teeny, tiny, you know, smaller portion of those places that you actually want to be, eventually, as long as you are continuing to move down that path, and this is what I saw you do really, really well, you continue to find ways to keep moving down the path, looking at that larger purpose of, "Hey, I know that I can do good work someplace. And I know that when I get there, I'm going to be able to contribute in different way." And it almost sounded like you felt obligated to continue on down that path. But focusing on that element, and then focusing on identifying and only going after those places that you actually are legitimately interested in, that's kind of the not so secret sauce to how you end up in a place that you actually want to be. So I just wanted to unpack that for a few seconds here because it's easy to listen to a story like yours, Eric, where you've had a really positive outcome on the other end, and it sometimes gets lost about how that actually got there. And in this case, I know you did a great job continuing to show up and continuing to focus on those places you want to be. So what I'm also curious about is Tonal. What caused you to believe, yeah, this is absolutely an organization that is right for me?

Eric Rosen 31:29
Yeah, specifically about Tonal, I knew coming out of my fellowship that when we talked about, it reinforced the types of tasks and things that I liked to do. But what it also instilled in me is that I also knew that I wanted to make an impact on people's lives and find a way to do that. And there's many ways to make an impact on people's lives. And I wanted to find an organization that I felt in which the work that I did would impact people. And for me, Tonal does that. And I don't mean it in a physical way of just changing people's physiques or changing their, whether they're losing weight or getting stronger muscles or things of that nature, it certainly does that. But what it does for me, is it reimagines and reinvents and reinforces their relationship with health and fitness that is also impacts more parts of their lives. So it was an organization that I knew that I wanted to be part of. And there were other organizations too, that do things similarly, but in other industries. But I knew specifically that I wanted to target companies that would allow me to do the work that I like, and I'm good at, and impact people. And so it was one of those things that I knew that I needed to narrow what that was, and be uber focused on what that was so that I could facilitate the right conversations and do the right research. And one of the things that you said earlier about related to what I'm just saying is that that's incredibly hard to do, I don't mean it was hard for me, it's a hard thing for people to do, it takes a lot of the work that you alluded to, which isn't just career change isn't just about a title or about tasks, it's really understanding you and yourself and what you want and what you are enjoying, and what you want to be part of. And when you do that, and you find the industries and the companies, you can continue to focus, like you said, "and you'll get to a good spot." The challenge is that when things are bad, you don't expand that further into organizations that don't quite fit that but sound like it could be okay. Or maybe that's role like you start to creep a little bit outside of it, because things are going tough, and it's hard. But if you can maintain that uber focus, you'll get to the place that you want to be, but I do recognize and again, don't want to minimize, it's hard to do that when things are not going well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:59
Yeah, especially I mean, 12 months in when... I don't know how you experienced specifically long periods of time in between where you're focused on something, but the result hasn't come through yet. But I know for me it very much felt like should I consider accepting something else? Like am I really doing the right thing here? Like am I doing the right thing for my family? Like all it causes me to question my intense over and over again. And you know, I'll ask you directly what was that like for you? What were those hard elements that people might not be thinking about from the emotional side?

Eric Rosen 34:35
It does. It certainly makes you question, did you define things the correct way because it feels so narrow? And that's when relying on the work that you did is you have to trust that because you did it from an honest place and it truly reflects who you are and what you want. If you put in the work upfront to do that, it's having faith in that and having faith in yourself. Again, it's not easy, you know, it's not easy to do. But if you put in the work at the beginning to do that, then you're only cheating yourself if you ignore that later on, when it's hard. It's easy to do that it's easy to ignore it. And it's easy to open up and say, "Well, this role sounds sort of, maybe it's, you know, and maybe I'll be able to fix it, maybe I'll be able to fix the roll once I'm there. Or maybe I'll be able to fix the company once I'm there" it's easy to talk yourself into those types of things, especially if they're the ones that you get conversations with, and they're the ones that you start talking to. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do, because you did something earlier for a reason. So I don't really have a magic bullet to say how you break out of it, I think, you know, changing your perspective, from time to time, not in terms of the details, not in terms of whether your answers are correct, but your perspective of take a break for yourself, read a book, you know, go for a walk, go talk to someone you haven't talked to in a long time, just find some other way to change your mindset when you then go back to it, you'll feel a stronger connection to the work that you did earlier, because your minds a little clearer. And you'll realize, "Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking. That is exactly what I'm looking for." And then it'll give you a little bit more of an adrenaline rush to keep going.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:16
Let's go back all the way to when you were at the beginning of thinking about changing and realizing that the past wasn't right, and you were in the midst of deciding, "Hey, should I make this change in one way or another?" And back there, when you were thinking about it, before you transitioned out, before left that opportunity in consulting, you had inklings of it and you ended up changing organizations a few times. But what would you advise people who are back in that situation who are wondering, "Hey, should I change to another organization, keep doing the same thing? Should I make a massive pivot?" And they've got all these questions going through their head. What advice would you give that person who's in that place?

Eric Rosen 36:57
I think that's the time to do a lot of the self reflection work and really break things apart. Break things apart into the tasks and the activities that you like and types of companies that you like, and then personally, what's important to you, right? I think if you can do that introspection and reflection earlier, then I think it's okay to figure out your path forward. Because at that point in time, you might not know enough about the tests that you like, or don't like, you might know a lot about yourself, but you're not sure about the test. So that doesn't say that your path is wrong. That could be an environmental issue, that could be the tasks issue, it could be a person, you don't know, right. So at that point, it'll give you a better roadmap of maybe you can try to your point, another experiment and do the same thing you were doing, but for a different company, and see if it was an environmental issue. But you could be in a different position where you know the tasks are just completely wrong for you, then it's finding the tasks that are right for you, right. So I think a lot of that looking inward, there's never too early a way or time to do it. I think historically, it's always like your first job out of college, you're still learning and figuring things out, right, might be hard for someone to say "That's a too early time to do something like that." But that might be more of a time of understanding more about yourself, and what motivates you and how you're responding well, and how you're not responding well. And just kind of taking inventory of yourself that can help you a little later on. So the more I think you can start taking inventory of things, the better off you'll be when you need to then use those pieces of information.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:34
You did a really nice job, even staying true to yourself at the very, very end, when it got to... you had an offer, you were in the negotiation process, it's feeling like you need to accept the offer and not sure how much give there is and everything else along those lines. And you did a really nice job coming out on the other side with even more than what some of the minimums were that you had to find for yourself not just accepting the, quote unquote, minimums. I will tell you from working with literally thousands of people on that, that it's a hard thing to do much like some of the other pieces that we've talked about here. And since you did such a great job through that process, what did you learn? And what would you share with everyone else about what you learned as you're going into negotiation to be able to stay true to yourself and what you actually want?

Eric Rosen 39:18
I think a couple of things, and thank you for those, I appreciate the kind words. I think a couple of things. The first thing is having support. When having support from people, I had the support from you and from Mo, right, to bounce ideas off to get information that I didn't know, to ask the question of, "Am I crazy here? Or should I ask this? Or is this out of bounds? Or is this how do you think and so...? How do you think this is going to be responded to? Or what about this type of wording, how would you react to that?" So having that support there is important. And then going back to the understanding of you, understanding what is important to you. If a certain title or dollar amount or total package is critical to you then knowing that's what you need to find. I think in my particular case, I had a sense of what I felt my worth was, I don't have any true empirical evidence of my particular worth to the world, but I had a sense of what I think it would be. And so I knew that it would be something that was worth asking for knowing that if it got to a certain point that was a little lower, or whatever it was, like where my line in the stand was, where I would say, "I could love the company, and I can love the opportunity. But this particular package salary bonus, or whatever it is, is not going to make me feel valued and put me in a negative spot." Then unfortunately, that's just not a good position to put myself in setting myself up for failure. So I kind of had an idea of where my lowest buying would be. And just knowing that I would make these decisions if I had to, as long as you have the support, and you know what's important to you, I think that the negotiation part is than just asking questions and not being afraid to. There's no harm in asking and realizes there's also no harm in being told no.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:17
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and take the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamored with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team. And we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. Really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that's scheduleaconversation.com and find a time that works best for you, we'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamored with. Hey, I can't wait to hear from you.

Cindy Gonos 42:41
I learned very quickly that one of my responsibilities as the General Manager of the swim school was to also be a lifeguard, the head lifeguard, if you will. And unbeknownst to my owner, or any of the folks that was helping me with training, I have an absolute phobia of the water. And when I went into my lifeguard training, I just kept telling myself, "You're going to be fine. You're going to do this, you're going to be fine." But the fear that I had was absolutely paralyzing. And it was really difficult for me to admit that, it was really difficult for me to admit that I needed to ask for help.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:20
All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Your Career Evolution: It’s More Than Just A Job Change

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Raise your hand if you’ve ever wanted to leave a job.

I know MY hand went up, and I think I heard all of yours go up, too. We’ve all been there. 

One thing we’ve learned over many years of helping people make career changes is that it’s about WAY more than just changing jobs.

You have to consider the mindset, and who you are as a person when thinking about making a career change.

What you’ll learn

  • The importance of figuring where you want to go before deciding how to get there
  • Fixed mindset vs growth mindset
  • Why sometimes it’s about changing as a person – not just a job or career change
  • How Larry managed to pivot from “just brewing” to the financial side of brewing

Success Stories

I was nervous. But obviously, it worked out extremely well. (Kelly) was unbelievable. I still keep in touch with her. She's phenomenal. And we had such great conversations. I didn't know that I would be getting laid off from this job. And I signed up for Career Change Boot camp a week before I got laid off. Which was just insane timing. And I just started it. I remember I wrote you guys, and I was like, “I just got laid off from this job. I'm so happy that I enrolled in this program.” And it was, it just was the perfect time.

Melissa Shapiro, Career Specialist, United States/Canada

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Scott took the time to really hear my problem, to understand, and offer solutions to help me transition to where I am and where I’d like to be. That is why I decided to sign up for Happen to Your Career. I used to work in the legal industry and now I work in the nonprofit industry for a nonprofit that helps people change their lives!

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Larry Chase 00:01
It was a realization that I'm not figuring this out on my own. And that was the challenge. You can't go figure out how to do something if you don't even know what you want to do.

Introduction 00:14
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what it does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:38
Raise your hand if you've ever wanted to leave a job. Okay, I know my hand is way up. Pretty sure I heard all of yours go up, too. We've all been there, right? One thing that I've learned over many years of helping people make career changes, is that it's about way more than just changing jobs.

Larry Chase 00:59
There were things that I saw that I could do and help out. And I was really put in my place every time that I would reach out and try to do more, and they say, "Well, you're just production." It tore up my soul, because I saw so many other things that I could go in and do. And so it was time to leave that company. And so I left and the question was, well, what's next?

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:21
That's Larry Chase. After discovering the love for beer, he ended up working in breweries for 20 years. He got to know every single aspect of beer, becoming an expert in all things, beer and breweries. He loved it for many years. However, more recently, he realized he wanted something different, something more, not just a job change, though, but an entire career change. Now I want you to listen in for how he was able to figure out the very next step in his career evolution. But first, I want you to listen to where Larry started out. Here's Larry sharing what led him to the beer industry in the first place.

Larry Chase 02:00
We'll start with a biology major in college and did not know what I wanted to do with that major. When I left college, I'm not going to seminary, I was going to be a Lutheran minister. After one year of seminary, though, I realized that this is not for me. And the short version of the story is that I found my higher calling. And that higher calling was brewing beer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:25
Love it.

Larry Chase 02:25
Now, it didn't quite happen that quickly. What did happen, though, is that during college, I didn't drink beer. I didn't care for the flavor. And it's really the beer that college students certainly drank 25, 30 years ago, I just didn't care for it. I got to seminary, I was in a larger metropolitan area, and the craft beer scene was really starting to kick off. So I can still remember the first couple of beers that I had, Pete's Wicked Ale and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, were two of my introductory beers to beer with flavor. And I said, 'Wow, I like this. Wow, what's going on?' And being a science major, I was curious about the questions of how do you create all of these different flavors, because that's not what I was familiar with.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:13
That's what not you put or you were used to in college.

Larry Chase 03:16
Right. And so this is all starting to happen at seminary. And people always laugh at it. But the best theological discussions took place at the bar on Wednesday night. So I probably partied more in seminary than I ever did in college. So I get to that end of that year of seminary, I'm not going to go back, I had a goal to travel Europe. So I worked for two years. One of those years was literally working 4 jobs, 80 hours a week to save money. And when you work that much, you don't spend so you save fast, and I did. I traveled Europe, and people would ask me, "What are you most looking forward to when you go to Europe?" And it was "I want to experience drinking beer in the British pubs." And it was... It was fantastic. Drank beer in Germany, learned about it there, ended up, didn't realize Oktoberfest was going on when I got to Munich, and boom. So I've been to Oktoberfest in Munich. fantastic experience. I get back to the States. I ended up traveling for three or four months around the United States. And as I go, I'd stop in at these little breweries and brew pubs everywhere I went. And it was on one of those places, I picked up this beer paper that was in one of these brew pubs, and I saw this ad for the American Brewers Guild of brew master. And all of a sudden it was "*ding*. Oh, I could go do that." And so I got done traveling and I was living with my parents at home flat broke, because I just spent all my money traveling. And I remember my dad taking me out for lunch, looking at across the table from me and saying, "Larry, what are you going to do now?" And I looked right back across the table at him and I said, "Dad, I'm going to brew beer." And you know, this fits at mid 20 years old. I didn't know how I was going to make that happen. I didn't know what the steps were, which is a lot of what you go through in this career change, right? And for some reason, though, it was much easier at mid 20s. I had nothing to lose. I didn't have a job, I didn't have any money. I just got to go figure it out. And I did. I started... this very little internet at the time, I think America Online was not the only thing going on in about 96, 97.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:30
Good old AOL.

Larry Chase 05:32
Yeah. So you really couldn't go and research places and what's out there. And so I just started stopping in the breweries in the places that I knew. And it was one of those times I was back in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is where I went to college, a friend called me and said," Hey, we're moving out of this house, you got to come get your stuff." And so I did. I popped into the brewery, talked with the brew master, I was doing informational interviews, that's really what I was doing, just asking lots of questions. And it was... by the time we got done with that conversation, he said, "Well, would you be interested in a job?" Whoa, wow, heck yeah. And I didn't even walk in expecting to get a job. I was there asking questions. So shorten that story up, that was my first brewing job. I worked part time, learning on the job as a brewer, the other part time I bartended at the place and I was so fascinated with it, I read voraciously all the texts and the magazines that they had, and anytime there was downtime I was reading. So anyway, I had that job. And I've been a professional brewer for 20 plus years, and have worked in the Midwest in Oregon for eight and a half, nine years at a brewery. And in that time, I got involved with the Brewers Association. I'm a real big proponent of the association and how they support small and independent brewers. And because of my interest in Financials, which I think we'll get to, when we talk about my career change story, I was on the board of directors for the Brewers Association, and serve that for eight years, and for five of those years, was treasurer of the organization and did a lot of work in bringing the BA along with their investment portfolio, creating investment policy statements and guiding the financial side of the organization.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:27
That is wonderful story and really appreciate you sharing, especially where and how it began. That's so fun to hear some of the origination of what ends up setting the stage for many years. And what I'm also curious about too, and I recognize that you and I have talked before there's not the first conversation that we've had, but I don't know the entire story for what caused you to want to change. You got into the beer industry and brewing industry by chance, almost, in one way or another, faded chance maybe, however, also you decided at some point along the way that once, you know, what was a wonderful situation for you, was no longer as wonderful in the same way. So I'm curious, what had caused you to want to change?

Larry Chase 08:17
Things that caused me to want to change. I wanted to change out of the role that I'd had. I'd been a head brewer for 20 years, and I'd always, for the most part been a head brewer in brew pubs. And as a brew pub brewer, you're a department of one generally. And as a department of one for anybody who has been their own independent business person knows, you get to do it all. And while brewing definitely still excites me, I get stoked about stainless steel equipment. I get stoked about the technical side of beer, the flavor of beer, how you create it, there's a lot that goes into being a brewer in a small brewery that I was just tired of the word. The joke is that you spend 85% of your time cleaning, actually, I shouldn't say joke, because it's true, it's what you do. And it was the nitty gritty daily tasks and the cleaning that I was tired of doing it. And I wasn't interested in going and finding a job in a larger brewery, in the operational side. I certainly could, I've got the chops to do it. But that didn't really appeal to me either. So I was really tired of doing some of that day to day work. And there was a second side of it too, is that the organization that I was in was very unhealthy. And I had come out of now three organizations over my brewing career where it was great to start and I think a lot of that was the honeymoon period, and then things change or organizationally, and it became a place that I didn't want to be, I dreaded going to work. I didn't want to be around some of the people and the leadership, and there was no direction coming from the leadership. And there were things that I saw that I could do and help out, and I was really put in my place every time that I would reach out and try to do more. And they say, "Well, you're..." I hated this. But it was kind of like, "Well, you're just production. That's all we want you to do." And, oh, it tore up my soul, because I saw so many other things that I could go in and do. It was time to leave that company. So I left. And the question was, well, what's next? And I thought I'd figure it out. And six months went by, I worked in a winery during harvest and crush with a friend who is the winemaker. Fabulous experience, because I got to learn about wine and how the similarities and differences between making wine and brewing beer is great. Yet, I always thought I'd open my own brewery. And I'd been thinking that for 15 years, but I could never come around to actually making it happen. And we could dive into all kinds of reasons as to why that is.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:11
Well, I'm curious, you know, looking back now, what do you think were some of the most prominent reasons why you decided not to, either real or what was stopping you, however you want to look at it, what were those?

Larry Chase 11:28
I have a, especially at this time in my life, I have a fear of not succeeding. Right. And I think that's what a lot of us are up against. And because I've been around the brewing industry for 20 plus years, I know how difficult it is to start a brewery and to make it successful. And part of it is that it's really important that you have partners in that that can help, because there's so much that has to happen, and the type of brewery that I wanted to open, you're almost three different business models. So that's not easy. And you need people to help. Well, I didn't have people who I really wanted to be partners with. I didn't even know names of people to consider. So the difficulty of doing it was very daunting. The financial side of doing it is very daunting, because a lot of people will try to bootstrap their breweries. Now, the friend we're staying with right now, he was talking about a brewer here in New Eugene, who is very proud and will boast to everybody that he hasn't paid himself in nine years. And I'm thinking "Dude, that's not something to be proud of. You've been doing a hobby for nine years. And that's not a business." So I know how challenging it is from the work that has to go in, the financial side of it. And you got to go out and raise money. And it's just all these things that I could never bring myself around to just diving in and doing and making happen. So I think that was a big part of it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:03
That's really interesting. So then, I am so curious, as you started about figuring out, "Okay, what is next?" And you started embarking on "Hey, what is this change for what's next going to look like for me?" You know, what did you encounter along the way? And what I'm really interested in are, what are some of the parts that you feel like were surprising to you that you didn't expect?

Larry Chase 13:29
It felt early on that I'd be able to figure this out on my own. That's what I thought was going to happen, I'd take this time. But one year went by, a second year went by, and I'm still sitting here without a job. And my wife and I are making it work, yet, I was, I wouldn't say miserable, but I really was a float, drifting, not really knowing where to go. And I think it was the realization that I'm not figuring this out on my own. I don't have the tools. I don't have the, for some reason, even though back 20 plus years ago, I said, "I want to be a brewer" but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And that was the challenge. How do you go... you can't go figure out how to do something if you don't even know what you want to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:18
Exactly.

Larry Chase 14:19
And so, and again, I was at a point in my life where I think that I felt I had more commitments than I probably did that first time around, and that I couldn't just go and do because of these commitments. I know too, that my mindsets was not where it should have been, and that came out through the work I did with Jennifer and mindset was a huge part of why I was not making any progress forward on my own, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:51
In what way?

Larry Chase 14:52
I really latched on to the conversation in our coaching with the difference between a growth and a fixed mindset. And I had read Carol Dweck's book, "Mindsets", probably in January of 2020. And I really latched on to it. But at the time, as I read it, I'm thinking, "Yeah, I've got a growth mindset." Because as you read that book, you know, the fixed mindset, we've all got fixed mindsets, we've all got some growth mindset. It's kind of a continuum of where do you land. You know, and I viewed myself as having on mostly all growth mindset. Yeah, of course, because that's the good thing. That's where you want to be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:30
Obviously.

Larry Chase 15:31
Of course.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:32
Of course.

Larry Chase 15:32
When in reality, I had a lot of fixed mindset. And that's what was holding me back from...

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:40
What did that show up for you? When you say, "Hey, in reality, I had a fixed mindset in..." sounds like more areas than what you had previously thought. How did you see that show up for you?

Larry Chase 15:53
The way that I've saw it show up best, there's this exercise that Jennifer had me do, and it was called old agreements, new agreements. And she said, "Larry, I want you to sit down, and I want you to write out what are all of the agreements that you have with yourself right now." And that was hard work, for sure. And getting it down on paper, and for sure you think about it and get it down on paper. But once we got it down on paper, and there was probably six or seven different ones that I came up with, and as we started reading through the old agreement, and then comparing that to the new agreement in a particular area, and as I would read through all of the old agreement, the words were all very fixed mindset, terminology.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:43
Interesting.

Larry Chase 16:44
And it took Jennifer to point this out to me. But when I realized it, I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And I start looking through each of these old agreements that I had with myself, and so much of it was fixed mindset. So my wife has a very positive, how can we make this work, figure it out attitude, always has. And one of the things that I am really good at is when an idea comes up, and this is where I overuse one of my strengths. When an idea comes up, I will immediately look to how it won't work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:23
Let's say all the reasons why this will not work or can't work or needs to...

Larry Chase 17:28
Exactly. I forget which strength that falls in. But that's the over use, it's that analytical side of it, it's good to have that, yet, when you take it way too far, you never end up seeing the positive. I'm looking... instead of... use the analytical side to look to how it can work, right. But I would always go to how it can't work, and that frustrated my wife immensely, because every time she would bring up an idea, my immediate response was to start talking about how it won't work. Well, when she is 100%, always, how do we make it work, and I'm always the downer of how it won't work. And we were these two opposites. So that's how it was coming out, you know, this fixed mindset side of me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:11
Can I read you some that Jennifer sent me?

Larry Chase 18:14
Please.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:15
She says, "Larry took his mindset language very seriously. Early in the engagement, we talked about growth mindset and empowering language as a way to call forth, what was his to do in his professional and personal life. He put together a detailed ideal career profile and used this entire process to retrain his thought process and speech patterns to empower himself and others to take action." And so I think this is so cool to have, one, you're sharing the story of here's how this was showing up. This was showing up in a variety of different ways, "My previous agreements were all fixed mindset, didn't realize it to the point of where, you know, I have this continuous interaction with my wife, where she was 'how to make it work.' And I'm like, 'Hey, here's all the reasons why it's not going to.'"And it's no small amount of work and effort and time and energy and all the other things to do something like retraining yourself, you have a totally different lens to look through, and focus on growth mindset, and just other mindsets that are very positive in that area. So what I'm curious about and the question I wanted to ask you is, what do you feel like helped the most? Because I think that's difficult to do over a period of many years, let alone a period of months. So really nice job, and what helped you along the way aside from what we've already talked about?

Larry Chase 19:43
One of the things that I did, I can't remember how it came out, but I'd started practicing meditation some time in this realm as well. And what I did, I took all of the new agreements that I've written for myself, and after, every morning, after my 5 to 10 minute silent meditation, I would take that piece of paper with all those new agreements, and every single day, I would read them out loud to myself. And that repetitiveness to try to put it in my head of this is how I think, this is how I am going to approach the world, the empowering language piece of it as well, I found a great one page or document online that really outlined instead of this word, instead of saying "I need" say, "it's important to" and by doing that daily, and helping to cement it in my head, one, was some of the words, I'm now at the point where... if I recognize I'm about to say, "I need to do this", or "I should do this", which is disempowering language, I can catch myself before it actually comes out of my mouth, and I am able to flip it and say, "it's important for me", or "I want to", or "I will do this". And that has a huge impact on how your mind approaches the world when you change the language that you use. And when you do it out loud. So that was speaking it out loud, and speaking it daily, I've gotten out of that practice right now. In those first two to three, four months, that's really what was keeping me, helping me make that change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:33
That is pretty awesome. And again, I just want to reinforce, if people listen to this, as you're listening to this right now, it can easily be glossed over that this might not sound like a big deal. But this is something that I would advocate is a much, much harder part of any type of career change that often people don't realize. So many people show up in our world, where they believe it's going to be more about a job and company and work change, but really, what we see over and over again, it's about becoming a different person and becoming the person that you want to be along the way. And I just think that you've done a really, really nice job with that, Larry, and I want to acknowledge that out loud. And also, you know, one of the other things that makes me very curious about too is, what else happened for you? Or what else did you do that you found to be very helpful in getting to the point that you are now?

Larry Chase 22:33
Sure. So I'm transitioning into being a certified coach for the great game of business. So this gets to that financial piece that has been an interest of mine for a long time. In fact, I still have my name tag from my junior year of high school when I was the junior class treasurer. So there's been this financial side that has been an interest to me for a long time. And so great game of business is an operational system that is open book management. And a lot of times people think open book management is, "I just throw up in the financials, let people see him" and walk away. That's really open book reporting, and there's a lot of companies out there who do open book reporting. They let their employees, at least upper management, middle management, see the numbers, yet they never go beyond that. It's... well, here's the numbers. So true, open book management, and specifically through the great game of business, which is the organization that really pioneered the idea 40 years ago, is teaching employees about the financials, so you open up your books, and then you teach them financial literacy, about how the company truly operates from a financial standpoint. And in doing so, you start to teach and give them line of sight into how, what they do on an everyday basis in their role impacts the financials and the success of the company. And one of the big mantras of the system is that "people support what they help create." So it's not about the leaders and the upper management, you know, pushing down from the top and saying, "This is how we're going to do this." It's about giving employees the knowledge and the tools to be able to create it themselves. And one of the questions that we'd like to ask is, well, "Who really out there creates the numbers for a company?" You know, a lot of times the answer is, well, it's the accountant. It's the people in the finance division who are putting out these reports, daily, weekly, monthly, and that's not the case. It's the frontline employees who are truly creating the numbers for the business. So when you get them involved, and you show them and you teach them, they get more excited and they now see how they're successful. And then you give them, what we call, "a stake in the outcome", where they get to participate in the rewards of that success. And whether it's a bonus program, there's many games that are 90 Day pushes to really make a behavior change, and there's rewards if you win. So I am in the process of getting my certification to coach that, to help companies. And then my primary realm that I want to serve is the craft brewing world. Because even though I don't want to be hands on brewer every day, I still absolutely love beer. I love the people in the brewing world. I've got contacts everywhere that I can call upon as I grow this new business of mine, which that's a whole nother realm. I'm now figuring out how do I build my own independent business. And that's not where I anticipated going, when I started the coaching with Jennifer back in November of 2020. So that's the change. That's where I'm headed.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:05
That is fantastic. And here's the part that I love about that incorporates so much of what you are really wonderful at and really just gravitate towards, in so many different ways. And I think anyone listening to this right now can tell that just in how you've talked about your story leading up to this, just in how you are explaining what it is that you are doing or get to do now. And I think what's really cool too, is this isn't just a "hey, here's what I'm going to do now." You already have your first client too. Is that right?

Larry Chase 26:43
Yes, I do. And that's a little bit longer story of how that came about. The connections are absolutely amazing. I got my first client, because the owner of the brewery saw me post on the Brewers Association daily forum, asking about any breweries out there that are currently practicing open book management, and specifically along the lines of the great game of business. And he saw that post, and he said, "This is interesting." He looked into it further and realized that this might be the missing piece that he's been trying to figure out for his company. And turns out, we ended up on, as I'm getting into the coach training, and is this something that I want to do, we end up on the same webinar call via the great game of business, and I knew he was going to be on there, because they'd given me a heads up. Anyway, we made that connection. And it turns out that he learned about it from me, unbeknownst to me at the time. And as we continued the conversation, I'm now gonna have a contract to be support person for them, who has the knowledge to help them implement the system.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:01
That is pretty fantastic. I love how life works when you start to become very clear on what you want, which direction you go and who you want to serve, it isn't magic, but sometimes it seems like it in a variety of different ways.

Larry Chase 28:16
So if you don't mind, I'm going to tell the magic of this. Because when I first left my job in 2018, I was aware of the great game of business, I've been following them. I haven't paid attention to it. There's other breweries and there's some big name breweries New Belgium Brewing out of Fort Collins, Colorado is a rock star in the world of the great game of business. And I'd served on the board of directors with Kim Jordan from there. So I was familiar with it. And when I left my job, I thought, "Oh, well, what would it be to be a great game coach?" And I was on their website, I called, I talked to somebody and this was in 2018. At the time, they said, "Well, we really want our coaches to have been practitioners." And while I had not been a practitioner, I'd never worked for a company that had done it. So put that on the back burner. Well, then fast forward, we get into my coaching work with Jennifer in HTYC. And when we got to the point that realize this is really something I want to pursue, I had made a chart of "here's the roles that it's important for me to go find to get to that point 5 or 6 years from now where I can then become a great game coach." And so to do that, I need to find a company to work for that is practicing the game, playing the game. So I start making the calls, I start finding contacts. And in one of those calls, I knew that a colleague of mine in the brewing world had recently implemented the great game at his brewery a couple years ago, and we served on a committee together so we talked about it. So I called him and I said, "Hey, would you introduce me to your great game coach?" So he did. I had a fantastic conversation with her and one of the questions that, you know, HTYC teaches I think is, you know, when you get into these conversations, that final question that you ask is, "Well, who else do you think I should be talking to? Who would you introduce me to?" So I asked that question. She thought about it. She says, "I'll get back to you." She hands up introducing me to the Vice President of coaching at the great game business. I get on that call, thinking that he's going to be able to share with me names of companies that I could go talk to and explore the possibility. That's not what his intent for that call was.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:36
What was his intent?

Larry Chase 30:37
His intent was to say, "I think we want you to be a great game coach, Larry." And it just blew me away. And part of the reason being is that I have 20 years of experience in the brewing industry, they've had breweries come to them, inquiring about what does it looked like to coach, to have a coach, and they're big believers in that coaches work best in industries that they know. And they didn't have any coaches who know the brewing industry. And so they wanted me because of my knowledge. And then they had a process to, you know, I had three different conversations, you know, to actually get to the point to them saying, "yeah, we'd love to have you on board." And so it all started, I think, as my wife will say, and I've heard some other people say, "You already know everybody who you need to know." And that was exactly the case here. I've known Jeff for 10 plus years, he introduced me to his coach. And before we knew it, I'm a great game coach. And it was all about those connections. So that's that magic that you talked about. And I love that story. And the great thing about it is that Jeff and his Bri are in Springfield, Missouri, which is where the great game of business is headquartered. So Jeff knows a lot of the people in that realm. There's Miller Brewing equipment out of Springfield, I've known one of their... he doesn't work there anymore, but he was their sales guy for the brewing side for 20 years. I've known him for almost as long, I called him to talk about the great game. He's a big proponent and fan of it because they do it. And turns out that he knows a lot of people at the great game. So it's all this small world stuff that these connections start to give you credibility and then excitement. And it's things just start rolling.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:25
Here's what I love most about that story. I love, really two pieces, maybe more, probably a lot more. However, two main pieces really stand out to me. One is that you have this conversation way back when, you had an inkling that this would be a lot of fun for you quite a while ago, and basically was met with a "Yep. No, we just don't do that. Nope, sorry." "Hey, thank you. But no, thank you" essentially. And you're up against a wall there. And instead of just accepting that, you kept going in that direction. Well, at the same time, you were trying to refine what you really wanted, and continuing to pursue that, continuing to figure out how this could be possible ended up leading to getting an exception made for you. And I think that's one of my favorite things about so, not just your story, but so many of the stories that we get to share on this podcast is that, really, once you start to declare what you want, and you're continuing to put action to figure out how it might be possible, then all of a sudden, that's part of what is that secret magic in one way or another that ends up making it possible later on. So I so appreciate you sharing a bit of what looks like an impossibility or looks like magic from the outside, and how it actually functions from the inside. I very much appreciate that. And congratulations again too. I don't know that I told you that.

Larry Chase 33:51
Thank you. The challenge now though it's just beginning. It's only beginning. Right? You said earlier how a lot of people come in thinking that it's simply about a career change a new job, a different role. You know, for me, it was... I went for six months, weekly with Jennifer, and for probably three to four of those months, we didn't even talk about a job, a role where I want to do, it was that mindset piece that we really had to work on first before I could even get to the point of considering what's next. The way I tell that story, it makes it sound like it just, you know, rolled one piece into the other. It was still challenging though because there were the days I had I really want to make that call, or I don't even know who to call and might have spaced out by three weeks because I didn't do it. I was afraid, yet, it's that case of, if you sit down and do it and do the work, it comes faster. We like to procrastinate because we're afraid and, nonetheless, here I am.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:58
I think that's amazing. And I am curious as you said, your journey is now just beginning. But I think the part that really is amazing about is even though it is just beginning, it is now on a different track that clearly you diagnosed years ago was what you, you no longer wanted to be on that same track. And you've gone through something that is very difficult. Most people in the entire world don't do this. They don't identify what they want to be doing, and then actively make it happen in the real world. So again, just kudos to you. But then the other question that I want to ask you is, what advice would you give to those people who were or where you were several years ago, and you know that you no longer want to be doing what you were doing, but aren't quite sure where you want to go or how to make it happen, what advice would you give?

Larry Chase 35:51
There's a few things that come to mind. It's one that my wife likes to say, and it's "leap and the net will appear" really, really difficult to do, I get that, really, really difficult to do. Yet, if your mindset is thinking positively in that direction, it happens. I think another piece of advice is that, don't wait. Because I didn't talk about how it took me way too long to leave that last job, even though it was probably two or three years that I knew I needed to be out of there, and yeah, don't wait. It may seem really, really difficult that you can't and you gotta wait this out, you will feel so much better. And it's not the first time. I've left two jobs under duress. And there was the first time I did it, it was... I should have done it sooner. And this last time, I should have done it sooner. So don't wait.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:50
I want to just close really quickly with something else that Jennifer wrote, your coach Jennifer wrote, one, "Larry did an amazing job of reaching out with a survey that asked about his strengths and leverage the how to ask help formula to enlist a highly educated support team." And she also went on to say, "Larry is one of the kindest, most honest clients that I have ever had the opportunity to work with. A heart for helping others and creating organizational health." I just I wanted you to know that. I'm sure she's probably told you some of those things anyways, but I wanted to make sure they got told here as well. And, again, congratulations, I really appreciate it. And thanks so much for sharing your story.

Larry Chase 37:33
Oh, my pleasure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:38
Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided they wanted to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line; scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:46
Let's say that we were to overly simplify the career change process for just a second here. If we divided it up into three stages, they would be the identification stage, which is identifying what creates a great next step and beyond for you. Stage number two would be the creating, finding and testing stage. Stage number three would be landing the opportunity. Each of these stages are pretty difficult in their own right. However, I see time and again from the 1000s of people that we work with that stage number two is probably the most difficult, that creating, finding and testing stage. It's also where we get the most questions again and again and again. All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Goal Setting: How Scott & Alyssa Have Learned To Set Impactful Goals

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Every single year my wife Alyssa and I sit down to pencil out our goals for the next year. But this year we sat in a hot tub in Austin Texas. 

Ok let me explain. We’ve done goal setting for over 13 years now, but funny thing…we’ve hit almost all of our goals. That sounds like a good thing right? Well it felt like a good thing, until recently. we started realizing that maybe we’re thinking way too small. Maybe we could be making a much larger impact for ourselves, our clients, our team members and our family and friends. 

Now for the last few years in a row we’ve shared on the podcast exactly what we’ve learned from setting goals as a couple for over a decade. Check out episode 386 if you’re interested in seeing the progression. 

This year we decided we wanted some outside help to break through our own mental limitations that we suspected we were placing on ourselves. 

Now I don’t consider myself as someone who thinks small and I acknowledge that we’ve done many things that our friends tell us seem impossible, but I had no idea just how small I was thinking. That is until we went to attend the One Thing Goal Setting conference in Austin Texas. If you’re not familiar with “The One Thing”, it’s a book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. I met Jay when he came on the podcast back in 2017. He now co-owns a company by the same name with a long time friend Geoff Woods.   

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Alyssa Barlow 00:02
And I think in the past, I've always felt like, "Oh, we have to have financial goals, and we have to have health goals. And we have to have spiritual goals. And we have to have goals for the kids. And we have to have the goal for this and the goal for that." And this year, I really felt like I was able to narrow that focus and just think, one, what's the one thing I want to change this year?

Introduction 00:28
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:52
Every single year, my wife, Alyssa, and I sit down to pencil out our goals for the next year. But this year, we sat in the hot tub in Austin, Texas. Okay, let me explain. We've done goal setting now for about 13 years. But funny thing, we've hit almost all of our goals. This sounds like a good thing, well, it felt like a good thing until very recently. We started realizing maybe we were thinking way too small. Maybe we could be making a larger impact for ourselves, our clients, our team members, our family or friends. And now, for the last few years in a row, we've actually shared on the podcast exactly what we've learned from setting goals as a couple for at this point over a decade. Check out episode 386 if you're interested in seeing the progression in last year's. This year though, we decided we wanted some outside help to break through our own mental limitations that we suspected we were placing on ourselves. Now I don't really consider myself as someone who thinks small. And I acknowledge also that we've done many things that our friends tell us seem impossible, but I really had no idea just how small I was thinking. That is until we went to attend 'The One Thing' goal setting conference in Austin, Texas. By the way, if you're not familiar with 'The One Thing', it's a book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. And I met Jay when he came on the podcast back in 2017. He now co-owns a company by the same name, 'The One Thing', with a longtime friend Jeff Woods. Today, I bring on a special guest, back on the podcast, my wife, and also our CFO of our company Happen To Your Career, Alyssa Barlow. Welcome back to the podcast.

Alyssa Barlow 02:47
Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:48
Okay, I'm excited to do this again. Last year, we went through "What were some of the top three things that we've learned from a goal setting for many years. And what worked really well, as a couple? And what hasn't worked over the last few years?" This year, we have a different objective, though. This year, we want to talk about a few different things. We're going to cover what changed about how we've thought about goal setting for this year, and then maybe also over the years. And then we're going to share our three biggest takeaways from this year, going to Austin Texas, doing goal setting with a... not by yourself anymore, but we're actually, you know, getting help with that. And then, what was most beneficial about getting way out of the ordinary to be able to set goals? So I am super curious, I have my own thoughts here. But for you, when you think about this year, in particular, what do you feel like has changed about how you view setting goals?

Alyssa Barlow 03:59
I think traditionally, I am not the big thinker in the relationship. And so it's a little more difficult for me to think about things in a big way. I traditionally like the linear steps to getting to the things we're thinking about. But like you said, after reaching our goals for year after year, I kind of started wondering like, well, if we're hitting all these goals, sometimes hitting them, you know, three, six months into the year and then having to come up with new things that we want to strive for, that maybe we weren't setting them big enough in the first place that maybe we could achieve more if we started looking bigger earlier.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:44
Now, hold on. So you said achieve more and I think that both you and I would probably describe ourselves as achievers, right. Can I ask you about that, like, what that means for you as an achiever? How do you think about that?

Alyssa Barlow 05:01
Well, I mean, I like to check the boxes. I love to make to-do lists and checkboxes off. I think you're right, like, I definitely am an achiever. It feels good to be able to check boxes and say it's done. But when you're checking all the boxes, and it's done early, it's a great feeling but then it made me start wondering if maybe there could be more boxes to check or bigger boxes to check.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:25
I think that's definitely something I resonate with, too, I enjoy hitting the goal. I mean, I also enjoy the process. And I've learned to enjoy the process over the years. I haven't always enjoyed the process, honestly. But the checking that box and wanting to check that box definitely feels very, very good. You know, I think that for me this year, one of the biggest things that changed in how I view goal setting is that if we're setting far larger goals, far, far, far larger goals, we've chosen to set some really, really, really aggressive goals. And this year, we're looking much, much further ahead to, you know, we looked at 20 plus years ahead in the future. And I would say that's one thing that was different for me. We've done that sometime, looked far ahead, but we haven't done that every single year with every goal. So that was one major difference for me. But I think the challenge there that I experienced is this idea of being okay if we don't entirely hit the goal. And what I mean by that is that if we're setting our goals large enough, and if especially if we're setting them across multiple years, really, I mean, everything that we set this year, supports our longer term goals, and is very meaningful to us or very emotionally connected to it, you know, for example, you know, I really very, very much want to be around not just for our grandkids, but I very much want to be around and still be in a high quality of health for... to be able to see their kids, and you know, have this goal where, particularly for our grandkids, I want to be there to like run up the stairs with them, and I want to be there to, like actively play with them and have it just be no big deal because I'm in really, really great quality of health. And, you know, on a smaller scale this year, there's things that I can do to support that goal, but the challenge for me is really trying to be okay with... if we've got these really, really aggressive goals. Because for me, that means that I am setting up to live well past 100, in fact, I've set my goal, I really want to burst through 120 and be able to live till 140. And I think we're reaching a time in which that's very possible. And that sounds really aggressive for so many different reasons. And regardless about how you feel about that, I think that the challenge here is whether we're talking about health, or whether we're talking about, like, you know, a monetary goal. I'm still reconciling with being okay with not reaching the year to year goals, because we've checked so many boxes in so many past years, and it feels so good. And I think that we're shortchanging ourselves. So I'm curious, how do you feel about that? Like, you and I had a conversation about... I don't think you were totally okay with it either, but share with me what you feel about that?

Alyssa Barlow 08:47
I think the what... in this particular framework that we use this year to set goals, I think what was helpful to me was that the end goal didn't necessarily have a time date attached to it. 'The One Thing' framework for goal setting, your largest goal that you set, they call it a someday goal. So I mean, you may have in mind, you want that in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, but it doesn't necessarily have a specific end date attached to it. It's someday. Someday you're achieving for that. And then you work backwards from there, which helps me because I am that linear thinker, I want the boxes to check along the path. I want to know how I'm working towards it. So for me to think way someday in the future, I could think and dream about things that I want to see someday in the future, and then back them down to what that could look like in 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, and what do I need to do this year in order to start moving towards that. I think for me, that was the big thing. It was a movement towards that not necessarily completing it. It was just the movement forward.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:59
And I think that's a really great point. Because if you learn to focus on the movement, like, that does so many things, first of all, like, it allows us to be able to spread far larger goals across many, many years. But also, I mean, the cliche, enjoy the journey, right? If we're focused on the movement, that really is synonymous with the journey in so many different ways. And I think that that is a... how shall I say it, I think that that is something that... as I become more and more okay with it, and I still don't know that I'm completely okay with it, I think I am still reconciling with that in many different ways. However, as I become more and more okay with that, it allows being able to be content with where I am, while simultaneously striving to improve and go after the, you know, the impacts and the things that I want, and we want, it allows for them to coexist. And that's something that... geez, especially if you go back, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago, that's been a huge struggle for me. It felt like those can't coexist in so many different ways. So let's talk about takeaways, then, your biggest takeaways. What was your third biggest takeaway, we'll say?

Alyssa Barlow 11:27
I think that along those same lines because I'm an achiever, traditionally, in the past it's been difficult for me to quote unquote "fail", I guess, at things. And so when you're setting huge goals way out in the future, it can be daunting to think that you might fail on that goal, but like we were just talking about, it's more about the movement or the journey forward. I don't know if it was my third biggest takeaway or not, but a large takeaway that I had coming out of the weekend, just being around so many other people, one, hearing the other people have that fear as well, that fear of failure, and that it's really daunting to do that. But I think the takeaway from that was that, in order to... it's almost a cultural thing, like, there were so many people they're talking about that it was like, "Oh, that's like a cultural thing. I thought it was a me thing that I was just afraid to fail." So for me, the impact was how can we change our children, so that they don't also have that cultural feeling of failure of not wanting to journey forward, because they're afraid they can't make it to the end.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:38
That topic right there. Like, we had a lot of tears, overall. Like, this was a highly emotional opportunity in time, I would say, for us, because the things that we were focused on mattered and what you said right there about, it's not just wanting to change this pattern of how we view this for us, but recognizing that, one, if we don't change it for us, it's gonna be difficult to change it for our kids. And we really both, I think, feel very strongly that we want our kids to be able to have a growth mindset as they grow up, not look at failure in the exact same way that we do, and we want to be able to impact that. And, you know, that was definitely one of my takeaways, too, you mentioned, you know, setting our sights higher, and some of what is associated with that, like, I kept finding, as we were focused on, you know, "What do we want to accomplish in this area? What do we want to accomplish with our finances someday? What do we want to accomplish with our business, Happen To Your Career, someday? What do we want to accomplish with our important relationships, like, your and my relationship someday?" As we were going through those, I kept finding that what I would write down was probably less tool for 10 or 20 years in the future, where we wanted to target. And then after I would write it down and start working backwards, realize this is actually more like, three years or five years. And it's like, wow, I kept bumping into that limitation that I didn't realize I was placing on myself where I just couldn't even imagine in some of those areas, what extraordinary could look like? And that's another thing that I took away too. What would extraordinary look like? You know, we use... here at Happen To Your Career, we use the terminology, "what would ideal look like?" all the time and variations of that question, but for some reason, extraordinary, just felt different to me, maybe because it was just a new work, maybe it was word semantics. However, you know, that felt different to me and really evaluating like, what would just, kind of, beyond, you know, my wildest dreams in each respective area? What would that look like? What could that feel like? What could that be? What are the possibilities? And that was a huge takeaway for me, just evaluating that and practicing that at a larger scale. And I recognize this was my second takeaway, like, what extraordinary looks like is really something that you have to practice? It's harder than it seems to sit down and really evaluate what that could be and what it could look like. What was another one of your takeaways?

Alyssa Barlow 15:45
I think, another one of my takeaways, which also kind of leads into the next question about getting away to do this, but because I have traditionally struggled with thinking bigger in the past, being surrounded by a community of people who were doing the same thing, obviously, we weren't all setting the same goals. However, everyone in the room was setting big goals, 20 year goals, 30 year goals, 40 year goals. Someday, in the future, when you don't even know you're gonna reach it, and these are big, big goals, and then all of a sudden becomes... I don't want to say easier, but it allows you to think differently when you're in an entire room or community of people who are also thinking in that same way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:37
Yeah, I can definitely agree with that. And it was... I don't even want to put it. You talked about the community, it felt like it almost was okay to do that. I think when I have a conversation with people on the street sometimes or just like, just meet people, I don't know, here in Moses, Lake Washington, Moses Lake is a pretty rural community, I would say it's a fairly conservative community. Like many times, I find myself explaining what a podcast is to people that I meet here, you know, in and about and around town, like, obviously, you all know what a podcast is. However, there's a lot of people in Moses Lake that don't really know, right, so if that gives you any sense of, you know, kind of the general vibe of the community that we live in, and we love it for so many different reasons. However, I would say that, you know, growth mindset is not popular in Moses Lake in many different ways. That said, though, being in that community of people, it felt like it made it okay to release what really wanted and sort of gave permission, for lack of a better phrase, to be able to go bigger than what was thought possible. And that was really, really cool, that felt really, really special. You know, my other takeaway, my biggest takeaway was that focus on someday. You mentioned it earlier, I mentioned it earlier, but that was my biggest takeaway. Instead of really placing emphasis on the number of years, I think the idea of someday focusing on, "What do I want to achieve 'someday'? What do I want to do? Who I want to be 'someday'?" releases a lot of the qualifications that we place on ourselves. Because, as I think about, you know what I really want, a lot of times, I am not even realizing that I'm saying, "Well, I can only do that if this happens" or "I don't know if that's really possible because of these other things." And instead, 'someday' releases a lot of the pressures that I don't even know that I'm putting on myself. So, especially, what usually is attached to like, if I'm focusing on specifically 10 years out, or 20 years out, or 30 years out. So starting with, "What do I want someday? Who do I want to impact someday? How do I want to be someday?" is just so much more powerful, and it saved a lot of time and effort, I guess I would say. What about you, what was your last takeaway?

Alyssa Barlow 19:27
I think the last takeaway for me was the part of goal setting. Most people think about setting your financial goals for the year or, you know, much more a health goal or something that's very specific, I guess, very measurable, very action oriented, you know, you can write down specific actions to go with it. But I think like Scott was saying with that word, extraordinary and someday, words like that are not measurable and actionable words. They're much more, I don't know what the right word is...

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:09
They're softer, they're more intangible for sure.

Alyssa Barlow 20:12
Yeah. So thinking about it in that way, allowed me to think about myself, actually. And one of the exercises they had us do was to try and define core values. And that was very difficult for me. Super hard for me to think about what my core values were. But when I finally got to a place where I identified some choices for my core values, and so 100% sure if I have all of them yet, but it allowed me to think about goals around that, as well, not just the super easy, actionable exercise goals, or monetary goals. And one of them for me was parenting, actually. So being able to think about, how can I set a goal around being a better parent? That was huge for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:02
I think that, you know, just like you mentioned, for your values, I think there's something that I saw for you is that, you know, I don't think you'd ever really considered parenting to be something that you value so highly, at all, in many different ways. And I think that gave you the ability to look at it differently. And I think that was really fascinating to be able to see that in action. And I think that allowed you to be able to set goals around it since it is something that is important to you, highly important to you, in a completely different way. And something that I wanted to, I don't know that you and I have discussed this fully since we got back, however, I'm curious about, what are your thoughts about getting away to do this? Because we've, in past years, you know, we might have taken part of a day, and we might have, you know, got a babysitter for the kids or had you're... taking them over to your mom's or any number of other things. And then we would go and set goals, we might go to Starbucks, might go someplace else, but this might be the first time where we've ever taken five days and gone away. Now, in fairness, this is also... this time of year is in conjunction with our anniversary, we've now been together for 22 years, and married for 17. And, you know, both of those anniversary dates happened in November. So there was another reason for us to get away. But I'm curious, from your perspective, Alyssa, what made it beneficial to get away? If it was beneficial. How do you think about that?

Alyssa Barlow 22:51
I definitely think it was beneficial. Yes. Especially since we were looking at goal setting from a different mindset in a different place this year. I think it was really, I think that was really helpful that we were in a totally different mindset in a totally different place in order to think about it in a new way. I think the other thing about getting away, that was nice, in the past, like Scott said, we've done, you know, just like a half a day here or maybe a full day even, I guess maybe one time we did an overnight. But having... being somewhere where we were away and had to travel home actually gave a little bit of time to decompress after the goal setting. So it wasn't just like, "Okay, go go go, we have to write all these goals down, we have to figure out how we're going to do all of this, make sure you got when it's all going to be done by, and now we have to go pick up the kids." It was... we actually had time to talk about things and especially when, you know, we were using a new framework this year, that was totally different for us, we were thinking in a totally different way, we needed that time and space to be able to talk to each other about it, sit on it, go back to it, talk about it again and then be able to actually, you know, formalize something out of it. So the time for that was huge, I feel like. And other thing, 'The One Thing' talks about the goal setting, specifically, they call it "your bunker". So creating a bunker room where there's no distractions, there's no, you know, you're not thinking about the dishes, you're not thinking about the laundry, you're not thinking about picking up the kids, I think that for me was big. I didn't have to think about, "Okay, we have to be back to pick them up at a certain time." Or, you know, are we burdening somebody else because they're keeping them. I mean, this was all pre arranged, everything was set up, we were gone, we knew exactly when we would be home, so I think for me just creating that space around not having to stress about, "Okay, we're running out of time or we're not going to get this finished or we're not going to have time to talk about it later." just having that space to do that in.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:02
That's really interesting. That's the same thing when we were talking about recording this. We each wrote down some different answers to these questions. I didn't see your answers, you didn't see mine but that's the same thing that I wrote down, too, that creating that space was so huge, I think that really made it, because not only did it create the space for... to not have to worry about all the things that normally just would distract us, but I think the other thing is, we really needed to spread it across multiple days. And, you know, as you're listening to this, maybe you don't need that same thing, I don't really know, but for us, that was absolutely huge. I think that's really what made it for us. And we have, sort of, spread it across multiple days in the past. And the way that we've done that in past years would be that we'd meet, initially, during November, we might meet another time to kind of reassess, and then we would finalize our goals on January 1st. And this year, I definitely enjoyed it so much better. I thought it was so much more effective for us, personally, because not only did it create the space in the way that you described it, Alyssa, but also I think, for both of us, it gave us the space to fight through the mental blocks and mental barriers that came up that I did not expect to that level at all, like, maybe I should have, but I did not at all. And also, I think being away out of town in a totally literally separate space, in a separate state in our case, it sort of forced us into a situation in which, like, we have to figure this out. Because I think day one, both you and I felt like, "Oh my goodness, like this is... we're barely into this, like we're barely... how are we going to pull this together in another day or two, in a way that is useful for the whole rest of the year and beyond?" And it definitely felt, at that point in time, like, wow, we're not making any kind of progress whatsoever. And as it turns out, you know, being able to just ask the questions that we were asking at the time, "What is extraordinary look like? You know, what do we actually want in each one of these areas? And what would that look like if we went beyond that in allowing to sit with those questions?" I mean, I know fundamentally, like that's a good thing to be able to do is provide space to consider, like, we do that all the time with clients. I didn't realize how much of an impact that would be for us, and it was a reminder of just how big of ideal that can be. Because the answers usually don't come right away, but it's the act of considering the questions and fighting through all the barriers that stop us from answering those questions that really, really are maybe even, in some cases, harder than accomplishing some of those goals themselves. That was really revealing and a great reminder to me. Here's what I would ask, it's a last question for you Alyssa. You know, what advice would you give... What advice would you give to someone who is just getting started with goal setting or just getting started as a couple with goal setting? What advice would you give to those people?

Alyssa Barlow 28:34
Definitely, no matter where you're at in a goal setting journey, where you've been doing it in the past, or whether you're just thinking, you know, "now's the time, I need to start setting some goals." find your community, find other people, you know, who are like minded, who are thinking in the same way as you, or even other people who have done it before because they can give you insights into the steps to move forward. Or you know, if you've been doing it for a while, how to change your thinking a little bit. That's how we, you know, I say stumbled upon this conference, really, because we had been planning a trip anyway for anniversary. And then it just, it was the right time, and the right place. Scott got the email about it. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, I think we do need to do something different this year. And let's just go for it." So finding that community, finding those people, finding ways to talk to other people about it. I really think that we had thought, you know, "Oh, we're doing so good. We're writing all these goals down every year and we're achieving our goals and we're doing so awesome" But then, you know, at some point, you realize there's more out there and you got to find a community to help you continue getting that more that's out there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:49
That's awesome. I checkmark next to all of that for me too. And the only thing that I would add to that would be that, as your... we've been doing this in various capacities for now 13 years. And when we started, it was far different. I think we were arguing about it, is probably that's... that looks very different from now, I think, we were definitely not on the same page, we didn't feel it was okay to want different things, I think we felt like, and, you know what, we were talking about this the other day, like, at the beginning, it really felt like we had to want the same things. And we had to just like, force that together so that we could, you know, feel unified and work on it. And I don't think we were totally okay with that, we can... some things we're gonna accomplish together, and some things we are... we want just being different people. And my advice to you would be, if you're doing this with a partner, then, you know, allow for it to be okay that you're doing it imperfectly. It's more important to practice it and get someplace. Someplace in terms of, being able to go through any kind of goal setting process, whatever that looks like for you. And just practice being able to declare to each other what is important to you, you know, even if the first year, that goal never gets hit, even if the first year, you know, it is just that type of conversation. If that's where you're starting, I think that's okay. I think it really, really is. It has to be imperfect, because it doesn't lead to everything else until you go through those types of conversations. And then for those people that, you know, for those people who have been, maybe you've been goal setting for many years, I would challenge you to think, "What could someday look like for you? What could ideal look like for you? What could extraordinary look like for you? And how could that be, you know, more than what you have limited yourself to in so many different ways?" because the one thing that I have found over and over again, is that, you know, as you do more, and you become a different person, and you are achieving more, the really wonderful thing is that you get to share that with other people, you get to share that with your family, you get to share that with your friends, you get to share that with the people that you work with and impact on a daily basis. It isn't just about you, even if some of those goals are set for you, and allowing you to improve in areas that are important to you, it impacts so many other people in the world. So my advice to you would definitely be, look much larger outside yourself. Alyssa, any final parting thoughts?

Alyssa Barlow 32:53
I think the only other piece of advice that I would give, and this is a new piece of advice for me, too, I guess this probably could have gotten in the takeaways as well, but, you don't have to have a goal in every area of your life or, you know, trying to work towards 18 goals this year. I mean, if you even only have one goal, and that was the big thing, you know, obviously it's called 'The One Thing', but, you know, we left the conference with them saying at the end, "One, what's one thing that would change your whole year?" And I think in the past, I've always felt like, "Oh, we have to have financial goals, and we have to have health goals, and we have to have spiritual goals, and we have to have goals for the kids, and we have to have the goal for this and the goal for that." And this year, I really felt like I was able to narrow that focus and just think, "One, what's the one thing I want to change this year?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:53
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And that, I didn't mention it earlier either but that was a huge takeaway for me, too, because I think I have forced it. And honestly, some of those are more important than others. Like when you start to prioritize and rank and I mean, again, sometimes I feel like I'm relearning that particular lesson because we literally do that all the time with our clients, we do that all the time for, you know, the people that we serve. And it's true, unless you are focused on less than... it's not going to lead to more in many different ways. And a lot of the times that can really be like, "Hey, what is the one thing that is going to be impacting everything else?" And that's it. That's your lead. Hey, Alyssa, thank you very, very much for making the time. And I know that we've done this the last couple of years but I really really appreciate the opportunity to just sit down with you and talk about this. Like I really legitimately enjoy this and being able to share it with other people. And I know you and I have had many conversations but even a couple of the questions here, we hadn't talked about in the same way. So I really appreciate that very much.

Alyssa Barlow 35:18
Thank you for having me. And it's always a joy to share.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:23
Hey, I would also encourage you, as you're listening to this, to definitely, for sure, think bigger. But I'd also invite you, too, at the same time, you know, if you have goals that are important to you around your career, or you want to set goals that are important to you around your career, and you want that to be the thing this upcoming year, as you go into 2022, and you wanna really want to get ahead on that, drop me an email personally, scott@happentoyourcareer.com and just go ahead and put 'Goals 2022' in the subject line. And what we'll do is either my team or I, we will get that email, we will introduce you to our team, probably Cindy on our team, or Phillip and we'll have a conversation with you and learn about your situation, what you want to accomplish, what you know about what you want to accomplish, what you have yet to figure out, and figure out the very, very best way that we can support you in doing that, and help you make it happen for this year, this upcoming year. So again, just drop me an email scott@happentoyourcareer.com put 'Goals 2022' in the subject line, and then we'll make sure that you're well taken care of. I'm so looking forward to supporting you for anything that is really, really, really up there, really, really important to you in this upcoming year. Hey, appreciate your listening. And if there's anything else you need, you know where to find us. Until next week, we'll talk to you later. I am out.

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Getting Out of Your Head: A Guide To (Finally) Making A Decision

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on this episode

There is one thing that stops people from changing careers more than anything else.

Indecision. Overthinking.

“What if it doesn’t work out?”

“What if I don’t like my coworkers?”

“Are the benefits good enough?”

“Am I qualified?”

Questions keep filling your mind and keep you going in circles – and you miss out.

How can you stop overthinking and finally start making decisions?

Phillip Migyanko and Sharissa Sebastian discuss how you can stop this paralyzing process and make the decisions that really matter to you.

what you’ll learn

  • What triggers overthinking in the first place
  • How overthinking can lead to wasting years of your life
  • The benefits of doing one thing today to move yourself forward
  • How to change your mindset and take baby steps
  • Thinking about your future self can help you take action now
  • How to break out of the “what if” cycle
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Sharissa Sebastian 00:01
One of my favorite quotes from one of our favorite people. That it actually really helped me a lot is when he says that, “change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.” And that has been so true in my own experience.

Introduction 00:20
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44
The biggest showstopper of career progression isn't your circumstances. Nope. It's getting stuck in the trap of indecision and inaction. Only, it doesn't feel like that. Here's an audio guide to learn how to move beyond overthinking in your career.

Phillip Migyanko 01:02
Is this career change important to you? Is getting out of that job that is not fulfilling anymore actually important to you? Is finding work that fills you up actually important to you? Then, how quickly are you looking to make that change?

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:17
That's Phillip Migyanko. He's our Director of Client Success here at HTYC. He's the one that talks to every single person who reaches out to schedule a conversation, who needs help. He's one of the first people that you talk to. Every week, he talks with someone actually, let's be honest, multiple someone who begin to overthink their options. The hardest thing for us to see is people who are waiting too long, they end up staying in limbo, and don't make a decision to be able to move forward with their career and ultimately with their life. It's super hard for us because we know what's possible on the other side. But it is something that happens all the time. And then people will call us like, you know, one or two or three years later, sometimes even more than that, and say, "Hey, okay, I am finally ready to move forward." As it turns out, Phillip recently had a conversation with one of our coaches, Sharissa Sebastian, that we recorded about this very topic. So we've decided to share this conversation with you today. The biggest of which is we'd love to be able to spare you some pain by overthinking because it turns out that all of us on the team are recovering overthinkers.

Phillip Migyanko 02:36
That's exactly what I like to say like I'm a recovering overthinker because my coach helped me at the time kind of worked through she's like, "Phillip, you know what, we're actually... if you keep diagnosing and calling yourself an over-thinker, you're more likely to keep overthinking." So I usually like to go alright, I'm a former overthinker we have moved past this and today, you know, one of the things that Sharissa and I are helping all of our listeners break down is if you find yourself kind of stuck in this overthinking mindset of, "what ifs" or "will this work out" or things like that, we've got some tools and systems and questions that you can go through to be able to take one step forward and move the process and take some action. So whether that's or just speaking directly to careers, but this can apply to lots of places, whether you're trying to decide what you're gonna watch on Netflix that night, what are you going to have for dinner that evening, or even in my cases last year, when kind of buying a new car, the same principle holds true and really, it's let's stop taking so much time, let's get right to the decisions and really move to that next stage. So it really becomes more of a question of how do we help people on our team break out of these overthinking states and really starting to decide what's the most important thing for you? And hint, it's not more thinking. So just in case, if you thought that, it's not going to be more than that. So, Sharissa, I guess my question, or at least my first question for you is, how do we actually help people decide what's important enough to then make that decision? How do people if, someone's right now they're going through a stage of "Oh, I just don't know what to do, I know what it looks like," how do they know it's actually important enough to do something about it?

Sharissa Sebastian 04:21
Oh, that is a great question. And one of the things is just to basically take a quick imagery of where they are right now, as I speak from my own experience when I say this as well, there times where I, you know, I had needed to make those bigger changes. It took a little bit more effort on my part because it was a significant change. I had to really be honest with myself, I had to take where I was and really understand, okay, what is... so many things that go into this, but basically, why is it important, right? So you can ask yourself, start off by asking the question like, why is it that I'm even contemplating? There's a reason why it keeps coming up. There's a reason why you probably keep coming back to the same decision point over and over again, and being honest with yourself to say, okay, do I really wanted to stay where I am and need purpose? Or do I really want to lean in and explore this a little bit more? It doesn't mean that you have to make this giant me. And but even just, you know, making the decision to be open to experience can sometimes really help. And one of my favorite quotes from one of our favorite people talking about it, that it actually really helped me a lot is, when he says that, "change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." And that has been so true in my own experience. And that goes back to you know, just really being honest with yourself where you are, and saying, okay, is this decision really going to help me get unstuck and get away from something that, you know, that I don't want, or because of something that I really do want. And when that's paying off things, even greater than the pain of change, that's when that decision needs to happen. And that's when you go through that, that next step in the process, which we'll be talking about.

Phillip Migyanko 05:44
I think that's so important, because it's for a lot of people that I see right now, and I talked to one of my jobs, here it Happen To Your Career, I got to talk to everybody who we earn the opportunity to work with, but everybody who we... comes through the door. And what I often tell people is like, "Hey, you know, sometimes being in a really bad situation, we know that's not that great, we know we need to be leaving that job." We also know, on the other... on the flip side of that, we have a really, really great position. But sometimes I deal with those people who are right in the middle of that, who are not in a bad situation of... but actually not in a good situation, either. And I think you hit the nail on the head of like, ultimately, when do you feel like you need to be making that decision when the pain becomes just as bad that you know that you have to leave? So I think that is a really interesting kind of next question I have for you of: how do we help people? Or how do you help our clients? Or when you think about people who are in this stage of really trying to decide when to make that decision you mentioned, you know, having more pain than the actual situation. So how do we help decide people how quickly they're looking to make that decision? And what happens if they're not ready?

Sharissa Sebastian 06:52
Yeah, so one of the things that I think is so important in this stage in the process, and is just thinking about, like, if this is something that's kind of nagging on you, like it's keep coming up over and over, and again, day after day, you have this little thing, the little voice in your head, they keep saying, well, what if you know, we make one of these, you know, what if I'm missing something? And this is constantly going, I thought, well, that causes a shift, right? If you're in this place where you're... maybe you have a job, that's not bad, you know, not bad or anything like that. You're just kind of chugging along, day in and day out. But suddenly you hit the face, in your career, or even your job with like, this is not fulfilling me quite in the way that I want to and maybe even you know, maybe don't know why. And it's difficult to create, and that's fine. But it gets messy. And there's this constant like voice in your head saying, but what if, or should I explore this? And those questions keep coming up here and they don't go away? That is probably a good time to really look into, okay, what do I need to do with this? How do I even start that exploration so that I can get into a place where I can make the best decision for me?

Phillip Migyanko 07:46
I think that's so, so important. And it's almost like, if it's not that important to you right now, then it's, let's move to more, to other kind of more important things. And it's so funny, because even creating this podcast today, I was actually overthinking all the content here. I'm like, Okay, what do we help people do? How do we get people to that? And so many times when I get to talk to people who are in these overthinking states, it's they've kind of almost driven, drove, whatever the English phrases is, so please email me back and let me know the correct English there, I have typos all the time. But more importantly, it's... how do we help people to kind of move past that and move past all those thoughts into that decision? Because they drive themselves crazy. And they know it, that's why oftentimes, over-thinkers tend to know that they're overthinking. And then they've already thought that they know that they're overthinking. And it just goes always into those next stages.

Sharissa Sebastian 08:43
That's so true. I know you are really good at walking people through this and helping him to navigate the space. So I would love to know, like, from your perspective, how do you help people figure out like, is this really important right now?

Phillip Migyanko 08:56
That's a really, really good question. You know, I think it's a lot of the points that you said have really, honestly, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're jumping on a call with me, if in some realm, you know that this change is really important, it is important to you. Because at the end of the day, what I tell people at Happen To Your Career, one of the biggest things that we do is we help people get really clear on what they want, both in their lives and their careers, and ultimately make the behavior changes for that. And if that's important, if getting to the life and the career that you want, is actually important, awesome. We know that it’s... let's actually make the change for it. Because we all have so much time on this earth. And we need and it's more important to keep moving towards that instead of staying stuck where you are. And if it's not at this time, that's okay, too. We're here when you're ready. It's more important that progress comes from actions, the same we... There's a very intentional reason why Sharissa and I are talking on this podcast, because we both like Tony Robbins, and say what you will, whatever opinions you have about him, but there's a lot of good nuggets in there. And one of the biggest things that he says is, "clarity comes from action." And he has another phrase that says, and you can let me know, if I got this right or wrong it's a, "stay it in your head, you're dead." We have to take these specific actions, or we have to be able to wait to get out our heads and go into massive action, because that's where clarity is going to come from. And before we get to that point, we have to really decide, is this actually as important right now? And if so, what will you commit to doing differently, if we know that at the end, we're looking to get a different result, if you know that what you're doing right now is not working, then inherently we need a different result, which then creates a different behavior. So we have to be behaving differently. And to do that, before that, we have to have good mindsets, we have to be in a good, emotional state. But I know for me that if I didn't have good sleep the night before, if I didn't have lunch today, if for me, if I haven't exercised in a while, and I'm just feeling kind of pudgy, that happens for Phillip, that's a word that I use on myself pudgy sometimes, anyways, if I'm just not feeling good, then generally I'm not going to make good decisions. So I'm usually thinking about "alright, what creates a good situation for Phillip? But at the end of the day, how can I put myself in a good mental state of feeling prepared, feeling awesome, feeling joyful, and playful and awesome, and all those types of things." And usually, for me, that means I'm taking care of Phillip, I'm doing things like getting good sleep, eating good meals, getting exercise, having good conversations, going outside, all of those things. And that puts me in a mindset to ultimately, I can decide how I want to behave. So I'm going to get different results. Because most of the time when I'm talking to over-thinkers, there's so often in the state of they just keep trying the same thing over and over again. "I've looked for so many jobs on Indeed and I just, I keep coming across the same things or man, I just keep trying to think about this over and over again" I hear them say and they go, "I just, I can't get past it." So how we help people really decide and get to know what's the most important to then now is go... is this really enough that you need to change to have to... is this big enough change that you really would want to create the life that you're looking to have even if we don't exactly know what that is? And if not, that's okay. But if so, which usually it is? What will you commit to doing differently? part of that comes with priorities, right? We have... there's whole bunch of things that we help people do. But at the end of the day, we only have so much time, there's only 24 hours in a day. So I guess that's an interesting question back to you, Sharissa. How do we help people determine their priorities? How do we help them like get to the point where it's okay, this is the first thing I'm going to do or this is actually what's most important to me, once they've decided, "yeah, it's actually is the most important."

Sharissa Sebastian 12:30
There is something that I mean, there's a number of different things that go into that. And one of the things I want to actually go back to partake something in terms of charity, because I think that is so important, because a lot of times, over thinkers can get into space and spiral because we don't have that character, we're not sure you know, that uncertainty of like, I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. And it's not clear to me. So therefore, you know, I'm gonna keep spiraling until some magical moment happens and then this time, and so being intentional about that, and knowing what those priorities are, and being able to say, okay, based on what I know about myself, what's important to me, and then also the other part of this is starting with the end in mind, which is so important and getting clarity on that. So in other words, what you know, based on what we know about ourselves and what's important to us and all of that, what is going to be ideal, always close to ideal as we can possibly get and getting clarity on that then it's so much easier to kind of work backwards from them to say, oh, what are the steps we need to take to get to us closer to that in a way that's going to, you know, fit, we are, as people, but also fit our lifestyle and the amount of time we have because there's so much that goes into this whole process and to you know, to help you get over that hump, of the overthinking, right? It's the clarity, it's all of these different things that were mentioned earlier as well. And that all comes together. And being able to pull those pieces together just makes it so much easier. But then it's all about the action at that point, right? They don't so much in time and before, it's like, okay, it's go time, but you've got to take the time to build the clarity. And then that's how you really get this momentum going really quickly.

Phillip Migyanko 13:52
I think one thing to point out, too, I was reading a really, really interesting article in preparation for this. And it was from James Clear. And he wrote a wonderful, wonderful book called Atomic Habits. It's all about habit change. And it was my most recommended book for 2019. And the reason is, because he, pun intended, is that his actions are incredibly clear. And he wrote a very interesting article about the difference between motion versus action. Meaning that if you're really looking to get to this stage, if you're really looking to get a new career, there's a difference between applying for 20 jobs on Indeed, versus actually having a conversation with somebody who's doing the work you're looking to do. The motion is we're just going through the motions of what job what we think job change looks like, or what we've been trained to do, or research things, because that's where overthinker is also get caught up to is going down the research rabbit holes, and just researching something in depth and going, alright, I've convinced myself that this being an astronaut is not going to work. So I'm not going to do it. Because I believe that, so I'm not going to instead, but Okay, I'm gonna go research another rabbit hole, and then do that again. When in all reality, the best thing to do is actually take an action, can you go... and I'm just using astronaut as an example here. But can you go talk to an astronaut? Or you talk to somebody who's been in space? Or can we talk to somebody who's worked at NASA, whatever those things might be, because that's going to get you so much better information than all the motions and smart people, like over thinkers, trick themselves by doing a lot of these motion activities getting exhausted there. And then kind of having the cycle of stuck, keep going around and around. When in all reality, we just need one action to do to bring focus to go, "Hey, is this something that could work or not work?"

Sharissa Sebastian 15:34
And as it gets comes down to like, knowing how to do that, right? Like, knowing how to take the right action, so that you're just not spiraling into the motion. I love that, that's so powerful, the motion versus the action. So I would love to know how you pull up in your conversations, how do you help people break down that decision?

Phillip Migyanko 15:51
Yeah. And I just to add on what you said, too, because I think it dovetails into this, which is we have to work backwards. Right? We have to go alright, what's ultimately the most important to you? What's that ideal state that we're going to as much as that we know about that, essentially, what's our end goal, right? Just like building a house, buying a car I had that I was overthinking that this last year. But whatever that end state might be, how do we work backwards from there? And more often than not with everybody that we're working with, well, we often hear is that it's not it's always a lot of work, but it's ultimately the most fulfilling. We go, alright, what's the really the end goal that we're looking for? And how do we chunk those pieces out and basically, give yourself sprints. So the easiest way to think about it is if you've ever heard of Scrum, it's a different, it's a way of productivity. But one of the practices they do is they break things up into two week sprints. That's just an example. But you can maybe do one week sprints or things like that. But if we know we have a huge goal at the end, we essentially want to break that up into what's one thing you can do over these next two weeks, and making sure that action is clear on what exactly you're looking to do. So in the astronaut example, that might mean I'm looking to have one conversation or send five reach out emails to one astronaut, not research a whole bunch of other things over here, but actually what's one action that's going to take you closer to your goal, and then having that over two week chunk timeframe, and then doing that again and again and again, and what that does and makes things actionable, it makes things clear because you're also defining when those things will happen. But also, this is gonna allow you to basically test things out over time. Because I think Sharissa, you had a wonderful point of, I think people that the fears and the potholes that people get into your, okay, wait, what if I become an astronaut, but then I hate and I realized that the space suit doesn't fit that well, then I'm stuck being an astronaut and I'm back again in the same spot again. And it's more about actually, it's not a zero or 100 kind of game. It's more about how do we take one step forward? I might be beating this horse to death, but you can hear me keep saying it's more about just moving ahead and little bits. And we chunk these things out and make them as each of the chunks is clear and possible, because that helps a lot of different reasons about research in psychology, and supports a lot of these points, but more about it is the motivating factor of having these small wins along the way. And for overthinkers, if you're stuck in the state, if you've been here for such a long time, it can get exhausting, and depressing, you just get apathetic because you're just like, I just exhausted myself. So we kind of give yourself permission to kind of put those things to the side. And let's chunk it out and do what's one thing we can do to move forward when we know we have a big goal. Because that's, in all reality, when Sharissa and I are helping our clients and everybody Happen To Your Career and people we've helped in the past and even to the state, we help them do big things. And how you do big things is little bits at a time.

Sharissa Sebastian 18:53
That's right.

Phillip Migyanko 18:53
So it's funny because people you know, they get into the research rabbit holes, or they are afraid to commit and they get those, what if decisions. Where do you find, Sharissa, people get the most stuck? Or what are some like, at this point in the conversation, I bet a lot of our listeners like, okay, I'm here. I'm moving one step forward, I got you. But oh, wait, I've got all these fears popping up that bla bla bla bla, what are those that we generally see? What are some of the biggest ones that we see people out?

Sharissa Sebastian 19:24
Oh, yeah. So this is a good question. One of the biggest ones, I think, is this, wanting to get it right, wanting to make sure that everything is perfect. And like, you know, you've done all the research. And so you want to, you know, check all the boxes, and then go back into the research if you have any kind of doubt in. And so we get into again, that spiral, right, you keep going and kind of like, two steps forward and 10 steps back, because we keep second guessing and questioning and doubting. And so one of the things and going back to actually what you said earlier, which I think is so important to this entire process is mindset, like you have to go in to this whole process in the right mindset, because if you are trying to get it perfect, if you are waiting for some magical moments to take action, it's never going to happen, you're going to keep you know, staying in that spiral, and it's going to drive you crazy and can increase the stress. And it's going to have negative impacts on your health and so on and so forth. But one of the ways to kind of break that cycle is to realize that you have a choice, you have a choice off, you know, what you allow your mind to think and to believe. And so being in that growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset is so important. And what I mean by that is a growth mindset is where you, you know, as you're taking these baby steps, you know, at a time, first of all, you're celebrating progress along the way, which I think is so important, I always tell my clients, even spending five minutes on something in a day, you know, like you celebrate the heck out of that progress, because it really helps with a building momentum. But going back to the growth mindset, is realizing that every little step you take is one step closer, even if you know, take that step, you're like, nope, this is not the right thing like that astronaut suit that you're talking about, oh, okay, and that's fine. You have a learning and you've learned something that you didn't know before you took that step. now you know, you know, it's just as valuable to know what you don't want as it is to know what to do want. So through this whole process and taking one step at a time and celebrating those, you know, the baby steps along the way, you're going to learn and develop so much, which goes back to the growth mindset of being open to just learn and knowing that every opportunity that you have, every call that you have, conversation that you have, every bit of research, everything is leading you closer and closer to where you want to be, even if you feel like you're hitting a dead end, and then you have to backtrack, and you have to go another way, that's so important to you, you know, along the way. And so having that growth mindset of like, every single step that I'm taking is leading me closer versus being in the mindset of like, if I do this, and I fail, then that's a waste. It's not a waste. You're always gonna build on what you know. And I, we speak a lot about this, especially with our clients who are making transition in there, you know, it applies to that as well when they're transitioning from one type of career to another. And that's one of the things I always say to them is you building on it, you don't ever have to look at that and go, Oh, I just wasted the last 10 years of my life. So even if you're in this overthinking space, and you've been in this overthinking space for a while, you haven't viscerally wasted that time, but you also don't want to go like you know, a couple of weeks down the road a month or even longer than and look back and go, Oh, yeah, I just spent all this time overthinking when if I had taken the action would have been, you know that much closer. So being in that growth mindset of realizing that you're going to celebrate the progress no matter what it is, you're going to celebrate the progress but you have to commit to taking the actions. If you don't, you're just going to keep going backwards. It's like that analogy of like quicksand. Right? So the more you stay in overthinking and even if you, you know your mind could be telling you "Hey, you know we're doing the right thing, all of this" but the more you don't take the action, the quicker you're going to sink into that quicksand. And that actually brings me to my next point, which I think is also a big part of this. Is the support and accountability. So listen, you know, raising your hand when you need help, whether that's having a conversation with someone, whether you know, whatever support you need, or having somebody even hold you accountable to take action is so important. So going back to the quicksand analogy, if you stay in the overthinking mode, and you don't raise your hand, well, then you're going to keep sinking deeper and deeper, but you're not going to get into any further, closer to what you be. But if you raise your hand and you're like, you know, open to somebody helping you with, it's even just that, you know, conversation or saying, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to commit to this action" and I'm going to check in with you and make sure that I actually take them back, even if it's a tiny baby step, that's gonna get you quick out of quicksand. And much faster on the way towards what it is that you really want.

Phillip Migyanko 23:15
It's so interesting, because there's a tons of research, we have read a bunch of books, but you know, more of, I think about, when I talk to the these folks, it's almost like they're driving themselves crazy. They know that they're doing it, and it's those resistance pieces that Steven Pressfield talks about this in the War of Art. And it's such an interesting point, because it can just come in here and can convince us of like, "hey, if you do this, you're gonna screw everything up." And really, at the end of the day, all these things are figure out-able. These types of choices you're going to make, it's not, at the end of the day, you can always reverse those or come back to that we're not making heart surgery type of decisions here with these commitment types of things. So to recap a little bit. We have to go through these whole steps. It's one, deciding is this change actually important to you? And specifically, if you're listening to this podcast, with careers, is this career change, important to you? Is getting out of that job that is not fulfilling anymore actually important to you? Is finding work that fills you up actually important to you? If it's not, that's okay, come back when it is or go on to something else. If it is. And hint, if you've gotten this far on the podcast, it most likely is. If it is, then how quickly are you looking to make that change? Knowing that the sooner that you can get on it, and the sooner you can start, the better because we only have so much time. So is this actually important? How quickly are you looking to make that change? Cool. So and then going from that standpoint to, is it really... is it important to do that now? So making sure that if you are committing to doing that, if it's a great time, that you put yourself in good state that you're taking care of yourself, but really exciting to make the choice that it is important to you. From there going, alright, finding fulfilling work is really the most important thing. I'm committed to doing that. It's defining what are the biggest priorities when it comes to that. Like really what matters the most to you. Fulfilling work looks different for everybody. But what matters the most to you, and what's going to matter the most to you, your family, whoever you have in your life, or it's just you whatever that might be, find those biggest parties for you next. Most likely, those are big things, especially in career change. So if we know that whatever those big parties are, in that end goal is we break those into chunks into timeframes. So how can you help make that big goal of the thing that's really important to you break those back up into chunks? And then making sure that you've got this plan, we call internally a plan for inevitable success. But how can you make sure that this plan is all sound and ready to go? And sometimes that might be bringing an accountability person, that might be bringing in a coach, that might be bringing in a friend? Or how do you know where the triggers are going to be for you, so you do not get stuck in those places? Sharissa, is there anything else to add to that? Did I cover everything or anything else to add for our overthinkers out there?

Sharissa Sebastian 26:08
No, you totally nailed that. I think you covered everything. But one of the things that I would love to add, if I have a couple seconds.

Phillip Migyanko 26:13
Go ahead

Sharissa Sebastian 26:14
Is something I call like a future costing exercise with my mind. And this helps in so many ways. But basically what this is, is thinking about, you know, taking yourself out of the current, your current situation and the overthinking all of that and basically saying, "Okay, if I were to project myself in the future, whether that's six months down the road, one year down the road, or whatever, you know, whatever that timeframe is, what would I be proud of myself or doing right now in this moment that maybe I'm not doing right now or that you know, that I really want to do?" So basically, what I mean by that is looking to your future and your future self and looking back at where you are right now and saying, "What decision do I need to make now, that my future self is going to thank me for?" So that helps to get us out of this current, you know, this zone of overthinking and saying, "Okay, if I could do that, what decision would I make today that one year down the road, I'm gonna look back and go, wow, I'm so glad that on this date, I made that decision. And then I, you know, I took action on it."

Phillip Migyanko 27:04
I love that. So going away from today, you might be thinking, "okay, Phillip and Sharissa, I've got everything I need to know, I know the steps. What's something I can do today?" Which is a great question, overthinker. I very much appreciate that question. So the one thing that you can do today, and I've been saying this, a whole bunch is move one step forward. So right now, take out a pen and paper, write down one thing that you can do to move one step forward. And in the thing that you're looking to do. It might be career, it might be not related to career, but write down what's the one thing that you're looking to do. And if you're not sure what that is, then schedule a call with myself, our team, and we can help you do that. But set whatever that one thing might be to moving one step forward, set a schedule for when you will do that. So again, that might come into the two week timeframe. But when will you be doing that, and the next week, and in the next two weeks, set a date for that. If it's helpful, share that with an accountability partner, share that with a coach, share that with somebody who you trust, that can hold you accountable to that, then be specific. So if we are clear about the action you're going to take, what will you do? What does done actually look like in this case? You're not just researching, you're not going to go look for companies that might be a good fit. No, no, we're gonna look for five companies that are in this Austin, Texas area that fit this space, we want you to be specific, because done is better than perfect. And then set the end date. So when will you have this accomplished by? So three steps, schedule done action, define what done action will be in specifics and then make sure you have an end date for that. So if it might be a whole bunch of steps in there, chunk those out. And when will you be looking to complete that by? So today, take an action, put a date on it. And if you have any questions or like Phillip, I'm still getting stuck. We have a whole team here to help you, myself, Sharissa. We have a whole bunch of other people here too. But as a self diagnosed, well now I think former overthinkers, we can help you through the process. So, Sharissa, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I very, very much appreciate it.

Sharissa Sebastian 29:07
Oh, you're welcome. This is so much fun. And for all you overthinkers out there, you're not alone. And it is absolutely possible to get through this and to get to the other side, basically, and definitely speak with Phillip. He is an absolute genius at this. And so it's super easy to talk with him. So he can absolutely help you and of course, you know the whole team is behind you too. So if you need anything, like Phillip said, we are all here. And yeah, we're with you. We're here to support you in any way that you...

Phillip Migyanko 29:34
Perfect and we are committed to moving you one step forward. So thanks again Sharissa for coming on the podcast. And thanks for all of our listeners today. So we'll see you on the next episode and I hand this back over to Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:47
Most of our episodes on Happen To Your Career often showcase stories of people that have identified and found and taken the steps to get to work that they are absolutely enamoured with, that matches their strengths, and is really what they want in their lives. And if that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that is awesome, you can actually get on the phone with us and our team. And we can have a conversation to find the very best way that we can help. It's super informal. And we try to understand what your goals are, where you want to go, and what specifically you need our help with. And then we figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like, and sometimes even customize that type of help. And then we make it happen. The really easy way to schedule a conversation with our team is just go to scheduleaconversation.com, that scheduleaconversation.com, and find a time that works best for you. We'll ask you a few questions, as well. And then we'll get you on the phone to figure out how we can get you going to work that you really want to be doing that fits your strengths, that you love, and you're enamoured with, Hey, I can't wait to hear from you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:11
Pretty much everyone faces fear when it comes to changing careers. Will they like me during the interview? What if I say something stupid or that doesn't fit? What if they see too much variety in my background? What if they think I'm a generalist? What if they hire me, but it's not as good as it seems? Fear of the unknown is paralyzing sometimes. But here's the deal, you can learn to overcome that fear, you can learn to not minimize it. But instead move through it.

Margaret Fredrickson 31:43
Feeling, like, nervous before an interview. Thinking well, it's an interview, you know how these things are. And I know everyone feels nervous. But I would just express to her, you know, we had one call in particular where I just felt so vulnerable. And I felt like oh, they're gonna hate me, they're oh my gosh, or they're gonna think I'm so kooky and crazy. I'm not, you know, I'm not this buttoned up fundraiser type. That's what they want. Oh, gosh, they're, you know, took acting classes, they're gonna find that out, they're gonna think I'm crazy. I'm like, well, they might think I'm crazy, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:19
That's Margaret Fredrickson. We get really deep in our conversation into how she made this change, particularly learning how a career search is so much more than just a job search. It's finding a career and a lifestyle that fits your needs. So we talked about what that looked like in Margaret's journey, and then a firsthand account on how coaching can help you overcome your fears and hurdles, to not only get you to your next career, but head down a path to what you really enjoy, or have even more joy more often in your life. So one of the things I thought was really interesting about this conversation is that we did something we don't normally do, we brought our her coach on to be able to shed some light into how that works. And also, maybe the most important, and most important piece of this episode, I want you to listen for as Margaret's talking, as her coach is talking, it's vulnerability, sharing vulnerability in and throughout the entire way and process of your career change. It's something that really doesn't get talked about in that way people say, you know, you need to be yourself, they say, be vulnerable, all those things, which is much harder to do in reality, it's not just a buzzword that's gotten popular these days. And we talk specifically how it worked in Margaret's journey and how it helped her be able to get a role that quite frankly, she wouldn't have done otherwise. All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Free Up 30 Hours A Month To Focus On Your Priorities: The Magic of Automation

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It takes a large amount of time to do a career pivot – and even more time to make the bigger changes that we discuss often on this podcast. Even though you end up with a role that fits you and delivers what you really want in your life, it can be difficult to find the time to make it happen. But you’ll never “find” enough time – you have to create the time.

HTYC’s own Scott Barlow and Phillip Migyanko discuss specific tactics that you can use to create 30+ hours a month to focus on your highest priorities

what you’ll learn

  • How to set up your environment to save you time
  • Removing time for things that need to be done (but aren’t adding value to your life)
  • Tips on effectively prepping your meals to save you time (and give you healthy options)
  • Adding back time that is being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions
  • How you can have a manicured lawn without ever mowing (only half-joking!)
  • Creating systems for things that we do all the time
  • The importance of time limiting during your career change

Success Stories

when I went through Career Change Bootcamp and starting to work through all of this – deep diving into what I wanted to do, my strengths and ideal career profile but then this opportunity presented itself! I went “wow, this checks almost all my boxes on the ideal career profile and seems to be a really great match.” You've heard this so many times from people you talk with – The journey is not what you think it's gonna be. You think it might be a straight line from A to B, but it's like a jagged curvy line that can go all over the place. Follow where things are leading and be open, because you just never know what's gonna be around that next corner. I'm so excited. I am the chief philanthropy officer at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada. And that's really kind of a dream job.

Karen Senger, Chief Philanthropy Officer, United States/Canada

"When I started I was afraid of making the wrong decision! My career was incredibly important to me and I didn't want to screw it up or waste time making a move I wouldn't enjoy! Scott helped me learn what my strengths are and what is most important to me… but more important than that I learned about what I can't stop doing that I have to have in my work to make me happy"

Rhushi Bhadkamkar, Senior Consultant, United States/Canada

I have worked my entire career in behemoth companies (Hershey, Kraft, Pepsi), but I never felt like my creativity could really be stretched. I was often told I have great ideas but there was no way they would happen. So I found myself really discouraged and wanting a more challenging, creative career. And to top it off, I’m making almost $40,000 more a year. I certainly don’t expect that kind of increase every time I make a career move, but I knew my skill value and what I bring to the table. I held my own and negotiated. Now my salary is on par with my male colleagues.

Julie Laughter , Senior Manager, Sustainability

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Phillip Migyanko 00:01
Where all this comes down to is the intentionality of things. So there are times where we've got the same thing. We have things that go in certain places. I've got meal prep time. But I think one of the biggest things that we do, really, for our clients that are going through this actual career change is what we're thinking about is, how much time are they actually spending reaching out?

Introduction 00:23
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:47
One of the biggest things that we hear again, and again, and again, as we have conversations with people all over the world, not just here in the US, but every place across the globe, is the issue of time. Time, because it takes a large amount of time to do just a normal career pivot, normal career change, let alone for the types of career changes that we've discussed on this podcast again, and again, and again, where you're really maximizing for what you want out of life, what you want out of your career, and want to be able to, you know, grow and show up in the ways that you want to, that's a different type of career change. And as it turns out, that also has a tendency to take more time. And the reason this becomes a question is because, where are you going to get all this time? Where is that going to come from? And that is... that's real, it's a real challenge. So we thought, well, hey, this is something we are helping people reconcile with every single day. So why not do a podcast episode about it? We do this for ourselves, when I say ourselves, I'm talking about our entire team. And we also do this for our clients across the globe. So I have with me today, our Director of Client Success, Phillip Migyanko. You've heard him on the podcast many times before, but he's back today to discuss, how do you not save time, although we're gonna talk about that too. But how do you even create time in some ways for yourself to be able to divert towards career change, or anything else that might be even more important in your life too. Phillip, welcome back to Happen To Your Career.

Phillip Migyanko 02:23
Nice to be here, Scott, and super excited to be diving into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:26
One of the things that we're going to do here, our goal is to talk about enough different items that collectively, if you applied them all, you don't have to apply them all, even if you do get just one thing from this episode. But collectively, we're going to give you enough different items where potentially if you did apply them all, you could save 30 plus hours per month that you can then divert to focus on your priorities, your priorities, being family, friends, priorities being career change, which is certainly what we've had most of our questions on. But that is our goal today. So no small task, right? It's definitely not an easy thing to do, but well worth it. So I'm realizing there's a lot of people that could probably benefit from this in multiple ways. We're going to talk about some of the things that we've personally done in the past to save large amounts of time. And then we're also going to talk about, specifically, and Phillip, I think you have some of these ideas already. We're chatting about this yesterday, long before we hit the record button about some of the best ways that we've helped our clients save time as they're going through their career change, too. So yeah.

Phillip Migyanko 03:30
You know, it's such a big thing, because I think you're right, Scott. One of the biggest things that we talk to people about when we begin working with them, or even before that process is essentially how do you save time, because we all know that this career change process essentially takes takes time to do and it's not, like, there's going to be magically, like, 30 hours gonna, like, come to your front door, like an Amazon box. It's more like we got to find those in places. And usually that comes to about, you know, saying no to some things, or one of the biggest things is I think it's setting up your environment to save time. And one of the things I always recommend for my first time clients is reading a wonderful book called "Atomic Habits" by James Clear because he talks about really setting up your environment to do so. But you know, for example, I've got a client who I'm working with right now, and we'll call her "Leah", and right now she takes her coaching calls in her bedroom, where her desk also happens to be. So we're doing our coaching calls, she's sitting at her desk, I can see her bed right behind her. And what we found after working together, after months and months is that, really, she's just thinking about work all the time because when she goes to bed, her beds right there, when she gets up, her desk is right there and it's all because it's physically in the same room. So she would be getting up at 6:30am getting right to her desk and start working. Then, like, working, taking some breaks here or there and really not stop working till 9 or 10pm. And obviously, this meant that she was just not giving herself a break and really never disconnecting. And I don't know about you but I've talked to a lot of people like that, especially during times where a lot more people are working remotely. And more and more people are and very much that it lengthened out her process in getting things done. Because from a mental bandwidth standpoint, she was just focusing on work all the time. So we, for me and Leah, we stopped, we looked, we're like, "Okay, how can we figure out how to basically set up your environment, so you're not thinking about work all the time?" Now, she lived in one bedroom apartment, it's not like we can move the desks to another spot, and it'd be a good fix for her. So instead, we literally took her physical laptop every single day. And at 6pm, which is the time that we agreed on that work with stop, we had calendar reminder, we had like her master schedule, we had things that were set up in her life where she knew 6pm was the time that she was stopping, including having conversations with her boss and all of her co workers and setting up her work to do so. But she would take her laptop, physically put it underneath her TV, that was also the spot that we agreed on that it would be out of sight, out of mind and put it there. And what we found over time is that it not only actually saved her, really, time, but that mental bandwidth that I was talking about earlier, and this also translates into getting things done faster. But what can happen for a lot of folks is we accidentally or unintentionally set up our environment that doesn't help us really save those big pieces of time. And ultimately, it makes us take so much longer than it needs to in the whole career change process. And that's what we really found working together. I know you found the same thing, Scott, when, like, setting up your environment, or really those time saving aspects.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:42
Yeah, I was thinking about it. We, my wife and I, and ourselves as a family, we spent a lot of effort and energy trying to set up our environment in a way that really allows us to accomplish what we want to or to spend time in the way we want to. So I love that you're calling this out as an entire category to itself. And so I mean, we do, I'll give you just two really super quick examples of ways that we do that. You know, one way is, this is gonna sound ridiculous, but we have a lot of hockey gear. I'll say that.

Phillip Migyanko 07:12
Oh, yeah, I've seen it. There's a ton of hockey gear.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:14
Yeah. So when we have the team up here last time, Phillip, you and Kathy went and played hockey with us, we're kind of...

Phillip Migyanko 07:20
It was flat on my face, guys. It was flat on my face.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:23
So we're pretty big ice hockey family, let's be honest. And so therefore we have a lot of gear, like, we just have tons of it and it would entirely take over our garage. But more importantly than that, like, there's time associated with every time we're, like, in the car, out of the car, all the things. Plus, hockey gear smells terrible. It smells terrible. So what this meant is that, you know, when my son started playing hockey early on, is that everything was just devoted to, like, the shifting around of hockey gear. And at some point very quickly, it became a thing. And it's like, oh, my goodness, why are we spending the time like moving the hockey gear from one place to the next is just terrible. So what we did, is we actually set up drying racks in the garage that work with everything else. And then in the summer, when there's less hockey gear around those drying racks shifts to lifejacket racks, they're basically sitting there for us to use the paddle boards that we have also stored in the garage. So taking a little bit of time to... and we literally custom built some stuff in there that allowed us to put the bags on the rack, everything to dry, and it just ended up saving us small amounts of time, like less than five minutes per day. But over the years, that adds up that five minutes, then you know, turns into an hour over the course of roughly a little more than a week. And then that hour turns into many hours. So just... we have no desire to spend time and effort putting away hockey gear and just moving it around.

Phillip Migyanko 08:49
That's a good point too. Because I mean, you're like removing a lot of those things that don't need to be done and really aren't adding things to your life overall. And I think that's a really interesting concept. Because, you know, we always think about adding time, but it's really about removing those things, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:03
Yeah. And that's a great point. And that really is the next category on its own, too. So we've got five categories we're going to give you today. Phillip, you mentioned the first one, which is setting up your environment to be able to save time. And then the second one is, what you said, removing time for things that maybe need to be done, but just, you know, aren't the actual tasks or whatever, are not adding that much value to your life, like putting away hockey gear, like I just think it's necessary, but I just don't really care to spend my time that way. So the third category is adding back time that's being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions. The fourth category is adding systems to things that you might do all the time and the fifth category, it's a bonus category. And we're going to give you some ways where as you're making your career change, you can actually save time during the career change itself. So we'll give you examples on all of these but the next one that you mentioned, where we're talking about removing time for things that need to be done but maybe aren't adding damage value to your life from doing the task itself. So a couple quick examples. And I know Phillip, you have a bunch of these too. We were chatting about these yesterday and I bet we have more that we don't even know about. Like, we wanted to have this conversation yesterday but didn't have time for the whole recording. So one example is lawn mowing for me. I mowed the lawn as a kid. I had the makings of a lawn mowing business way back when. I do not care to mow another lawn if I don't have to in my entire rest of my life. However, you know, the homeowners association that we live in freaks out if our lawn is a foot long, so it must be done. And, you know, what we... At first, we thought, "Well, okay, how are we going to do this?" Because most lawn services charge like 60 to 80 bucks for the size and type of lawn we have. And I don't really want to spend, you know, 60-80 bucks and this was quite a while ago. But what we started doing is we started having a neighborhood kid mow our lawn for 20 bucks per time. And you know, that ended up being a total cost of $400. And save me about 25 hours worth of time every single year, especially during the summer months when that lawn is growing frantically. So now, we've actually transitioned it over. My son, I don't know if I've ever talked about this on the podcast, Phillip, have I told you this before, like when each of my kids turned 12, I'm helping them start a business?

Phillip Migyanko 11:17
Yep. And I think McKenzie opened up a cupcake.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:20
Yes.

Phillip Migyanko 11:20
That I want to be an investor in but that's another subject for another time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:23
Yeah. So my son, who just recently turned 12, decided he wanted to start a lawn mowing business. So he's mowing our lawn. He's renting our lawn mower from us, which I wanted it to be a real business and have real business learning. So yes, he's renting our lawn mower from us. And then the way that that happens is he mows our lawn. So now at this point, he's doing that. And there's the additional bonus of we're spending time in a way that I want to and I don't have to mow the lawn. Right? Fantastic. All the way around. Phillip, I know that yesterday, you mentioned that meal prep is one of these things that saves you a ton of time. So I'm curious about that.

Phillip Migyanko 12:00
Yeah, so meal prep is such a big one. And we all know it. And sometimes it's one of those big things that we need to do. But one of the biggest things that we do is at the beginning of every week, we're always thinking about always the next week or sometimes two weeks ahead where we're kind of deciding which meals do we want to be having, make sure they're prepped and ready to go for dinners. That we have really busy days, you just want to have things ready to go by the time to make things but also that they're healthy, that they're nutritious, all those types of things. So what we do is we'll get all of our groceries on Saturday or even earlier in the day Sunday. And then we spend about two or three hours on Sunday, some upfront time planning both of our lunches, but also all of our dinners for the whole week. And that just saves so much time because really we're just rotating between 10 different meals, we're getting through the less decision fatigue about, which thing do we have to eat this week. And what's that look like for lunch this week. And I always have a problem because sometimes I forget to eat lunch because I'm just like helping and talk to people so much. So having things ready to go on Sunday for the whole week, it's been super helpful for us, and essentially putting a little bit more time early in the week to save time later on. So we can spend time just like talking or being together and have your dinner for ready to go. But Scott, you guys use an app and you have somebody who makes those kind of meal preps for you, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:11
Yeah, we've turned this to an entire system.

Phillip Migyanko 13:13
I'm super curious about that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:15
I know, I said that we talked about systems later. Here's one small tidbit of an example of how we've done that. So we use a service called eMeals in the habit in the form of an app. And the way that this is structured is they actually will, based on what your dietary needs are, like, whether you want to eat paleo, or you want to eat keto, or you want to eat comfort food, like, you can choose just about anything that's on there. We subscribed many years ago when they only have like two meal plan options. But now they have many, many, many, and they're really very, very, very good too. So you can make all of those choices. And then what happens is when the next week rolls up, you can just click the button and say, "I want to eat that. I want to eat that one. I want to eat that." and then, this is the really fun part, it will transfer all of the information that in the form of list items that you need to purchase over to whatever other app of your choice. So whether that is like Safeway or Kroger or Walmart or, you know, insert your service here that might deliver your groceries or allow you to do pickup, it just transfers all that information over there. It's integrated together. And then with the click of a button, it sends it over to, you know, Walmart or Trader Joe's or wherever it is, and boom, it's there. Now, you can press the order button in the other app, and then it can show up at your doorstep or you can go pick it up. So we go and pick it up once a week. So the extra advanced portion of this is if you don't love the meal prep portion, you could have somebody else do it too. So that's something that we've been experimenting with over the last couple of years and that's worked out quite well. What we've settled on is that works really well for us for lunches and breakfast. We still prefer to make all of our own dinners. That's just something that we'd love to do. But the whole system around it just has it show up so we can go to the grocery store, pick it up, take a total of 10 minutes to do that, and it's exactly what we wanted without all the time spent planning. So that in itself estimate, I was talking to my wife about this the other day, it now happens... it used to take about, let's say, 105 minutes or that translate to about 91 hours per year creating a menu and then go into the store and shopping and everything and that was on the low side. Now, it takes less than 35 minutes a week for everything to happen in total. And it costs less than $30, by the way, per month. So yeah, there's another example here. So what about this third category here, adding back time that's being taken away in the form of obstacles or distractions. This I think might be possibly the most valuable one. Realize sometimes I didn't realize in many cases and still to this day I'm pretty relentless about tracking how I'm spending my time and setting up feedback loops so that I can understand how I'm spending my time in ways that are accidental so that I can edit it out versus just do that year after year after year. So this first one, get ready for it, it's going to make you cringe.

Phillip Migyanko 16:06
Oh it made me cringe when I thought.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:08
Oh my goodness, yeah. Okay, so it is canceling Netflix. I know. But here's what I found, we actually, and we do still have Disney plus if that makes anybody feel bad. I don't know.

Phillip Migyanko 16:20
Yeah. Because there's, you know, you can put shows you're watching. So cancel any of the subscription services. But yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:26
Yeah. But by canceling Netflix, what I would do, and I love Netflix, I'll be the first to say they have an amazing service. They have wonderful movies, they've done a really nice job, I think, of produced, like, changing their business model to now where they're producing a lot of movies as well and series and everything else that goes along with it. But I also have noticed that just experimenting with it saves me about 35 hours per year at a minimum and that's probably a low estimate based on what I found. Because what happens is I would find an episode of something and then I couldn't stop watching it, could not control myself. Yes, I know we talked about lots of things, like, where I think people are assuming there's tons of discipline there. I have zero discipline when it comes to an amazing series. So I'll just literally binge watch when I'm supposed to be working. Like, that is a real thing that has happened. So I've realized that that is not, you know, a year later when I think about that, it's like oh yeah, I didn't actually want to spend my time that way. I just felt like I couldn't spend my time any other way after I saw that first episode. So that's one way.

Phillip Migyanko 17:28
But, you know, it's interesting. That's like me when I'm, like, trying not to eat a chocolate bar so I just don't bring any chocolate into my house because I'm like, if I have a chocolate bar, I'm gonna eat the whole thing at one time. So my decision it's, kind of, discipline is when I'm going through the store, I just don't pick up any chocolate and it's kind of the same thing also with my phone, too. I noticed for me and, you know, one of the other tactics that I were talking about before we were hitting record here was just removing all the notifications from my phone, my computer, iPad, all those types of things because I don't really necessarily want it to be in control of my attention. It's more of, anything that pings me is like I'm being distracted and it removes me from the task that I'm looking to do and it's really easy, you go... if you've got an iPhone, you go into your settings app, you just turn off all notifications except for the apps that you want on and, really, for me too, it's such the social media apps, especially games, all of these things they are designed to have you plug into your phone and the biggest way they do that is notifying "oh hey, here's a new thing for you" "oh hey someone on your photos like something" or "oh this new, new thing" and so you just have to, yeah, we're gonna make that noise a "ooh" thing that's going to be an... But more importantly, it's just removing all of those like little distractions especially notifications on your phone because this little black box that now we carry with us all the time just becomes an Uber distraction piece for whatever is out on the internet and you can really make sure that it's working for you instead of you working for it. And, for me, specifically, that means yeah, no games. I got it. They are all off my phone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:57
And I think you could probably argue that maybe part of, maybe this is also an example of setting up your environment, too, not having chocolate. And I know that's less of a time saving thing, well, I guess it depends on how long it takes. But certainly, the email notification where it is saving and conserving your attention so therefore you are more productive in spending your time in the way that you want to, that is absolutely also an example of setting up your environment but it is minimizing those obstacles and distractions too. You know, something else that... and I know Phillip, you know this and now Kathy, who's on our team, jokes about this all the time because she now is obsessive over this one thing I cannot stand, and I know that sounds insane but it adds up. I cannot stand making, you know, five clicks where I could possibly have just done one click or a keystrokes or here's the example, if my computer is processing faster, and I don't have to wait on it, that is more time that is not consumed if with individual tasks, which means that my tasks that are spent on my computer or phone get shorter. So what I've learned is that, for me, personally, this is not right for everyone. But for me personally, I spend a fair amount of time on the computer. So keystrokes count, and if I'm waiting on the computer to process, then that means that it literally takes longer. And that's something that quite frankly, I can't stand. So my life is infinitely better when I buy the fastest processing laptop, or the fastest processing computer. And for me, that typically cost me about $1,000 more per computer. But I get it back very, very quickly, because I spend a fair amount of time on the computer. And I'm not waiting and more importantly, I'm not frustrated, too, at the every single computer usage. It's now a pleasure to use my computer instead of be mad at technology. So there's another one. And I know that there's a lot of apps out there that can help with that, too. One of the things that we use on our team is this email app that syncs up with Google or Gmail, and it's called Superhuman, and they literally have reduced the keystrokes and clicks that it takes in order to operate that and they've cut it in half. So it takes... where it used to take three or four mouse clicks to process email for one type of email plus all the keystrokes, now you can do that with less, you can actually use the entire email system without the mouse at all, which is so much faster than switching back and forth. Yes, I know that's super nerdy. And I love it.

Phillip Migyanko 21:31
This is not a paid advertisement for Superhuman at all. But I mean, if Superhuman is listening, we will definitely take that. But more importantly, there's so many benefits of the Superhuman app, it really helps just more really schedule the emails for a later period of time, you're less than clicking and clicking back through and overall and it really allows you just to focus on the most important pieces of email because I definitely get lost in just the mountains of emails. And as, you know, as many of them come in, and some of them just aren't important. And I know a lot of my clients or a lot of the people that I talked to is they have like email inboxes that are like a thousand plus, they go, "I just need to go unsubscribe that thing, cleaned it out." But instead, "I'm just gonna give a whole new another email. So then I'm just gonna leave that to one of the site and get this new one. And Superhuman is definitely helpful and the email processing and kind of cleaning all that stuff out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:19
Just makes it easier. Here's another one, this is gonna also sound very, very nerdy. Phillip, you have been to my house, and you've seen my garage. And most people think that it's super organized and everything because it literally has a place for everything. And then also we've built out places for future things, too, even containers that don't have anything in it. But they have a label for when they will have something in it down the road. Yes, that is the level of intensity that is put into the garage. But one of the things that we were finding is that even though we had drastically reduced the amount of consumption that we had made as a family, we were still finding that we were having lots and lots of items in places for things, or I should say lots and lots of items that needed to go to Goodwill, and we didn't have a place for it. So we were actually spending lots of time and energy. And again, I know this sounds absurd, but we were spending more time and energy than what I wanted to be spending trying to figure out what to do with this stuff. So when I had redone the garage and redesigned it, built a staging area for items to go to Goodwill, or to be able to donate to different charities. So it's super easy to get to. Now, it's right outside the door. So it's not an obstacle. And it takes less time to be able to, when we need one to donate something, I can go and I can just put it in this basket. And then when we make a run to, you know, Goodwill or get a place where we can donate that, then it's right there. It's easy. It doesn't take additional time. Most importantly, it's not capturing my attention. But this is something that we found we were doing all the time. Another thing, Phillip, I don't know if you do this, but Amazon has a wonderful, wonderful return system at this point if you have prime. So we can just take it down to the UPS Store, which we already... We send all our business items, we ship through UPS and the UPS Store and we have an account down there anyway. But you can just show them your Amazon app, they'll scan it, and you don't even have to put it back in the box. So if we're returning something from Amazon, then we can just basically take it in and toss it on the counter and say, "Here you go." And they'll take care of everything else for it. So this makes it easier for us to be able to shop at amazon, which of course, they've done a really nice job with. They want us to continue to shop at Amazon. But they're meeting some of our needs and it ends up saving us time versus ordering from other places. Now if something doesn't work, it's so much easier for us to just take it back, it fits in and we have this little staging area for returns that go to places, too, so they don't stack up in our house. Okay, so what are the... now I've given you totally nerdy items. What do you find that you're doing, Phillip, that is out of the normal, we'll call it, that ends up saving you time?

Phillip Migyanko 25:00
That's such a good question. I think one of the, you know, we talked about meal prep, that's such a big one. I think what all this comes down to is the intentionality of things. So there is times where we've got the same thing. We have things that go in certain places, I've got meal prep time, but I think one of the biggest things that I do, and I think one of the things that we do, really, for our clients that are going through this actual career change is what we're thinking about is, how much time are they actually spending reaching out? I did the same thing when I was in my career search. But you might have heard one of our clients on this very podcast, Vicky, who I was working with. And for her, she spent a lot of time in the research phase. And specifically during that reach out phase, there can be lots of lots of places where it can be very time consuming, because so many people like to do the research part. And you don't really want to reach out to somebody if you don't know something about them. And then people get all those thoughts in their head, like, "Okay, well, I have to know what school they went to, the city they live in, the name of their dog, what's all those things before I talk to him just in case those things might come up." And I find, yes, so many people spend a lot of time in there. So one of the things that I do that's personal in my life, but one things I help really focused clients on is we really take those available hours for things that are kind of outside, and we go, okay, so for clients, they might have seven hours, they might have 10, they might have one, whatever that number might be, we look and we go, "Alright, here's the available hours that you have to work on this career change work" and we go okay, so we know in the reach out phase, there's really four big components, sourcing, i.e., finding the people who you're going to reach out to, researching, finding out the unique things kind of about them, and then be able to do the talking points for them. And that's where people tend to spend the most time. And then writing the email actually to them, number three. And number four is actually sending the email to them and doing any of those like and sillery types of things. I have clients who do loom videos, that's a service where you can record a free video that's just about a minute long, and makes it a little bit more personal. A couple other things there. But so many people spend so much time in that second part, that research phase. So what we do is we go "Okay, all that available hours, how can we time block and essentially time limit, which is a little bit counterintuitive to a saving time, but time limit all of those aspects of those four parts of reaching out." So what I do with my clients are, we go, okay, and especially in Vicky and her case, we said, we found that she was spending hours and hours, like five plus hours a week in the research phase. And I said, "Vicky, all right, we now only have two. So we have to find the unique aspects of each person in that two hour time, so we can send out those emails. Because email sent out is better than no email sent out." So allows us to really make sure that we're limiting our time to focus on the best places, and ultimately, again, come back and save more of that mental bandwidth for us. Because if we're spending too much time in the wrong areas and not getting results, it's really not getting us any place. So it's a really good aspect from the time learning aspect. Because we're always trying to figure out where we can best utilize and spend our time and remove the obstacles that might potentially get in the way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:01
Time limiting is, I think one of the most effective strategies and tools that you can have, not just for your career change, although it works particularly well for your career change, or any other area where it's new for you or you have perfectionist tendencies, or you care a whole lot about because those are the areas where we have a tendency to spend inordinate amounts of time rather than just doing it and doing the 80% good enough version and then moving on even though the 80% good enough version might be just as effective in most cases. So thank you for pointing that out. The other other thing I would say here, if you're in the midst of making a career change, pick out just one of the strategies, one of the strategies to save you time elsewhere so that you can make more time for your career change or utilize that strategy that we just talked about in saying "Look, I'm going to time limit myself, I'm going to spend... I'm gonna allow myself 90 minutes in total to be able to spend on this task. At the end of it, I'm going to consider it done." And, you know, just pick out one of these so that you can, instead, utilize that time that you now get back in one way or another to be able to focus on what's a priority for you, in this case, your career change. And here's the other thing too. If you are wanting more of this, these are things that we do for our clients every single day. This is just a tidbit. This is just a small amount of the strategies that we personally use or we personally use with our clients and, you know, we can absolutely help, it's what we are here to do. It's what we love to do. It's what we do every day. So, you know, reach out to us. Phillip is one of the people that gets to have so many of the conversations with people who are trying to decide if we are the right people to help them through their career or... and we're trying to decide what is the very best way that we can support them. So do this, just email me directly scott@happentoyourcareer.com, just send me an email, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And what will happen is that either myself or our team will get back to you. And we'll go ahead and set up a time to chat. And that way we can understand your situation, ask you some questions and figure out the very best way that we can support you for the type of career change that you want to make. And Phillip is, like I said, one of those people that you may very well talk to, and he's really, really great at it. Phillip, what advice would you give to somebody who's in that situation where they're trying to figure out what is the right type of help to get during this career change, regardless of whether we're helping or, you know, they're trying to do something for themselves?

Phillip Migyanko 30:38
Yeah, I'd say the biggest thing there, that's a really great question. Because it can be really different for everybody. And really, the biggest thing, or the advice I'd give to somebody who is sitting in those shoes right now is, the best thing you can do is raise your hand and ask for help and to continue moving forward. Because I usually say this to a lot of people in those calls is that there's lots of people in the world who sit and stay in their same spot and wish they would have done something. And we all know people like that, and then they end up retiring, and then it's not good. And then the difference between those people and the people who send that email to Scott and jump on a call with me or somebody on our team is that they raise their hand, and ask for help, and decided to do something about it. The biggest piece of advice is raise your hand, ask for help. We have a whole team of people here, there's tons and tons of people out there looking for help and wanting to give help. So you're not in this alone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:26
You heard it here first. So Phillip has talked to many, many, many hundreds of people over the last couple of years. And I think that that's great advice well served. If there's anything that we can do for you or anything else that you want to hear on the Happen To Your Career podcast, don't hesitate to let us know. Otherwise, drop me an email scott@happentoyourcareer.com, and we'll be thrilled to pieces to set you up with Phillip or someone else on our team. And guess what, we have so much more coming up for you right here on Happen To Your Career next time. See what's in store.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:04
What if, after going through all the work that it takes to get a job, you realize, almost on day one, that it's nowhere close to what you expected it was going to be. In fact, it's far worse than that. It's the opposite of what you expected is going to be. Well, if you were in that situation, you'd probably start looking for a new role, right? Well, that's what happened to Cheri. You heard her voice in the introduction. She realized early on that her new role was not totally what she expected it to be. She became super unhappy, and started searching for a new job within a month. She applied to a ton of roles but kept hitting the dead end. But here's the thing, if we fast forward, spoiler alert, we'll see that she made it to one of those roles that when she saw it in the job description, she originally didn't feel qualified for it.

Cheri Thom 33:00
I wanted to be a product owner. I have found that I really like that idea of, kind of, being a subject matter expert and, kind of, owning a process or product. And I hadn't been looking for that when I was looking for jobs because I didn't feel like I was qualified for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:17
One thing we see all the time that's really unfortunate is so many people limit themselves to roles that they feel like they check all the boxes for every single bullet point on the entire job description. I see this all the time. You find the listing, you immediately scroll down to all the job requirements, you mentally check off everything as you go. But then you find there one or two qualifications that you don't have, you sigh and then you hit the back button to check on the next listing. No good, right? A lot of times, the people that get hired in those situations don't have all the qualifications, it happens so frequently, I can't tell you how much, you know, coming from my HR days and recruiting days. And certainly, we see that all the time here at Happen To Your Career as we're helping people. But I want you to take a listen to Cheri's story because this is one of those situations. She navigated through all the mental and real challenges that come up along the way. So you'll hear her describe that. All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Intentional Happiness: The Importance Of Being True To Yourself

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It can sometimes seem like many people just get lucky in life – somehow they get the things that everyone wants.

But it’s not really luck. It just so happens that the science of happiness works whether you are intentional or not. 

However, to get the best results in your life and career, you must be intentional in your actions. But how do you figure out where to start?

What you’ll learn

  • The difference between internal happiness and external happiness
  • What led Jen to figuring out what was most important in her life
  • The benefits of being intentional in your life
  • The biggest restrictions to following your purpose
  • How to be true to your whole self in your career

Want to hear more from Jenn? Look for her new book Beyond Happiness in October, 2021.

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Jenn Lim 00:11
For me, sort of selfishly, was when I was down and out. And, like, I was 28, 29 and like a whole trifecta happened to me. I got laid off from my job, 911 happened, like...

Introduction 00:33
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:57
I am a total nerd when it comes to anything that has to do with the science around happiness, psychology, and I just absolutely love it. And that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to have our next guest on the show. But the other reason was, because well, I had been a fan of her work for... going on 10 years now.

Jenn Lim 01:25
So it was a selfish, sort of, like, inward look of, well, what is meaningful? So before I got to the organizational stage, I had to do that hard reflection within myself. And then understanding that "oh, purpose" and this was the terminology that is now versus then. But what was it for you? Like, how can I make these big decisions of, where I work, where I live, who I go out with, you know, like, and not have to, like, have a whole conundrum every single time. I realized it was like, Okay, what is the most important thing to me?

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:00
That's Jenn Lim. She's the author of a brand new book called 'Beyond Happiness'. She learned how to identify what was really important to her after she had been laid off from her job, her dad was diagnosed with cancer. All of that was happening at the same time as 911 was occurring and all the global events that followed. Well, after looking internally and doing much research, Jen learned how to be much more intentional and leverage the science in psychology behind happiness. This led to her working as a consultant with Tony Hsieh, the former CEO at Zappos, and later the two of them co founded the company Delivering Happiness. Take a listen to Jen's story, but basically pay attention later on in the episode because she talks about what actually works as it relates to career happiness.

Jenn Lim 02:58
Just, kind of, paint this picture of this journey of like, and, I don't know if you read the book, or just seen the book, or whatever, but one of the things that we talked about is the highs and lows of life, and heartbeats of our life. So for me, sort of selfishly, was when I was down and out. And, like, I was 28, 29 and like a whole trifecta happened to me. I got laid off from my job, 911 happened, my father got colon cancer diagnosed with colon cancer. So all this was like, "wait, what the... what is going on?" Like, I was making good money, you know, that calm days, right? Flying high. I was like, oh, even though I majored in Asian American Studies, I'm able to tell my mom and dad, "Don't worry, I got it." And of course, everything fell. So for me, that was a huge sort of awakening point of "Wait, what is this matter again?" So super existential questions that I think, COVID actually, in the last, you know, 2020 of last one and a half years brought back to our lives. So at that moment, I just wouldn't look inward, because all the things that I thought were important, which was, at that time, you know, I was like, in school and all that money, internal status was like, "I need to make that happen." And then I got it. And then it was like, "Wait, it's gone. And I still feel nothing more meaningful than before." So it was a selfish, sort of, like, inward look of, well, what is meaningful? So before I got to the organizational stage, I had to do that hard reflection within myself. And then understanding that "oh, purpose" and this was the terminology that is now versus then. But what was it for you? Like, how can I make these big decisions of where I work, where I live, who I go out with, you know, like, and not have to, like, have a whole conundrum every single time. I realized it was like, "Okay, what is the most important thing to me?" So that's how it all started. And so this is pre my days at Zappos, pre Delivering Happiness and then through that time for him was more organizations and leaders, and when I say leaders, I mean at every level, like, we're all leaders, right? So when leaders get that sort of lightbulb in their own way, then that's when actual change happens. So that was my inspiration, just like figure out my own life and see what that means. And I was like, "Oh, wait, this can actually be scaled to organizations and teams. And we can actually make this world a happier place" you know, like, all those collegiate type of thoughts and mentality became real to me from a scientific basis, there's the positive psychology and all that, but that's kind of the trajectory of what I've seen, of what actually makes change happen in the world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:38
That is really interesting. And I told you earlier that I've been aware of your work for over 10 years, around 10 years or so now. But I don't think I was aware of, you know, what took place in, sort of like, early career and everything like that for you until I was prepping for our conversation. And now what I'm really curious about when you were going through all that for yourself, and you're sort of having this inward look, do you remember what any of those realizations were for you? Or you said just a moment to go, "Hey, I had to figure out what were the priorities for me. Or what was most important for me." Do you remember where you... any of the pieces that you arrived at at that time?

Jenn Lim 06:14
Yes, sure. It's, like, probably because I had to write this freaking book. And they have to... the way, what are those...?

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:22
Now you're prepared for this conversation. The thing you had to write a book.

Jenn Lim 06:27
Oh, yes. Not the easiest way to go back into having reflections and memories. But there was two things: it was the inward one and the outward one. So the inward one was very, like, existential like, "Wait, what the frick am I doing right now? Like, why does this even matter? And what matters to me?" That turn point, like, that turning point for me was when I saw all these people suffering, you know, like, with the layoffs, with the 911, with my dad, you know, getting diagnosed with cancer, it's almost like, "wait, that's kind of crazy, because I've been spending all this time trying to work, work, work, and make myself established. I have a status for myself, but I'd actually rather be spending time with the people I love" So that turning point was very significant, because then I knew I was making decisions on, number one, the people I love and care about, including humanity in the world. So that was a big one. And then so that was inward. Like what my own purpose is, it's for serving people but being true to myself, number one. Being the authentic self is realizing this is how I'm going to make decisions. And then there was the external side, which is, "What am I going to do with this, sort of, aha moment of like, yeah, I want to be true to myself so what am I do with it?" And then it's the realization, I can connect that to other people, like, what is it that I was brought here for, what I'm passionate about, or purposeful for. And then at that moment, it was like, "Well, I don't necessarily need to be in corporate America or corporate world anymore, I want to actually want to understand how this new realization comes out in the work I do, whether it's passion stuff with art, or you know, creativity, or within the business realm, which has a lot of creativity too." So that's when I realized that's the extension of, number one, I had to be true to what was going on inside, get my values straight, get my priorities straight, make my decision making and cloud, like, all this craziness in my head, sink into groundedness, and then extend that to others. Because I realized that was my number one value as people, how do I have those relationships with others?

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:40
You know, what's really interesting to me is, I heard you say something earlier, too, about, you know, as you had some of these realizations, and then you started doing other different types of work, you started seeing that some of the science actually supported what you had sort of realized for yourself too, as well. And I think that's been a bit of a conundrum for me over the years. If we go back, you know, 20 plus years ago or so, that was... I very much felt that I worked for a number of organizations, well, I'm really glad for the experiences, you know, some of these were considered to be great organizations from people standpoint, and yet being in them and around them, it still felt very non human, and like, I couldn't be myself at work. And then later on, I had a similar experience where, as I started understanding what the research and science says, it's like, "Oh, no, no. I wasn't totally way off pace." So I'm curious, what's behind that for you as you were going along on that journey, as you started work with Zappos and other organizations later on, what did that trajectory look like for you? And what became apparent?

Jenn Lim 09:42
Yeah, as you were sharing your story, I feel like we're totally living parallel tracks. Because here I was going in my whole, like, "wait, what is this all mean?" I thought I had it figured out for myself. And then I came across this whole body of research and the science, like, "wait, there's happiness science in positive psychology", like, this was huge and new. And this was when I started, like, collaborating with Tony at Zappos and all that stuff and implementing that in an organizational level. But that was that moment of like, *ting*, like, "Wait, I don't have to do all the research. I don't have to make myself a guinea pig of everything. I actually can learn from this body of work." So the top things that came from that, sort of, awakening was there's actually scientific lovers that actually focus on not what's wrong with us, per se, but actually what's right with them, and to be honest with those wrong with us, but I should be recognizing that, "Okay, these are the things that can help me get up in that level." So senses of autonomy or control, sense of progress, growing, developing, learning, a sense of connectedness, a huge one, especially right now, when we're on demand and all that, like, "who am I connected to" and I would like to do that in my workspace, ideally, not just at home. And then ultimately having that higher purpose, and that word is being used a lot these days. But really, what am I doing beyond myself was that connection to this greater thing called the world and the universe. So when I came across that, I was just, like, what, like, those are the levers that are scientifically proven. And it became a tool, you know, like being able to say, "Oh, these are the things that I can remind myself on a daily basis, like, what are the things that I can have more control of?" So that's like a personal decision not to go back to the corporate world, but to actually do crazy passionate things and start my own company, co-founded something with Tony, you know, all those things. And then, like, you know, the progress stuff, like, how do I feel like I'm developing in life as a person, not just a worker or employee, making sure my connections are meaningful that how's the weather or you know, who won, you know, the baseball game today, I mean, those are super important. But there's layers within that, that get us really deeply grounded with each other. And of course, that higher purpose that we all hear so much about, but having the ability to feel it on a day to day basis was what that journey became of when I was, like, "Wow, this is happening. This is already existing in the world. How do I connect myself to that?" So that became like, "The Hero's Journey", if you're familiar with Joseph Campbell's work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:20
Yes. Absolutely. Well, and it also leads to another question that I was really interested in asking you. And from your perspective, you know, you're talking about purpose, which is over the last 10 years becomes sort of a buzzword, like engagement, and all of the others that have followed. What do you feel like, are some of the biggest or what have you seen are some of the biggest things that stop people from feeling that sense of purpose, that sense of connection to purpose? What are some of those biggest restrictors if you will?

Jenn Lim 12:52
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is a little too basic in the sense, like, as human beings were resistant to change, and then I'm a huge, like, fan of science and nature. And so I geek out on all that stuff and how systems happen in the world with animals. So, like, a Darwin thing is, it's not the smartest or strongest that survive, it's those that are most able to adapt. I'm paraphrasing here. Because he has a whole body of work, but so that, I think, is where that, sort of, natural selection in some ways, like, the animals and the eco systems and the bio systems that survive or those that adapt. And we are not, as humans, equipped for that naturally, whereas nature animals are usually more equipped, but either that or they not. So I think that's the biggest barrier within ourselves, like, we're so... when we get into our comfort zone of what works, it's so hard to change it because like, why would we want to move away from something that feel safe, and this goes again, back to the prehistoric ages, like we just want to survive, like, our brain works that way. So that we're, when we're primal, I just want to survive. I'm just hitting this, you know, mid cortex versus my prefrontal because I don't want my prefrontal to make decisions because I'm just in this, you know, freeze mode of life. So I think it goes back physiologically, it goes back, I don't want to be eaten by a lion. But these days, there's not many lions going on, at least where I live, I don't know where you're living.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:25
You know, it's pretty crazy out here in Central Washington. To be clear, I also don't want to be eaten alive.

Jenn Lim 14:31
There's different types of lions out there. But basically, that really primal desire to protect yourselves is there but that's why I think we're at a different stage now. We're more elevated and we have the luxury of being able to talk about these things that even my parents didn't have, they were trying to, you know, put food on the table, you know, and I'd love to hear about yours, ancestors as well. It's like now we have the luxury of, like, thinking about these more bigger elevating things that can transcend this survival mechanism, because this sense of purpose that we know that we were born into, it was in us when we came out of our mom's womb, whether or not we tap into that, because there's so much resistance out there is our choice, it's hard as hell, but it's our choice to go back into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:19
You know, thinking about that, and it being your choice... I have, well, it sort of makes me think about a few other things too, at the same time. And, one of the other pieces, I know that, you know, even though you're doing organizational work, right before we got on here, really hit the recording button, we were talking a little bit about how it can't be driven 100% from the organization side to show up and be able to just expect that the organization is going to 100% allow you to just be yourself at work, it has to be driven from both sides in many different ways, which means there has to be work done from the individual, as well as the organization in order to create a, I'm going to call it a situation, that allows people to show up and be their whole selves at work, which is something both you and I geek out about. So I'm curious, how do we distinguish between what are some of the pieces that we really need to do for ourselves versus what organizations can do?

Jenn Lim 16:21
I love these questions. I'm really glad that we're talking again, after all these years of, like, you following this, because it's such a current pressing question to answer, especially right now. Sort to me, like, that asshole that says, gotta read my book, because I don't want to be that person.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:39
The book is great, though. It's worth a read. I will say, I read it, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Jenn Lim 16:45
Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:45
Break down for us. What are some of the lines?

Jenn Lim 16:48
Before the asshole, like, the main saying, like, oh, as I say in my book, that's the line that's like, hard for me to say because, but basically, the separation between what's internal and external. So I kind of touched upon this before. So I'm calling what we are in right now the adaptive age. Like this is Darwinian, this is like, basically, we've gone through all these eras of generations of being farmers, and then industrialists, and then technologists, and then now I feel like we're in the adaptive age. So what that means for me is like, let's control we can within and embrace and adapt to what we can control. So that to me is the separation between inner and outer of organizations. So the inner is like, and as I referenced in the book, a lot about purpose and values. And I go through all these exercises of understanding what really is you can, like, basically guess those will evolve over time, but at least putting a stake in your ground, on our ground, in everyone's ground and say, "Hey, I've done a bit of work" and understanding what that is. So I can draw that line and said, "This is what means everything to me."

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:51
I'm super curious, give me an example of one or two of those exercises that you're referring to.

Jenn Lim 17:55
Yeah, so one of them, first one is the Happiness Heartbeats one, like as you can imagine, like on a heartbeat monitor, the metaphor for that is that, "that's life." And even though we're, you know, my company is called Delivering Happiness, this book is called "Beyond Happiness", it's knowing that those highs and lows will come. And so as an exercise, it's really simple, it's basically storytelling your own life, and identify those highs and lows in your life from childhood. And it's really important to include the whole thing, and I actually encourage people to not just think about work, I think about life, because it's pretty much time we spent on earth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:30
It's mutually dependent on...

Jenn Lim 18:33
Right, or integration. Yes. So when you map those things out, just think top highs, top high moments, three on each side, and then three low moments, and then go to each of those moments and ask yourself, you know, "what values were there not there?" "what people were there or not there?" asking those questions, just kind of dissect it, knowing the highs are as just as important as your lows in determining what that's sustainable happiness is, that's what truthfulness is all about. So that's an exercise that we really encourage, like, one of the first things to do is like, let's just, you know, before we talk about anything else, go into your life, your own journey. And that reflection is really cool. And then the other one is what I call "the wheel of wholeness". So if you can imagine a whole bunch of like pieces in the pie, one of the things that in organizations that I work with, that don't have yet but are working there is to understand not just the employee lifecycle, like "oh, I'm gonna, like, recruit, and then train" and then they're gonna leave. It's more about the holistic life cycle. So the wheel of wholeness is about these puzzle pieces, or these pie pieces that are important to every individual. So it's not just about how they are as employees, but as human being. So the pie pieces are about not just like, "are you feeling gratified or satisfied with your work? it's like, "where are you financially? Are you feeling sound?" Because that affects your psychological state and whether or not you're productive work. If you're freaking out about, "I'm not getting enough", then you're not going to be as productive, kind of thing. And then the other pieces are, "Where are you mentally? Where are you emotionally? Where are you relationally, with people in and outside of work? And where are you spiritually or purposefully?" that kind of thing. So that expands it in a way that we're looking at employees as human beings, knowing that psychological state will affect anytime they move into the work state. So those are a couple exercises that we like to do just because it gives you a snapshot. And then once you check in again, you know what to dial up, dial down, and things to work on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:37
I appreciate you sharing those in detail. That's super helpful. I also recognize that I diverted you from the original question that I asked as well, which was, you know, where, and we can go back to it as well, because you were on a really good trend line there. You were starting to tell me a little bit more about where is that line in terms of how can we think about like, what does the company responsible for or organization responsible for versus what am I responsible for? So I'm curious, any other thoughts that you have on that, too?

Jenn Lim 21:04
Yeah. So I think this we've come to a place like people talk about future work all the time. And it's kind of like, what does that mean? So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:13
Thank you for saying that out loud. Yes.

Jenn Lim 21:16
Okay, like that sounds like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:18
Like engagement or something at this point. Yeah.

Jenn Lim 21:21
Anyhow, that matters to me. But I really feel like this whole concept of this future of work of AI technology and displacement, and re, you know, re skilling and all that, it just got totally ushered in, in quick form in 2020, without us knowing it, and the future work. So basically, those decisions need to be made of who's responsible for what and what I say in the book, I call it not just accountability, but co owned accountability with each other. And what I mean by that, and I know, accountability sounds like, "Ugh, what is it?" It's another one of those words, everyone's sick of hearing it. But I'm thinking about accountability in villages. You remember back in the day, like when we're all in villages, no one was designated certain teams or certain roles, we were all accountable for each other, because we want to survive, fast forward to how dolphins operate, or orcas operate. They're all accountable for their roles. Because one dolphin is a swimmer underneath and like, get all the fish up, so everyone else can eat. And those things are ingrained in a natural way. So what I mean by co owned accountability is whatever position you're in, it's just so important. This is where the twist comes in, too, like to have these conversations, to have that sense of like, "wait, what am I bringing to the table? What are you bringing to the table? And how are we going to work on this together?" Because even organizations that say from the get go, like, "we're gonna give you an amazing employee engagement, and all these perks and all that stuff" at the end of the day is really who you work for, and who you work with. It's like your team, that you really need to have that really honest, transparent communication with. So in some ways, it depends on the team and the organization you work with. But what's really helpful to the conversations in terms that line, the question that you're originally asking, when you come to the table, knowing that this is my, this is who I am, my purpose, my values, and if this engagement or this team is not honoring that, why would I continue to do that? I mean, it's easier said than done for certain times and people but that's kind of where I draw the line, like in terms of, do I want to live in a life of integrity and being true to my authentic self?

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:34
One of the pieces of really simple logic that I always go back to is if you don't know what those are for yourself, it's difficult to ask for them, it's really difficult to have those types of conversations that you're talking about, if I don't understand what I stand for, if I don't understand what I value the most is really difficult for me to articulate that to someone else. You know, another really interesting thing and I'm curious your opinion on this too. But we've found, and I'll give you a little bit of preface or context, a lot of the work that we will do is we'll help people make career changes often what people consider to be the type of sort of unicorn career changes where they're transitioning to a role or organization or situation that does allow them to be so much more of themselves but part of the magic behind that is that they first have to understand what it is that they want. Now here's the here's the part that's really interesting to me, is that I find that in many many many situations where people think it's impossible to create a situation where you can be more of yourself and people look at that and go, "Yeah, that organizations not going to do that" or like, "that boss is never going to say yes to that." But so many of those situations, if you know what it is that you stand for, you know what aligns with your purpose, if you know what you are aligns with what you value, then when you can articulate it and do ask for what you want, you can usually find some resolution that is in alignment. Yeah. So I'm curious, what's been your experience on that?

Jenn Lim 25:07
First of all, I love what you all do. I love what your organization does towards...

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:11
Thank you.

Jenn Lim 25:11
Feel like we're, you know, we're cut from the same cloth basically, in terms of what we're trying to strive for, because you know, who wants to wake up unhappy and sleep unhappy? Because this is our time. And being the best we can. So love that. And you're totally right, it's not easy. And it's not to say that the work that we are talking about is easy at all. But the question is, is it worth the effort if it means waking up every morning, and being able to feel and say, "Look, I don't have to turn on the news, or I don't have to, like go on my feed and I have to see what's going on the world. I am grounded within because I know my purpose and values." And I know that's easy to say. But like, that's why these exercises that I introduce are talked about in the book are so important, because at least it's a line in the sand of understanding that. But yeah, of course, it's not easy to implement. But one of the things I would say, having been on both sides of the table of hiring, and trying to be hired, when someone comes to the table with that sense of who they are, what they believe in, if I put my employer hat on, I'd be like, "this person is who I need, like that sense of like, that's resistance to the chaos around us." That's a sense of like, "no matter what's gonna happen, I'm resilient", you know, I'm already grinding myself. So no matter what, like with your company, if I agree or aligned with your purpose or values as a company, I'm all in because I already know that within me. So from both sides, you can kind of see it's, kind of like, it lights up and it becomes a gauge, you know, coming to an interview is not like, "Oh, I hope I can impress this person. It's just like..." And other person, if I was that employer, I'd be like, "Oh, shit, like, I want to learn from you, too." Like, that's the kind of engagement I think people, your audience, would probably be amazing in changing how we work in life and how we show up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08
Well, I think you made such a great point, too, like, when you're grounded in yourself, and all of those ways that you had mentioned, when you're in that interview type situation or that type of conversation. It's not about "oh, my goodness, how can I impress this person so that I get hired" instead, it becomes much more of a real partnership type of conversation has been my experience. But it doesn't happen without that work. And it doesn't happen without that understanding. You can't just like fake that conversation.

Jenn Lim 27:34
Right, exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:36
Not well, at least.

Jenn Lim 27:37
Not well. And it shows, I mean, you know, and then some people are naturally more introverted and all that. But, I think that if that other person, like if that person that's looking to interview you or interviewing you doesn't see your authenticity, and how genuine you're being about things that matter, then it's kind of like, well, you've benefited from that, because you automatically know this is not going to be a good fit anyway. Because who wants to show up to that every day at work. So it is a very, like exchange a partnership, as you said, of people and personalities, and what it means to be heard and be able to do therefore good work and progress and be connected and feel both ends are being, like, are benefiting from that social contract, but in a work relationship.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:25
So I have two more questions. Let's be honest, I really have like 72 more questions, but we only have time for maybe two more so. So...

Jenn Lim 28:36
If you want to call me at midnight, Scott, we can talk then.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:39
Fair enough. Careful what you wish for. You might get that midnight call. The hardest of the hitting questions first. How often these days do you do spontaneous dance parties? Like I've been seeing that on various forms of your bio for like 10 years. So how often does that happen nowadays?

Jenn Lim 28:57
Well, right now if you're down to do one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:00
Oh, we can... I wish I would have, like, thought to like queue up some music or something. I'm looking around, the same, we can just do it without music like...

Jenn Lim 29:07
Yep, we can. Silent dance party.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:10
Silent dance party.

Jenn Lim 29:12
I tried to get, well, I don't try because it's spontaneous. But it happens. Once a day, ideally more.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:20
Ideally more. That's fantastic. So here's my other actual question, too, well, you know, I'll preface this a little bit too. We have many people in various leadership roles in all kinds of organizations listening, and our audience. And also, many of these same people are thinking about their career and their life for themselves. So I would love to ask, you know, what advice would you give them on two different fronts? Thinking about someone who is potentially going to make a career change and wanting to find the type of situation where they can be much more of themselves at work and then simultaneously, on the other side of that, too, where they are potentially having an impact on an organization to allow that and enable that and make that a part of reality.

Jenn Lim 30:08
Yeah, I love that question. Because I think most of the world is going through right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:14
It has various stages of that.

Jenn Lim 30:15
Yeah. So it's like, kind of, one on his way out, and people aren't showing up to work saying, like, "No, I don't think I need that anymore." So it's really interesting, because the conundrum is you would have thought that everyone's like, chomping at the bit to get a job again, but people are like, "Wait, I don't think so. Like, that doesn't fit my needs of raising my child, or like, the work hours are not good." You know, there's an interesting play going on between who, like, where the scale is between corporate and basically being human being and wanting to work. So I think two things come to mind. One of them is, as you're thinking about these career shifts, not to sound like a broken record, purpose or values, just do those exercises really quick and, like, root yourself in that. It's actually really eye opening. Most people think they know, though, but when they do the exercise, they're like, "Oh, wait, I didn't prioritize that, right?" And then the next thing is, as you're entertaining these different kinds of scenarios, there's two questions I would ask in these scenarios, like, "What's in it for me? What's in it for all?" And when you're able to answer both of those questions, then you have a very clear answer to, wait, because if your purpose values is grounded, then you understand "Okay, this is what's in it for me. And then by answering what's in it for all, then that answers more of that purpose", you know, that 'we thing' instead of the 'me thing' of, what does it serve other people? What does it serve customers? What does it serve society? All that stuff. So when you have those two questions in mind as you go through these changes, and it lights you up, because "Oh, wow, it actually serves my purpose and serves like I want to do something great for society and community. But it also serves me too, because I know I need XY and Z things because that's what I believe in." So that's sort of a simple, like, kind of, mental model to think through and doing this shifts. The other thing I would remind, and it's also a big part of like, why I wrote the book. I use this metaphor about greenhouses. And we, you know, it's kind of like when you're in plane, I don't know, when's the last time you were in plane, but you know, and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:12
I just got back from a month-long trip. So we took a bunch of different planes. So...

Jenn Lim 32:15
Oh, awesome. So you remember that routine of COVID. So you know, the oxygen masks that fall like that whole thing. We're so used to hearing that, like, put yours on first before putting on any walls, but we don't really practice that in life. So the greenhouse metaphor is basically, moreso, wanting to help, you know, we've tried to grow and nurture other greenhouses, but sometimes we forget to tender. So I think that's a big thing about considering these shifts is to have those two things in coexistence, making sure that you tend your own greenhouse, knowing that you want to grow and nurture others as well. And it could be anyone like me, your friends, your family, your kids, you know, all of the above global society, whatever it is, change the world, all these things fit in this society in the realm of the other greenhouse, just make sure you're tending your own as you're doing that for others.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:04
I very, very much appreciate that. And the book that you so kindly wrote in preparation for this interview is "Beyond Happiness". And I really enjoyed it immensely. And I want to hear something that struck me, I actually copied and pasted and wrote it down. And I thought it was really, really great. You had written someplace in there, I can't remember what chapter it was in. But "when life gives us lemons, companies in survival mode, just pass out the lemons until they run out. And if they're thinking slightly longer term, they'll actually build a lemonade stand, but if they're adapting and thriving, they'll use the seeds to plant more lemon trees, so everyone can have a stand of their own." And I just thought that was so useful as, not just a way to think about part of what you're talking about in the book, but just as a mantra for how this whole set of topics that we've been discussing works. So I really appreciate that. And I will probably quote that in the future someplace else, 'cause I love it. Thank you for the conversation. I really appreciate it. I, selfishly, you have been on a mental list of mine of people who, you know, 10 years ago, I'm like, "I'm would love to get to know her. She seems fantastic." And I will say that you are just as delightful to talked to as I had hoped, and maybe even more so 10 years ago. So I appreciate it.

Jenn Lim 34:20
Thank you. Maybe it takes that 10 year incubation for it to happen, but...

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:24
You know, that could be. But I'll take it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:29
Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that they wanted to take action and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest, just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com, just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us, we'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:41
One of the biggest things that we hear again, and again, and again, as we have conversations with people all over the world, not just here in the US, but every place across the globe is the issue of time. Time, because it takes a large amount of time to do just a normal career pivot, normal career change, let alone for the types of career changes that we've discussed on this podcast again, and again, and again, where you're really maximizing for what you want out of life, what you want out of your career, and want to be able to, you know, grow and show up in the ways that you want to, that's a different type of career change. And as it turns out, that also has a tendency to take more time. And the reason this becomes a question is because, where are you going to get all this time? Where is that going to come from? And that is... that's real, it's a real challenge. So we thought, well, hey, this is something we are helping people reconcile with every single day. So why not do a podcast episode about it? We do this for ourselves, when I say ourselves, I'm talking about our entire team. And we also do this for our clients across the globe. So I have with me today, our Director of Client Success, Phillip Migyanko. You've heard him on the podcast many times before, but he's back today to discuss, how do you not save time, although we're gonna talk about that too. But how do you even create time in some ways for yourself to be able to divert towards career change, or anything else that might be even more important in your life too. All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week. Adios. I'm out.

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Negotiation: A Tool For Your Successful Career Change

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on this episode

The difference between an average career change and a successful career change often lies in the negotiation.

David Sally is an author and award-winning teacher of negotiations with years of business experience. He shares what really makes someone a great negotiator – and it’s not what you think it is.

What you’ll learn

  • David’s journey from being a political science major to teaching negotiations at Cornell University
  • The biggest contributions to becoming a great negotiator
  • The struggles woman have with negotiating (and how to work with/overcome them)

Success Stories

Thank you for guiding me through the negotiation process of asking for a raise. Even in this economy you convinced me to follow through. I also appreciate your thoughts on what I should include in my portfolio; it made the difference in the value added that I was able to present to my supervisor.

Ken Russell, Career Placement Coordinator, United States/Canada

It turned out to be the best fit possible they had all the tools and all the resources. It helped me to approach the job search in a completely different way. It allowed me to put myself out there in a vulnerable way (even in the interviews) and it allowed me to get exactly what I wanted.

One of the most key things we talked about was feeling instead of thinking, I would think all the time, about this and that, I would just take time to feel. That is the key for really understanding where you are supposed to be and what you love.

Kelly , Leadership Recruiter, United States/Canada

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David Sally 00:00

But I'm going to keep it in my interior and not necessarily in my exterior. And the very best negotiators are able to do that. Be people who can preserve relationships, their counterparts will come to them again and again to deal with even though they know, the interaction will be great. But ultimately, there's going to be a strong demands coming at them. They know that the tough fair negotiator will tell them 'no', might tell them no in a really nice way., but it will be clear what the limits are.

Introduction 00:34

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:58

Negotiation is one of my very favorite things. I know that makes me weird. I'm totally okay with that. However, what I found is the difference between an average career change and a very, very successful career change often lies in the negotiation.

David Sally 01:15

Part of that is just the way our minds are wired for important decisions and negotiation. You know, negotiating a job offers is somehow no different than retirement savings and that level but it's also people don't know what to do to prepare.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31

That's David Sally. He's an award winning teacher of negotiations with many years of business experience, but he's also an author of a really wonderful book on negotiation called "One Step Ahead". He shares what makes someone a really great negotiator. And guess what? It's probably not what you think.

David Sally 01:51

It probably begins with my first job out of college, I was a political science major, undergraduate, and like a lot of young people coming out, especially back in the day, so we're talking fully admit my age, we're talking the early 1980s[a]. I was headed to law school without any clue of what it meant to be a lawyer. It's just a lot of political science majors that I would go to, you know, I'd like to college, I'd like studying, I'd like the classroom, I'll just go off to law school. And I realized, I came to this somehow, not so blinding insight that when you're headed off on a whole path without really having experienced much of the world. I grew up in Chicago as the oldest of three sons of two academics. So we were... I was, you know, I grew up in a family where the... we had a blackboard in the dining room, that's how nerdy of a family I grew up. And I realized, you know, I don't know anything about the world, why am I headed off to law school? So I went and decided, well, no, I'm going to, I will still follow through, but I'll defer any kind of acceptance. And I'm going to go out and work in the world. And I was lucky enough to get a job at Bain & Company, the corporate strategy business, and their headquarters in Boston. They were still a small to medium sized firm at the time. And I had a blast for three years there[b]. And I realized, I really loved doing strategy, and that kind of work and working with a variety of interesting businesses and very intense level of work. But I knew that, my wife and I, and we were a serious couple at the time that we were going to have kids, I knew we wanted to have kids, we wanted to, and I knew I didn't want to travel two and three days every week while having kids. So I thought I could keep doing this for a while because we were still a year away from getting married. And we were certainly going to be a few years away from having our first kid. And I said, you know, "If I know I'm going to leave, at some point in the next three to five years[c], why not get started now?" Because I had made the decision that I was going to re-enter the "family business", which was academia. So I left Bain & Company to go get my PhD at University of Chicago, in economics, not in political science. I thought that economics was a good field for me to combine my basic what now was three years[d] of business experience with some of the issues that I thought were important to me from my undergraduate studies. And while the University of Chicago I got interested in what was then we're talking now, the mid 1980s[e], the new subfield of behavioral economics started by Danny Kahneman, who's become famous for his thinking fast and thinking slow and also famous because he won the Nobel Prize for it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:43

There's that.

David Sally 04:44

Yeah, there's that. Yeah. And I realized I was never really fully an economist. I'm really more of a broader social scientist, and I'm interested in ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries. And so that's what I wanted to do work somewhere in the space that connected economic ideas of people maximizing their utility and trying to pursue their self interest with the social psychology ideas that people don't always think clearly about what their options are. And this is a topic obviously, that you spend a lot of time on. When people think about their career choices and things like that, it turns out, well, economists assumed automatically that the more important that decision, the more rational people will be. Right? It was orthodox economists would say, okay, we agree that people don't buy a gallon of milk purely rationally every time. But when it comes to big dollar things, or things that impact their life, you know, their well being, well, they will think it through, they'll make option charts, they will draw tree diagrams, figure out everything, and they will really hone in on maximizing and turns out now, that's actually, they're probably... consumers are probably better at picking out the best value for a gallon of milk than they are about thinking about big issues like career choices, or where to put, where to invest their retirement savings and things like that. So those were the kinds of issues that got me interested.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:15

Yeah. To support that, I saw a funny statistic that was pulled from a broader study, but it paired up the amount of time on average Americans spend shopping for a TV or a computer, versus the amount of time spent on deciding a career change, or also had some investing into retirement, any number of other things, I had all of these things that were absurd. The TV one over every time or the computer went over every time to a ridiculous level. So I absolutely love the crossing of interdisciplinary ideas, concepts, experiences. So I think that's one of the reasons I appreciated the book so much, and how you put together one step ahead. However, before we go down that road, I really wanted to ask you, you mentioned when you were considering going to law school, you somehow had the foresight to say, "Hey, I need to get some real world experience." And then later on too, as you were deciding, hey, do I stay for another couple of years anticipating that years in the future, potentially years in the future, you were going to have children be married those types of things, and it would no longer line up. And then you said, "Hey, why not do this now versus later?" So I'm super curious about that. Because that's not the normal path. And I love it. Not just because it's not the normal path. But I'm super curious, what led you to those? What was behind that? Because it wasn't a normal set of decisions.

David Sally 07:50

Yeah, that's a good question. And there, and like you said, there are two different decisions. We need to unpack them both. And then I have to, after we do that, I need to go to a third confession, which I think is also very relevant for you and this podcasts about the way that life works. I think the law school thing was easy, because it was so, as much as I say, I'm not an economist, I just think I'm a really enlightened economist. I mean, this is part of why I like it. I understand economists, the whole point of behavioral economics was economists don't seem to understand humans very well. You know, they got good models of markets and certain markets, but not all markets. But, wow, they really don't seem to understand how human beings really tick. And I think one of the qualities, one of the things that I aand we could source this back to having read ridiculous amounts of novels when I was a kid or just having an, I think I've always been a very empathetic person. I understand how other people are thinking, I think it was part of the reason I was really good consultantt. I could go down to I was the most baby faced 22 year old working at Bain & Company looked like I was 14 and one of our clients was down in the oil field in Louisiana. And I was solely responsible for, he was the general manager of oilfield services company, is a grizzled, caging guy who must have been like, he looked like 60 years older than me, but he wasn't 40 years older than me, and he had been in the business for a year. And here I am looking like I'm 12. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm supposed to advise him and help him, well, you know, if you kind of understand how people tick If you value their words, if you can get inside their heads a little bit and are very adaptable. And that's, of course, a big theme of one step ahead. It's how do you develop those capabilities? So I think I've always had that ability to identify with other people. And that sort of has been a quality. So I guess, in some sense, I do that with my own brain when I think through, okay, what are really the options that I had at the time when I said okay, I can defer law school or I did really well, I did well on my grades I did well on the LSATs, that option sitting there anytime I want to pull that, but what's not going to be sitting there is the chance to do an internship or be, you know, come out of college, in the regular college recruiting cycle and being able to, at that time especially go through that. So I thought, oh, well, that's a pretty easy decision, because I'm kind of doing I'm recognizing my own decision making. And again, this is a big theme that I want all the listeners to think about that not only in negotiations, but in career decision making you want them, the most advanced people, the smartest people are able to both be making the decision and monitoring what they're actually using to make the decision at the same time. So let's bring it to the world of negotiations. I'm actually bargaining, I'm making an offer, but I'm seeing and I'm monitoring myself my own speech, but I'm also monitoring how my counterpart is thinking about things. So I think I'm good at that. And I realized, you know, you're kind of doing this as a default. Why are you doing this? You can defer. So that's the law school decision, the Bain decision to leave early was honestly, there were some, I was really good at it. There were some frustrations for me at the firm, the firm I was at, and I think this is very again, might be relevant to some of the folks that are listening to the podcast, Bain had changed from a small firm to a medium large firm, and the character of the corporate culture had changed was you could see that it had changed, and it was going to continue to change. So when I first joined, we were in the Fanueil Hall Warehouse in Boston, that was the main headquarters. And I could walk, you could walk down one hallway. And you could walk by all four founders offices, I could see everybody in the firm and a five minute walk down a long warehouse hallway and everybody's office, it's all open plan. And so really small firm and the nature of the firm, it became so successful, it grew 35% every year[f] that I was there that by the final year, when I was making this decision to leave, the people that were attracted to Bain had moved from being very risk taking entrepreneurial types, because it was a startup kind of firm to blue chip kind of candidates who were different people and different people to work with than originally. So I kind of saw that I was less happy there than I was at the beginning and I could kind of forecast where it was going. And you know, it just worked out in the timing of my personal life that my wife and I were getting married, she was going off to medical school thought, well, if I'm going to pull the parachute, I'll pull it now and go to graduate school. Yeah, go get my degree in economics. Now, here's the console. That's the two decisions that I think I impact. Here's the confession, I thought what I wanted to do was to be, and some of the listeners may know this name, Michael Porter, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, as a Harvard Business School professor of strategy, and he was the number one writer in corporate strategy at the time, and his books are still, you know, invaluable books. And he had a sweet ass life. He wrote best selling books, he consulted for Fortune 500 companies at probably ridiculously hourly rates, thought a little bit. I thought, you know, what I want to do is be a poor man's Michael Porter, you know, I want to do some strategy research, I'll write some journal articles, I get my PhD and I will have a little consulting business on the side. And let's be realistic, I won't be Michael Porter, but there's room in the market for you know, some other people below his umbrella or doing something, you know, a smaller niche play. And then for reasons, mainly because I had grown up in Chicago, I thought, well, I applied to a number of different programs. But I thought I got into University of Chicago, the Business School PhD program, I thought, well, go back to Chicago. I love Chicago, but it is maybe the single worst place to go, if you want to become Michael Porter, like a Harvard Business School Professor like, with consulting business. University of Chicago is way too serious about economics and the kind of pure academic pursuit. It's the worst possible, I should have gone to Harvard Business School, but I went to Chicago. And then as we talked about earlier, not only did I go to Chicago, which wasn't the right place to go, but then I ended up getting hooked on behavioral economics, which is not gonna lead to doing Michael Porter life. It's gonna be...

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:40

That's two strikes Michael Porter life.

David Sally 14:44

I know. I don't, either, yeah, but it just... I got hooked on behavioral economics. I said no, these are the, you know, as you described, you know, this is the intersection that I want to kind of play around within for a few years[g]. So the best laid plans I guess, which is some story, I'm sure you've heard many, many times, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:02

Best laid plans. Yes about that. I feel like we could have an eight hour discussion just on that alone. However, I am really curious about, what took place between then and now? Somehow, somewhere, those best laid plans went awry. And then you began to have an interest as a relates to the, well, I'm going to call it the art and science of negotiation. How did that come about?

David Sally 15:31

That came about because one thing that behavioral economists can teach really well, so I got my PhD, and I got my first teaching job, research job at Cornell University at the business school. And one thing that business schools teach and teach very well is negotiations. And so I was offered the chance my first year[h] to begin teaching negotiations. And I thought, as well as I taught a core class in general management. And I think that the thinking in negotiations was, I have a bunch of real world business experience. And I have behavioral economics, which is a nice disciplinary to the art and science of it is the science part of negotiation. So I started teaching negotiations, and it's honestly, it may be the best, let's keep this confidential between us, it may be the single best teaching gig in a business school, because there's not a single student who walks into the class thinking that they don't want to be there, they know they're kind of negotiate for the rest of their career, they know that it's a class that they are really eager to take. It's also a super fun class, because every week, the way that I teach it, and the way that most people teach it, you are in a simulated negotiation. And you might be an owner of a house, you might be an HR manager interviewing different candidates, negotiating a job offer, all kinds of situations that we put the students in, ranging from very straightforward, simple, one off purchase of an item to very complex diplomatic kind of situations. So the class always combines this experiential element of actually having done in negotiation, we do that in the first part. And then we come back and show everybody that results, some people did really well, some people do poorly. And we spend the next amount of class time trying to unpack why that is. So I had to make myself smart about the negotiation literature in terms of the academic side of things in order to teach the class. And as I did that, and so we're talking about 1995 or so when I started teaching it, I began to get my own ideas about some things that I thought were done correctly in the literature and some enhancements that could be there. And just got really fluent in the research, much of which is done in psychology labs, or business school laboratories, I'm just kind of judgment and decision making. But there's a whole stream of negotiation researchers and I got to know that literature really well and saw some things that some ideas that I thought could add to it. And I began to bring those into the classroom. And in fact, this book, "One Step Ahead", I had started. So I talked for about a decade at Cornell, and then the last number of years at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. I began about 10 years, actually 12 years ago[i]], in the wrap up class to begin to do what is in the book, some of the data and finding some of the ideas about how to be tough and fair, how to be sophisticated, those began to filter into my kind of wrap up class for the quarter. And it became a book.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:50

One of the things that you just mentioned, you mentioned the ideas about how to be tough, or how to be fair. And I think that the toughness part is something that is different, or stood out to me compared to much of what the literature and also research is out there. And you dug deeper into that than what I've seen in other places. And it initially stood out to me because one of the things that I heard you say and I think you've also written is something to the effect of good people need to be able to negotiate with toughness, otherwise bad people always win. And that, to be honest, that statement actually hit me badly. First, because I'm like, hold on, what does he mean by toughness? And what about bad people versus good people? Like those are the things that into my brain, but as I kept going in your book, you start to really define what you mean when you say toughness. And I'm wondering if you could shed a little bit of light on that now for all of our listeners, first of all, because I found this very useful is to begin to unpack what does toughness actually mean and what role does it play as it relates to, not just negotiations but interactions as well leading up to negotiate. So what do you mean when you say toughness, first of all?

David Sally 20:02

Yeah. Well, I think you put your finger on a really important point, which is, I think, depending on the culture we come from, and for those of us coming from the US, we hear the word toughness, and we think a red face angry muscle man, that's toughness, right? That's we have this very male centric exterior version of what we think that characteristic is. And it may go back to western movies, and John Wayne, and you know, the PhD dissertations in English literature, I'm sure have been written on this. But for me, the single finding that comes out, so part of what I share with readers is that version of toughness makes it seem like, okay, I understand how that could be helpful. I've seen people operate like that in the business world or in other parts of my life. And sometimes that seems to go pretty well form, I profile in the book, Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate investor in Chicago, who fancies himself the grave dancer, he nicknamed himself and he is this version of toughness is very exterior and very apparent. And I think when people feel the see that version of toughness, you said, "Well, that's going to crowd out every positive quality that I want, as a person, as a business person, as just a human being, it's going to be... I can't do that." So in my classroom, I take... I actually, let me step back for just a sec, I'm going to come to the toughness, the data. So I actually part of how I make this very real for the students is their grades dependent on how good of a contract they sign. So they get evaluated every week on what kind of deal they made. And we soften an oval a little bit by dropping, you know, if they have a really disastrous one, the two lowest outcomes are dropped. And I won't go through all the details, but I basically get a performance score over the entire quarter. Or if I'm teaching corporate executives over a week long executive program. So I have a performance measure that says, "Okay, this person did 10, or 12, different deals, and pretty consistently, they came above average." And so when you total that up, that becomes a really high performing negotiator. And I see on the other end, obviously, some low performing people. After every negotiation, and this is a tool that's used by other business school professors, counterparts rate each other on personal qualities. Were you a good communicator? Were you fair? Were you a rational? Were you emotional? Were you tough? And so at the end of the quarter, and in the book, "One Step Ahead", I can say, okay, what's your mental model of what it means to be a really great negotiator? How important is it to be prepared, to be tough, to be creative? And people have different mental models, it tends to be in the main way that people are correct with their mental models is they think preparation is important, creativity is important and good communication is important. All true. They also have some doubts about toughness, some people think it's really great. Other people think, "Oh, no, that's going to really hurt you." Most business school executives, and many, many executives also think it's really important to be fair, to be seen as fair, it's good for relationships, it's good like that. And the data reveals that the single most important quality is to be tough, is to be seen and be perceived as tough. And you say, "Okay, wow, this is a dismal view of life." Again, if we're thinking about toughness as this kind of macho, horrible person to deal with. But the kicker comes, especially for the students who have been together for an entire quarter, 10 weeks[j] when I say, "Oh, well, let me show you five of your peers in the classroom who manage not only to be seen as the most tough people in the class, but also the most fair, and indeed, every year, there are a handful of people who are seen as very fair and very tough. Well, how can that be? Well, it can only be if we're wrong about the surface understanding of what toughness really is, it's not creating interpersonal conflict, there are ways to signal toughness to the other side where it's much more of an interior quality where you can be fluid and accommodating and easy to deal with on the outside. But toughness is really an interior quality and this is now we're getting back to sort of the way I think about toughness, I think about it as and these are great qualities when you're thinking about changing career or pursuing a career. It's about perseverance. It's about having goals. It's about being dedicated. It's being willing to say no when you have to say no, that you will draw and an image in the book is to think of the relationship of toughness and fairness are the sophisticated negotiator, as an ancient Chinese coin, which we've all seen at one time, or another, which is a round coin, only punched out of the middle was a square. And that was because the Chinese used to carry it around on a string their coins. So this idea is toughness is the square and the insight, it's sharp, it's no, it's the willingness to say, no, it's perseverance, its integrity. But the outside is round, it's fluid, you're accommodating, you say, "Yes, I can, I will talk with you with my counterpart about anything you want to talk about. But ultimately, in my interior, I have goals, I have objectives, and I have aggression in there. But I'm going to keep it in my interior and not necessarily in my exterior." And that's what I think these, the very best negotiators are able to do that be people who can preserve relationships, their counterparts will come to them again and again to deal with even though they know the interaction will be great. But ultimately, there's going to be a strong demands coming at them. They know that the tough fair negotiator will tell them no, might tell them no in a really nice way. But it will be clear what the limits are. That is the version of toughness as being much more about interior qualities than external performance kind of getting red in the face, or anger or macho stuff.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:26

That is, I believe, and I found it to be a much more useful, helpful, functionally, well useful and helpful functionally as a way to not just negotiate, but also I would say influence as well. And what I'm curious about is how we can take those ideas, the idea of toughness, the idea of fairness, the idea of that's not a dichotomy, necessarily, that is actually something that can coexist when you have different definitions or boxes drawn around what those actually are. So how can we take those ideas? And how can we use them? We take like a real situation that we have somebody going through right now where they are in the, I would say beginning stages, what I would call the beginning stages of a job offer negotiation and for the sake of protecting the innocent and not so innocent, let's go ahead and just call this person "Ruth". Ruth sounds like a great name. But anyhow, Ruth right now is at the place where she is anticipating a job offer, that's probably likely to happen in the next two weeks[k] here. And right then and there is a great point because that's where we can begin to use some of these concepts functionally. So take me through this idea as Ruth goes through her different stages of bargaining and negotiating as a relates to a job offer, how might she bring in some of these ideas for toughness, fairness, and everything else we've talked about up till now?

David Sally 28:03

It's a great question. And it's one that I'm... when I'm teaching both MBAs and executive. One of the main reasons people take a negotiation classes is to be able to ask the professor this question, you know, I'm going through a job offer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:16

Not here for the class, but I do anticipate... sometime in this quarter.

David Sally 28:21

I want to bump up my salary. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:23

Can I schedule my office time now?

David Sally 28:25

Yeah, exactly. Definitely. No, the first class, never by the office hours, at the end of first class, we're at an up "Hey, do you mind if I come by to your office and talk to you about it?" And it's totally, totally fair. So I'm going to give let's deal with Ruth situation, I'm going to give some of my generic advice and see if we can work it into the kind of round on the outside and square on the inside.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:45

Perfect.

David Sally 28:46

So round on the outside for me, one of the main things, I heard a couple points. One is the job offer negotiation is you are already a pseudo employee or pseudo independent contractor with the organization you're talking about with, you're already being evaluated. And if you think you're not, you're sadly mistaken. So therefore, the accommodating the roundness part is to be hyper aware of that fact. And then they use vocabulary and ideas that have currency within the organization that you're talking with. So let me give you two examples that I can think of in my own past where I've counseled students. So I might have students who are eager to do what I did back in the day with a strategy consulting firm, that kind of firm is analytical data driven. So therefore, if I'm going to negotiate with them, I want to negotiate on facts, evidence, numbers, tables, spreadsheets, I want to show them that I can gather the relevant data that I can parse it through that I can say, "Hey, here's what my peers have, you know, here's the average starting salary for people who are like me, here's my data, I'll share it with you completely. Here's how I've crunched it and made it, I'm not kind of throw a US spreadsheet with, I'm going to show you that I'm already a consultant that I'm going to, I might put it in a chart, I'm going to think about the language and the ways whatever clues I have in terms of how they would communicate it." A marketing, let's say, it's more of a marketing or sales job, similar kind of thing. I want to be negotiating with the language and the style and the culture that's relevant for them and making my... so then I'm probably more in whatever it means to pitch in that particular company, in that particular work, then I'm pitching myself, okay, what does it mean to pitch yourself, especially pitch yourself to a particular organization, there are clues that you can gather from your the interactions that you've had from some research. So that's the way I would think about the roundness of kind of adapting the fluidity to work with the counterpart that you're dealing with in a way that, as you said, totally correctly, this is negotiation is influence, I'm not trying to change the way they're or hopefully confirmed the way they're thinking about me how awesome I am, right? This squareness comes to, there are basic economic realities. If poor Ruth is negotiating a job right now, with unemployment at the level set it is, it just on a macro economic level, leverage is going to be limited. So you've got to be... that is the square part, that is kind of seeing life clearly north south. But so the Chinese when they had this image, the Emperor set in a square in the middle and could see clearly north, south, east, west. That's part of what you do in the square, I have my dreams and my ideals. But I'm looking clearly north, south, east, west. And if I'm negotiating a job right now, with unemployment at 15%, plus, and if I don't have another offer in hand, then I want to be extra careful, I want to see clearly how much leverage I really have in a situation. In other situations I want to not be afraid of when they do have leverage. And I see north south east west that I am the number one candidate or they've already committed to me, then I want to make sure that I leverage that. And that's toughness. That's like seeing things clearly. And being willing to have there's a courage to the interior part of toughness, that I think people who were exterior tough are ultimately cowards, and I can think of one in Washington, DC. And I can think of a number of other people whose external toughness is ultimately cowardice because they don't have the interior courage to be willing to risk. So I think there's a bit of courage even when you don't have leverage, there are ways to ask for more, a higher salary, in a way and this is where the toughness combines with the roundness to do it in a way that communicates what is fair or whatever levers, you have to say, No, you need to pay me more money than you are currently offering. But do it in a way that allows as tough as possible while still working with the counterpart.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:11

I think that's so wonderful. And I appreciate you pointing out how you must be sensitive and aware of what are the situations that you're in, and you use the example of, hey, in a consulting business versus I'm in a sales type role versus any other situation, everyone is going to be slightly different. And there's going to be different, I'm just going to call them levers and buttons for lack of a better phrase that they are more likely to respond to based on, you know, what they're used to. That said, how can we do some of that? You know, I heard you say just a moment ago, there's ways to do this. What would be some examples when we can either keep going within those couple environments?

David Sally 33:53

Yeah, no, that's great. That's great, because especially you did a great job because we're helping Ruth. So I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that to her counterpart, Ruth is seen as a woman. Okay. We know some specific problems that women encounter in negotiations for being tough. And there's a whole chapter in the book in which I describe some of the research on gender and negotiations and the advantages and the disadvantages of being a woman while negotiating. And a slight aside, the central character is one of my favorite in the book, a woman, a white Mississippi housewife in 1949, who Lillian MacMurray, who started trumpet Records, which became for a few years one of the main record labels for gospel music, r&b and country music. She was a real pioneer and it's super fascinating person. So what can Ruth do, Ruth faces a problem that many women do which is no surprise for the listeners, it is that much harder to be tough to be seen as tough as a woman. It's got all kinds of stereotype issues and feedback issues. You're not just tough, you're witch, right. Two specific tactics in the book that seemed to work and let me admit it the outset, it stinks that life is like this right now. But let's deal with the reality of this, the fact that there is gender bias, and there is a stereotype. So how do you get around it? There's a law professor at Marquette University who has labeled the first tactic, the mother bear Grizzly exception. So women, and this is all based on real world research, women are allowed to be tough if it's not for themselves, but for another, hence the mother bear exception. So part of what you can do is, if I am a need to be tougher in a negotiation, I find a way to say I'm doing this because I've got a family to feed because I have people depending on me, I'm using words and images to signal that I'm doing this because I am a mother bear and not for myself, because both men and women counterparts and it's not just male counterparts, it's also women counterparts will be more judgmental, and will activate stronger stereotypes against a woman who is negotiating for solely for herself than without this kind of mother bear exception. So in the book, and and I share this advice with, again, with Andrew Snyder, who's the professor at Marquette, invent a client. If you don't have a client, and this can be a way to generate internal toughness for the negotiator as well that I am doing this on behalf of my future self, on behalf of my partner, on behalf of my kids, on behalf of my department, when I am a leader in an organization or on behalf of my organization, that there is a way for many women negotiators to generate that toughness. So that's the first thing, the mother bear exception. The second tactic is called relational account. So it goes back to the same thing that in our society, women aren't allowed to be seen as tough. So that relational account says a woman can be an effective, tough negotiator if they give an account that their boss or mentor has told them that this is the right tactic, this is what they should be doing. So that is the relational account, they're going to weave a story about how somebody else told them that this was the right thing to do. So I can tell all the listeners out there by one step ahead and say that "David Sally totally that this is how it's supposed to negotiate." This is and honestly joking aside, I tell my students this too, that you're in my class, you've learned this, my professor told me, I have to ask for more. Because if I don't, I'm engaging in malpractice, on my own behalf. So use relations. So women can use relational accounts, whether it's advice that they say they got from a mentor from a trusted source to say this, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to come back and ask for a bump and pay of 25%. But my mentor slash professors slash trusted advisor, whatever it is said that I have to do it. This is what I have to, he advise me that I have to do this. So that's kind of the nitty gritty of how the extra challenges that Ruth is going to have in this world just because of the female stereotype.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:39

On a totally, well related note, but slightly different direction. So I think, you know what you said earlier, just acknowledging the fact that that's screwed up in, I think were the words that you were used earlier, that that is what it is right now. And well, I want to be cognizant of both sides in that, that is what it is right now. I'm also curious what your opinion, just, you know, I have a 12 year old daughter, I would love to see some of those stereotypes change over time. I'm just curious. what your opinion is of, what do you think it'll take to change that? I don't really related to as much as the to the topic exactly. But I'm just curious.

David Sally 39:19

I have my youngest, is a 25 year old young woman who, yeah, look, and I think that I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer what's gonna... I mean I think the answer is representation. The answer is more women in running organizations. The answer is having a woman be president, having a woman more women as CEOs, more... it's just representation, I mean, I think is a fairly enlightened, I've always fancied myself as an enlightened male, and I'm Father daughter, but I realized that I think it's slowly seeping into our male brains that we talk over women in meetings and I'm guilty of that and I'm being and what I'm calling in the classroom and allowing a student to blather on or not, I want to make sure that it's not gender based, you know, I don't want to let the male students blather on because they're guys and making sure that all the kind of pathologies of women not getting credit for the ideas that they generate in meetings. So I'm trying to do my own little part, but honestly, in a macro sense, it's just got to be representation. And I hope, you know, my other small contribution is I honestly believe that the secret of one step ahead as a book is it's actually written for women. And the beautiful thing is this, I think women have a harder time being average negotiators think they have an easier time being great negotiators. I think these qualities that we talked about, about toughness being more interior, and about an adaptive bill, about being more naturally cognizant of the social intricacies and complexities, which is this outer fluidity and the ability to operate in the world, those tend to be more female traits in our society, honestly, than male traits, I think men to be great negotiators have more to overcome than most women do. I think that women are starting with a big advantage in terms of the fact that they have most of their character, the way that they would think of themselves as tough tend to be interior qualities to begin with, whether it's through self image, or just the messages that they're getting from the larger society. So you know, one of the most interesting experiments in negotiations on gender is this, the participants were divided into two groups, one group was told that there's been research and this was made up, there was been research done that said, male quality, that they weren't labeled male qualities, but they were being assertive. Being firm, maybe even being a little angry, is good for negotiating, the other group was told. And in that setting, women underperformed as negotiators, the second setting was the both men and women participants were told, the best quality, research has shown that the best qualities of a negotiator our ability to listen, and ability to adapt to what the counterparts interests are, all things ever generally label female kinds of qualities in that setting, women outperformed men. And the hidden message of one step ahead is that research, even though it was kind of a little made up is actually right. Female qualities are in fact that they these female qualities of interior toughness, perseverance, willingness to say no, integrity, etc, etc. That is what it takes to be a sophisticated advanced negotiator.

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:50

I appreciate you sharing. And I have one parting question just for all of our listeners, as they are going into, not just job offer negotiations, but as they are wanting to become better at negotiation bargaining influencing, what advice would you give them?

David Sally 43:11

First I have to fix gender and society.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:14

And I know you've got. There's no small task here.

David Sally 43:17

Yeah, I think that probably there's two big flaws that I think people under prepare for the negotiations, you should spend more time that we talked about early on about the amount of time that people spend shopping for a TV versus something. Same thing with negotiations, people don't spend enough time, spend more time and in the book, part of the reason I think part of that is is just the way our minds are wired for important decisions and negotiation, you know, negotiating a job offers is somehow no different than retirement savings and that level, but it's also people don't know what to do to prepare. And there's a whole chapter in the book that lays gives people a checklist form. And it's the form that I train my students to use and think about this element. You know, what are your interests? What are your goals? What are you do this, do that? And the fascinating thing is, it has two blank columns. So it's got issues like what are the issues in the negotiation? What are your interests? What are your goals, and then it has to blank columns. And early on, students will say, "Well, why are there two blank columns? Because I can fill it out for myself. But what should I put in that other column?" I said, "Well, how many people are in this negotiation? You know, are there... is it just you? Are you negotiating engine? No." There's a counterpart and many people, not all people, many people don't realize that they avoid thinking through stepping into the other side shoes and thinking through what are they trying to achieve, where are they coming from? So I'd say that's the other big advice is take to spend more time prepping yourself, but part of that preparation is force yourself, if you don't naturally think this way, and some economists do, and some negotiators do automatically and these are, you know, great salesmen do all the time. Right? Great salespeople are thinking through the customers mindset all the time. But not all of us are like that. In fact, I think in the book, who would something like 60% of us are not naturally that way. So force yourself to wait, okay, what do I know about the person I'm negotiating with? What are their interests? Where are they coming from? What offers are they likely to? What kind of language are they likely to use and force yourself to go through that, and you'll be amazed both that you can pull clues and figure some things out. And you'll feel that the whole point of preparation is just like an actor, you're ready to improvise, you know what you're doing, you've thought it through. And when you hear a line from the other side, you are able to react in real time to it. And that's part of being super effective.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:00

I love it. And I appreciate you taking the time and making the time there's been a super fun conversation. So I appreciate that as well. Where can people who want to learn more about you or get the book, where can they go to be able to do those things?

David Sally 46:14

You can get "One Step Ahead" on amazon.com, at your local bookshop, now that they're reopening and about me, I'm on Twitter a little bit, it's gonna have a little harder time finding out about me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:29

Hey, many of the stories that you've heard on the podcast are from listeners that have decided that they wanted to take action, and taking the first step of having a conversation with our team to try and figure out how we can help. And if you want to implement what you have heard, and you want to completely change your life and your career, then let's figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest. Just open your phone right now and open your email app. And I'm going to give you my personal email address: scott@happentoyourcareer.com just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And then when you do that, I'll introduce you to the right person on our team. And you can have a conversation with us. We'll try and understand your goals and what you want to accomplish in your career no matter where you're at. And we can figure out the very best way that we can help you and your situation. So open up right now and send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line. scott@happentoyourcareer.com

Scott Anthony Barlow 47:38

Okay, here's a story we hear all the time, you did the work, identified what you wanted, found a role with an organization that you want to join, you got through all the interviews, you met everybody, organization was a fit, you nailed it, you got an offer. Except that the offers not quite everything that you're hoping for. Maybe the salaries not quite meeting your expectations. Or maybe it's half the amount of vacation time that you've grown accustomed to. Maybe it doesn't have all the leadership or mentorship capacities that you're interested in, maybe the role itself needs to be modified.

48:12

I mean, I know that's a crazy signing bonus. But I'm also like, this is a C suite role and the salary at 130 is just not, see it, like if we do any type of comp analysis, 130 is not what a person of my experience for 15 years[l] to master's degrees, the extent of what the role it's just under. But I also know we're talking about a startup. So I just don't know how flexible I should be. And again, I don't want to leave any money on the table..

Scott Anthony Barlow 48:38

Look, when you get to this situation, I understand the stakes are high. You want to negotiate your offer, you also don't want to blow it. So how do you tell this organization? The same organization that you just spent so much time and effort going through the interview process, meeting all the people, determining that it actually is a fit, they finally made this offer, it's your ideal role but, guess what? You need more. And how do you not offend them, by the way? How do you avoid sounding greedy or like you're going to be difficult to work with? These all sound like problems, it's not a great way to start off. However, there absolutely is not one way but multiple ways. So today on the podcast, we don't normally do this but I'm actually sharing with you a recording of a coaching session with one of our clients where we help her negotiate an offer but get this, she not only ended up accepting the offer, but raised her total comp package from 165k, to not 175k not 185k.. 359k. Right. Okay. Hang tight to hear exactly how we did that. All that and plenty more next week[m] right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically. Even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until, next week. Adios. I'm out!

[a][02:08] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[f][12:06] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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[g][14:56] @joshua@happentoyourcareer.com

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How To Define And Focus On Essentialism For Your Life With Greg McKeown

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on this episode

We live in a golden age of information and productivity. Never in human history have ordinary people had such easy access to more information, or more tools to get work done, instantly, from anywhere, by themselves. Which is great! But, as we all know, can be overwhelming. Our poor human brains can get over-filled, or distracted. Checking email, checking social, checking the news, checking the market. And sometimes, in the midst of all this information overload, we lose track of what’s really important. 

If you’ve been listening to our podcast, you’ve heard me talk a lot about figuring out what you want. What’s really important to you? How do you filter out the noise of all the outside demands — other people, social media, the news — and really drill down to determine what you want for yourself? Getting to that answer of what you want is the key to achieving clarity about your career change goals. Once you have that clarity, you can go out and achieve what you want. 

I’m speaking with Greg McKeown this week. His bestselling book, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” is about exactly how to answer this question of what you want — what is essential to your life? Greg is a blogger with millions of monthly readers and, as I mentioned, a bestselling author. He’s written a lot on his concept of essentialism, which I think is a great framing concept for career change. Because, when we talk about career change, what we’re really talking about is figuring out what is most important to you — what is essential — and how do you go about getting it? He and I had a great conversation about exactly that.

What you’ll learn

  • How Greg learned (painfully) why he needed to focus on the essentials in his life.
  • Greg’s philosophy of Essentialism, discovering your best life by doing less.
  • Why figuring out what is essential to your life is important.
  • How Essentialism can help you identify what you want and drive your career change forward.

Success Stories

I convinced myself for many years, that I was very lucky to have that job, and I would be crazy to leave it. I convinced myself that the team needed me even though I was miserable. And ultimately, it took me getting physically sick to realize I needed to leave! One of the biggest things that I learned out of the signature coaching was on designing my life. And this is another thing that I had really never, it had, I don't know, if it had never occurred to me. I just never believed it was possible until now.

Michael Fagone, Mortgage Loan Officer and Finance Executive, United States/Canada

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The way you guys have it laid out it just, it makes it easier to move through the process, because the steps are laid out such a way that it's clear. It's that extra support to help you move through the process that helps you move through the program.

Kristy Wenz, Chief Communications Officer, United States/Canada

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Thank you both for inspiring me to always ask, "Why NOT me?" and stick to my values for what I want for my life. I couldn't be happier and more excited for this new life!

Lisa Schulter, Special Projects Manager, United States/Canada

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I wanted to thank you because you have helped me land a job that is more fulfilling in every way than a job I thought I could have had before I met you. The work you did and the techniques you taught me literally changed my life.

Eric Murphy, Science Teacher, United States/Canada

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Greg McKeown 00:01

Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin at work or at home? Have you ever found yourself being busy but not necessarily productive? Have you ever found yourself be, where your day is being hijacked by other people's agenda for you, whether that's through email or whether it's on social media, where people are hijacking you with their opinions and you feel distracted and pulled into that or just by the news, the incessant, you know, addictive news cycle that's trying to get you to focus on it over any other thing? If you can say, yes, to any of the above, then what's happening is whether you meant to or not, you're falling into the way of the non essentialist. And what I'm arguing is the way out is the way of the essentialist.

Introduction 00:55

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:19

You've probably already heard that, you need to say 'no' to more things. And we've all heard about drawing boundaries and that if we're too busy, well, guess what? It's just our own fault. All we need to do is say, 'yes' to less things, which sounds easy in theory, and it's nice to write down. And it's great to read about on a blog post. However, it's much harder to do in practice, in reality.

Greg McKeown 01:43

All of a sudden, as COVID hit the, you know, like a quarter of the US population, almost literally overnight, had been asked to believe something like involuntary essentialism. Not unkindly, we were told, go to your room, and don't come out again until you've had a good thing about it. Like, it's a global teenager, we went and have had to think. And I think there's not almost not anybody who hasn't asked whether they said it in exactly these words or not. But the spirit of it is, what's essential now? All the things I could focus on, what should I focus on? All these things I no longer control which things even matter.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:31

That's Greg McKeown. He's a huge advocate for pursuing less. What he refers to as "essentialism". His writing has appeared in places like New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, Huffington Post, Inc. Magazine, lots of other places. And he's among the most popular bloggers in places like the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn influencer scripts, averaging over a million views a month. Oh, also, he's the author of "Essentialism" which I read a while back and thought, hey, I have to get Greg on the podcast. So many months later, he's here to discuss the disciplined pursuit of less and where the idea of essentialism actually began.

Greg McKeown 03:12

One of the key inflection points for me happened when I got an email from a colleague at the time it said, "Look, Friday between 1 and 2pm will be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby because I need you to be at such and such a meeting." And my wife was expecting, otherwise that's an even stranger email to receive. There we are Wednesday, where we are Friday, and our daughter has been born in the middle of the night. And we are, you know, I'm instead of being totally focused on this central moment, I am feeling torn. How can I keep everybody happy? How can I do both? And so to my shame, I go to the meeting. And afterwards I remember I called saying, "look, the client will respect you for the choice you just made." And I'm not sure the look on their faces invokes that sort of confidence, or that I was really in any mental shape to be able to contribute well to that meeting, but regardless, it is clear I made a fool's bargain that I violated something more important, something essential, but something less important. And what I learned from that was this, if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. This gave impetus in hindsight to get on with researching, studying, understanding, interviewing, "why do we do what we do?" And I have found that many people fall into a trap and people listening to this can test it themselves. Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin at work or at home? Have you ever found yourself being busy but not necessarily productive? Have you ever found yourself be, where your day is being hijacked by other people's agenda for you, whether that's through email or whether it's on social media, where people are hijacking you with their opinions and you feel distracted and pulled into that or just by the news, the incessant, you know, addictive news cycle that's trying to get you to focus on it over any other thing? If you can say, yes, to any of the above, then what's happening is whether you meant to or not, you're falling into the way of the non essentialist. And what I'm arguing is the way out is the way of the essentialist.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:26

So let me ask you this. This is something that as I'm hearing you talk, I am wondering because I'm thinking about some of my own experience as well, as I'm hearing you tell your story. And part of the way I found reason to pay attention to the essential more so than anything else was through a set of, what I consider to be extreme experiences much, much like you, I would probably call what happened with, you know, you're at the client meeting, and your wife and new baby are in the hospital. Yeah, I'd say that's more on the extreme side, not necessarily extreme in the form of like, life or death or anything like that, but definitely more on the extreme side. And I myself had several different experiences back to back that began to cause me to pay attention to the essential where, you know, my, I guess mine did actually fall into the life or death, I didn't realize that till now. But my son, I was at work, and my son ended up, after going to the doctor, my wife and had taken him to the doctor earlier in the day, got a prescription, got two prescriptions actually, and gave him the one prescription he started turning blue, and wife called me and she called me again and called me again and I didn't pick up the phone until I realized that it's the three ring signal and, I don't know how it works in your family, but in my family, if my wife calls three times like it's an emergency, so I eventually pick up the phone. I had that same sort of decision to make as you were initially I actually decided to stay at work at first because the situation I was in, there was a ton of resources put into it. It just happened to be this really big meeting, all these people had flown in, I was in charge of the whole thing. And at first I decided to stay and then finally, I came to my senses and left, but it could have been too late for all intents and purposes. And you know, he was blue, he is on the way to hospital. And fortunately, the other prescription happened to be a steroid, which ended up saving his life. So that was kind of my moment of like, there's really no reason not to pay attention to the essential, could miss out on almost everything. I appreciate what you teach to many, many different levels. But all that said, here's my question, those were longest preface ever to this question.

Greg McKeown 07:42

No, that was an important story.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:43

Do people have to go through something as extreme as what you or I went through in order to wake up to this idea? Or is there hope to get out of that busyness and run around and stretched too thin and all the things, all the pieces that we just described, and do it differently without having to have the type of learning that you or I did?

Greg McKeown 08:08

The answer is, definitely yes. It can be done. And it's the best scenario to take, is to choose to become an essentialist before you have to be a voluntary essentialist. It's a cheaper way to get a great bargain in life. Because you don't have to pay this huge price for the lesson. You can just implement it while things are good. But even if it takes some external event to create the wake up call, that's the next best scenario and tying this back to what we just talked about a moment ago, all of a sudden, as COVID hit the, like a quarter of the US population almost literally overnight, has been asked to relive something like involuntary essentialism, you know, not unkindly, we were told, "go to your room, and don't come out again until you've had a good think about it." Like this is a global teenager, we went and had to think. And I think there's not almost not anybody who hasn't asked whether they said it in exactly these words or not. But the spirit of it is, well, what's essential now? All the things I could focus on, what should I focus on? All these things I no longer control, which things even matter? Of all the changes that have taken place, I mean, is there anybody who hasn't had to reprioritize? Everybody's had to reprioritize in some way, whether they lost a job or whether other people in their company have left or whether they're now working from home and that changes dynamics and time that's available, the more distracted at home potentially, because they have children and then navigating all of the strain of that. I mean, everybody whether they wanted to or not, has been confronted with a prioritization challenge. Now, a true essentialist is better positioned and prepared for this moment. They have less to change, they're more relaxed with the idea of constraints and the benefit of constraints, why boundaries are helpful, why trade offs are to be celebrated and embraced. They have a mindset and a skill set that lends itself at this moment. But even if you didn't, and you're suddenly discovering in this moment, the need for greater focus, the need for greater discernment, you can still benefit a lot from this moment. Now, discovering this language of this approach to life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:40

It's so interesting thinking about it from that perspective. And first of all, let's not just gloss over that, that was one of the funnier ways to describe the global teenager that has to go to the room that I've heard in the scheme of things to describe some of the byproducts of COVID. And in some ways, I guess you could say that is the one of the silver linings and I don't want to make light of some of the harsher impacts of COVID or anything along those lines, but I have been almost sort of, I'm not even sure the right way to say it, Greg, guiltily questioning myself in some ways about why I haven't had to make very many adjustments as it relates to COVID. And I think what you mentioned rings true a little bit for me, because I feel like I've sort of been operating in this mode in many different ways for a really long time, not just from an essentialism point of view, but from many other point of views, like work from home for five plus years, and all those sorts of things as well. But I think that for me, it makes a really important point that when you're talking about essentialism, and the ideas behind it, which I think that you described so eloquently, I would equate it with lifestyle change, rather than just a way to think about something or just a way to think about it differently. Does that make sense?

Greg McKeown 12:04

Yes, I think it is about a lifestyle change, ultimately. I think it starts with a mindset where you say "look, only a few things are really essential and most of it beyond those essential things should be questioned or eliminated." There are few things if you can discover them and invest in them, they will pay tremendous dividends over the long run. And so once you get that mindset, an essentialist believes that almost everything is non essential and a non essentialist believes that almost everything is essential. So as you get the mindset of the essentialist as you shift the mindset, then you start seeing the world through a new lens and you used to put on these new glasses or, well actually the way I feel like it's you taking off glasses you're taking off this barrier to seeing things clearly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:54

Why the subtle difference? Explain that for me, when you say, taking off versus putting on glasses. Tell me why it was different?

Greg McKeown 13:01

Because I think that non essentialism is this false perception, you know, those sort of joke glasses that you can wear sometimes that magnify everything way too big, you know, once you put them on you, you're almost you're basically blind. I think non essentialism is like that, that you've got to remove the distortion so that you can just see things clearly, essentialism is just how things are. I mean, I didn't make them this way. It just turns out if you see things as they are, a few things really matter and lots of things don't. And if you pretend that everything's equally valuable, then you'll go through life a certain way, and that certain way will be, okay, try and do as much stuff as you can, fit in as much stuff and respond to as many emails as you can and say yes to everything and compare yourself with everyone and compete with everything. Because your job is just to do as much of this stuff as you can. If you believe that only a few things matter, but they are so valuable if you find them, then suddenly you automatically start moving from the mindset to the skill set. What is the skillset look like? It's three skills, it's explore what's essential, eliminate what's not and it's execute the things that matter most, by building a system to do it. You start to do those three things automatically, naturally, spontaneously, once the mind sets in place. Why? Well, if you suddenly discovered that you aren't in a coal mine, as you've always believed, but you really in a diamond mind, think of how you'd automatically change your behavior. Suddenly, you'd be all in the business of searching, you'd be in the business of carefully chipping away, looking, you'd be getting researchers that could help you find the disproportionately valuable items, instead of just mass, get it all out. And that's the same in life. Once you see things clearly, you start to explore naturally. And then of course, you want to cut out the non essential because you recognize it now as total dross is just not, it doesn't even matter. Many of the things that appear important through the lens of non essentialism are not important even one week later, they don't matter at all. It seemed... sometimes urgently important. But one week later, you couldn't even care less. So it just shows what a con non essentialism can be. So you of course, you want to start getting rid of the stuff that doesn't matter, you want to stop fretting about the things that don't matter. And then finally, you want to build a system that means that even when you sort of forget this perspective, it still happens automatically. So you want execution to be as easy and natural as possible, on the going. Those are the three skills. And I say they fall in naturally the mindset.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:48

So let me ask you about particularly the idea of exploring, first of all, one of the things that I've observed is that whether it's called essentialism or by any other name, that I've heard people talk about this idea. One of the first things that I think people have a tendency to misunderstand about this and I've heard you mentioned this in a variety have different places. It's not the idea of saying no to everything, absolutely everything. And I think that's one of the falsities falsehoods, it's one of the things that people get wrong. So it is saying 'no' to almost everything but it does not equivocally mean saying no to everything. And one of the places where I've heard you talk about that most recently, we just mentioned your new podcast. But on your first episode, when you were chatting with your wife, and you were talking about this idea of exploration versus saying no to everything, so help me understand where the line is drawn, because I think that can be confusing because it seems almost in conflict sometimes.

Greg McKeown 16:48

Yes, I mean, the the key to essentialism is in the title, right? It's, "what is essential" you don't say no for the sake of it reactively any more than you should be saying yes, for the sake of it reactively, essentialism is arguing. You will say no to things because life is trade off, every choice is a trade off. Now you can go through life unaware of that, blinded by non essentialism so that you think you can just say yes to everything or you can become aware that you can't do that, that's a con that that's a, you've been sold a bill of goods. And now you say, well, every yes is a no to many things. And now the question becomes, how thoughtful are you in which things you say yes to, and making sure that you say yes to things that you have a high confidence, really matter. You invest carefully, thoughtfully, like Warren Buffett, where he's saying, "look, life is a series of punch card with 20 punches available." He thought that's how he would make a good investment, is to think like that. So it means that you don't mess around saying yes to any old thing. You say yes only to the things you have a high confidence of. Now you can do exploration before that, you can try things out, you can learn about anything, but you don't invest big on everything around you. He's talked about how like, really, their investment strategy borders on lethargy. That is they're constantly looking and exploring, but they don't say yes, until they've got something that's such a no brainer. It's like an obvious business that they totally understand that has really great long term value, then they invest big and hold it for the long run, don't tell the managers how to do what they're doing because the whole point is that that it's already well managed. And that's it. That's the whole strategy. The most successful investor in history is a total, you know, surest essentialist in his understanding of the world. And it is now just a statement of fact that 90% of his fortune can be traced back to 10 investment decisions. We can do the same thing in the investment decisions of our own lives. Just don't go big until you go, yeah, I've done a bit of quiet exploration, I've looked forwardly, I'm looking at lots of different things but I'm going big on the things I am sure about, you feel completely right about.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:18

I love that idea of perpetual exploration. But then investing big in the areas that you are sure about, right about. Let's be honest, one of the reasons I loved the idea behind essentialism, I think everyone can get on board with it, because it's so easy to understand. Have you found that? And actually, one of the things I was wondering as I read the book way back when because I'm in the process of writing a book as well, and thinking through all these sorts of things, but the simplicity of the idea, I think, causes people to latch on to it even easier, and be able to apply it in their own lives. I'm curious what you found, as you see people latch on to this idea versus where they struggle with it.

Greg McKeown 20:01

I think the people when they hear essentialism, want it from the first moment, it's, presented to them. If they... suddenly, they recognize that life has had two paths. And they just didn't know that was a second path.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:16

Well, those crazy glasses that you were wearing not that long ago, all of a sudden, and now often there's no going back.

Greg McKeown 20:21

Yes, I think that is right. I had a great conversation recently. Maybe we'll put it on the podcast at some point, but with a couple. And the husband Jerry, is, you know, he's an eye surgeon, he was completely overwhelmed. His wife said that he would sit with his head and his hands and sort of moan, I can't do it all. I cannot do it all. And then he would stand up and say, "but I have to", and that's how he proceeded in life. And this had some predictable effects. He wasn't taking any time to invest in himself. So when he started to get this terrible skin rash that could have threatened his whole career, he didn't even have enough space or sense of control over his own time to go to the doctor's. And so this is threatening his career, but he still doesn't have time. And then they're on this road trip together for a couple of days. And they read essentialism end to end. And as they're reading, the way that Jerry tells that, he says, he's like, "look, I just didn't know that was a different way to do life. I didn't know that." So he's going down this path believing this is it, this is the only way and my job is just to try and make the best of it. And suddenly he wakes up, there's a different way and he just... he completely reverses his approach to life. He emails everyone in his, you know, medical office and says, well, we've got to change this. Any client that could be served by someone else on the team needs to be served by them. Previously, if he'd ever worked with a patient, he always worked with that patient, you know, he just would gather and never let go. He would look for people he could refer to other eye doctors that might even be a better fit. Everybody understood this, they were very supportive, quick to do it. And they understood why he needed to make the change. He even renegotiated with his church where he was on the elbows board. And he said, "look, I've got to make some transitions." And so he counsels together and steps down from that board so that he can have enough health to be able to make a contribution. And they found that a little stranger because no one had done that before. So there wasn't a good protocol for being able to have this conversation. But nevertheless, it got his life into proper balance. And both he and his wife in different words have said to me, look, essentialism didn't change his life, it saved his life. Because the stress was already so high, but then when an additional stress was added later when one of his colleagues retired early like a 30 day warning, he suddenly had all of these extra patients everyone coming out and they think it would have finished them off literally because of the other health issues he was dealing with. So essentialism is a different path, path that, you know, it's a path of less is, path less traveled. But it doesn't make it a path we ought not to travel.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:22

I definitely think you should put that on the podcast for whatever my opinion is worth. The only reason I say that is because although Arianna Huffington is great, I think more people will relate to that story that you just shared and hearing it come from those people themselves, I think could be really powerful to help spread this message.

Greg McKeown 23:43

Yes, I think that well, we're going to launch an episode and then maybe we'll do more as a sort of secondary episode and around the subject of intervention. You know, what does it look like when you're doing it live with somebody?

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:58

Yes. That'd be fantastic.

Greg McKeown 24:00

Yeah, I think that there's a hunger for it because I concur with you that there's different ways of looking at this subject. You can talk about it, you can talk about with people that have figured out some of it in their own life that can be helpful. But I also think people are hungry for really how to break this down for me. I mean, in fact, if your game right now, we should do like a miniature conversation about that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:23

Let's do it.

Greg McKeown 24:24

I mean, let's just start with, you don't overthink this. What's something that's essentially in your life that you're under investing in?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:29

That I'm under investing in right now. Let's see, probably...

Greg McKeown 24:33

You've already had the thought. What's the first thought?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:35

Oh, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. So my time with my daughter as it relates to helping her build her first business.

Greg McKeown 24:43

How old is your daughter?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:44

She's 12.

Greg McKeown 24:45

Do you have other children?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:46

I have two other children.

Greg McKeown 24:47

This is the... where does she fit in the...?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:49

She is the oldest of the three.

Greg McKeown 24:52

What's the business she wants to start?

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:54

She wants to start a cupcake business, a bit selling cupcakes, making them and ultimately doing bakery designs. It's something she is exploring and experimenting with.

Greg McKeown 25:03

When did she come to you with the idea or did you go to her with it?

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:07

We have been talking to my family for years about, when you turn 12, then I will help you start your first business. And we will spend time going through that process and helping you understand a different way to be able to earn money. So this has been something we've been talking about for years. However, it's only been recently where she has decided this is the thing I want to explore and put my time into.

Greg McKeown 25:35

Voluntary. She's only just 12. So she's been expecting this and thinking about this, but now she's 12. When did she turn 12?

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:43

Six, five months ago, which is why I feel like I am under investing in it.

Greg McKeown 25:50

Right. How much time in hours have you spent in the last five to six months on this with her?

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:57

15.

Greg McKeown 25:57

So you've average kind of an hour a week. Is that right? An hour a week on this with her?

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:02

Probably. It's more been in a few chunks and my intention was to spend an hour a week. We now have it on the calendar. Beginning literally next week, however, I am feeling very strongly that this is something that both she wants to do as well as I want to support her in. And I have not made the time.

Greg McKeown 26:24

This 15 hours is it's kind of curious to me though, because we can one to two times do you mean like, is it really as much as 15 hours? And how would that, you certainly spent a whole day with her talking about her business?

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:38

Good question. We have spent three different time periods. One was probably about three hours-ish, right around three hours, if I recall. Another was two hours. And then another one, I actually don't remember how long it was, separate time periods. And then we've had a number of other more casual conversations that were not scheduled not on the calendar, not pre planned.

Greg McKeown 27:05

Sounds more like 10 hours.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:08

That's possibly fair.

Greg McKeown 27:09

Which is fine. I just trying to get to the details of it. We can understand the practical cool things if you spent how much time per week going forward, would you feel satisfied?

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:22

That is a great question. I love questions like this. How much time would I feel satis... How much time a week would I need to spend in order to feel satisfied? That's how I'm interpreting the question. I think if I spent one hour a week with her each week, focused every week, I think that that would create a couple purposes for me. One, it would be an additional intentional way that I get to spend with just my daughter, it would allow me to focus time and energy into helping her with something that she is interested in exploring. It would allow... well, a few other purposes as well. But I think that, yeah, an hour a week would... I would feel very good about that.

Greg McKeown 28:04

Why does this matters so much to you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:06

That's a great question. One of the biggest reasons it matters so much to me as I want my kids to be able to have seen a number of ways to not just earn money, but really add value and contribution to the world. And I don't want the lack of exposure to be a limiter to how they get to contribute to the world. And instead, I want them to be able to have the type of mentality where they decide what they want, and how they want to go about it and are able to make that happen, for lack of a better phrase.

Greg McKeown 28:48

You want them to have freedom. And a different way of saying it is you don't want them to be stuck.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:54

That's part of it. Even more so, I would say that I want them to, well, yeah, maybe part of it is stuck. I guess you could call it, not... making sure that they're not stuck. But I would say, I'm looking for the right word here. More of it is, I really want each of my kids to be able to leave the house at whatever point that that happens, you know, with the understanding that they have a far greater potential than what they might realize this very second to contribute good to the world. And I want them to understand and have had enough life experience prior to them leaving and going to do their own things with the idea that they can uniquely contribute. And if they want something, if they are interested in something, if they have a high desire, if something becomes essential for them, that there's no reason that they shouldn't pursue it.

Greg McKeown 29:55

It's more to do with them feeling able to discern and then pursue their essential mission in life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:03

Yeah, I think you could make that argument, which is interesting, and I've got a question about that for you later. But let's keep going.

Greg McKeown 30:09

I see this sense that you want them to be able to feel empowered, you want them to be able to know that they can shape the world around them not just take it as it is, not just live whatever role they're told to live or given to live, that they can go out there and proactively do something about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:27

Absolutely.

Greg McKeown 30:28

And just one more time, like now that we've identified that, why does that matter so much to you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:33

Well, I think part of it, unequivocally, comes from how I was raised and some of the great, I'm going to call them attributes that my dad had, being able to figure anything out has served me very, very well. But also the other side of it is I didn't have exposure to it. So, I guess people, either not just running businesses, not just being able to put this kind of contribution in the world, but also being able to decide that they wanted to do something and be able to make it happen on a grand scale, on a larger scale.

Greg McKeown 31:12

You said two things there. One was aspirational. And one, I felt like came out to those pain. So one was, I want to be a great dad, I had a great dad, I had somebody who was a father. So there's something in just, I want to do at least as well as he did. And then the second part is to do with, you know, even despite being there for me and good for me, I didn't get this exposure. And so there's a, I think, a sense of, if I had had exposure to this kind of experience, if I've been taught and mentored earlier, I could have lived a different kind of life because I had a different sense of option coming into life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:53

Yeah, I think both of those are a big part of it. And I would call both of those somewhat this partially selfish side because of what I experienced. Some of that is imposing it on my children to some degree. And then the other side of that really is much more aspirational as you said in terms of my hopes and dreams for my children.

Greg McKeown 32:14

Well, it's you're learning from your experience and you want to make sure you didn't.. you don't do any, you don't give less than you were given, but that you add to it and give them more of an opportunity, more of a sense of power in the world to affect change and to make an impact.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:36

Yeah, absolutely. And interestingly enough, I think that, although it... I found it makes for good conversation when I say that, my 12 year old starting a business and that is interesting in some capacities, but it came, we're not really doing it because it sounds good, it came about very organically, partially because my kids were seeing myself build this business for the last eight years. And I realized as we were having conversations about it, that they really didn't understand what it took to be able to make this happen. They really didn't understand how it could be possible. They saw the benefits of it, but not necessarily the nitty gritty how to make something like this, not to say that they have to go and run businesses of any kind as they progress in life, but how to make things that are important to them happen.

Greg McKeown 33:34

Yes, you recognize that the data supports this that people that, you know, children that are exposed have an entrepreneurial experience while they're young are far more likely to be entrepreneurs later in life. They simply know by experience that it is an option. And for people that haven't had entrepreneurial experiences early in their life, it's not that they can't become an entrepreneur, of course they can. But this just simply less likely. They just don't think of it as being a real option. They know logically it is but they don't feel emotionally. If you haven't experienced when the risk is low when the child is young, then they have nothing to lose. It's an asymmetric risk want you to take, no downside possibly really great upside. So this is all under the banner of why does this matter so much?

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:21

Absolutely.

Greg McKeown 34:22

So now let's get to the make it happen.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:25

This is so much fun Greg, I'm glad we're going down this route.

Greg McKeown 34:27

I'm glad too. I'm enjoying it. When you first told me that this was the area, the way you said it was particularly, you said, you know when they turn 12 I'm going to, and then there was a pause, help them to start a business. And there was something in the way you said it that grabbed my attention because it was so general. I know just that kind of intent. I've got, I've definitely done that in my own life. And the problem is that there's no teeth to it yet. The intent is powerful, the intent is important thing in life for sure it is. But until you say when you turn 12, I will be available an hour a week one on one to talk about and help you get this business going and I will work for year for that hour, or whatever the commitment is, it's not real. It's just... we were really expecting the 12 year old to be able to show the level of initiative. That's beyond the initiative we're showing in the early days. Sometimes that happens, but it's, you know, it's a bit of a far reach. So of course you already at this tipping point, you've said that you've... but I want to get this a little more concrete. So you say it's on the calendar, when is it on the calendar for you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:38

4:30 on Mondays. I'm not literally checking my calendar to make sure that I marked it recurring.

Greg McKeown 35:47

Yeah, good. Is it recurring?

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:49

I hope so.

Greg McKeown 35:50

Show me. Tell me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:51

It is recurring. However, I'm so glad that I did because it is not actually scheduled as a full hour. Ah, whoo.

Greg McKeown 36:00

So you're gonna schedule it for now, we make one little adjust.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:04

We are doing that. Thank you, Greg. At this point, you have literally changed my life and possibly my...

Greg McKeown 36:09

I love that because these small changes really are how change happens.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:13

Agreed.

Greg McKeown 36:14

At the big general intense overrated, that overwhelming and they just don't really happen. So here we go, you've got 4:30. Now, who knows about that time? Does everybody in your home know about that commitment?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:27

Good question. I think, let's see McKenzie most definitely does, that's my 12 year old. She and I had a second conversation about it this afternoon, as well as yesterday. Alyssa, my wife, knows about it. The other kids do not though. And I think it would be worthwhile to declare that this time is to be spent this way for both of us.

Greg McKeown 36:52

And declaring exactly the right idea because what you wanted, you're trying to make any sort of change, right, the science is there. You want awareness, excuse me, you want to have it be measurable, so that is okay, 4:30. It's now measurable. You want it to be repeatable, where you know that it's every week so it's repeatable, but the middle one that I think is a little less well done is this observable and I want to make this more observable for you. So that would be, for example, my commitment is to leave my office, which by the way, is in five minutes. So I'm giving full warning now. And I will go outside. And I will announce to my family what time it is. And that's the way for me to make it observable as to whether I am following through on this or not. It's a fun way for me to do it, but it really keeps me honest. I mean, right now is a literal example of this because really, we could talk for quite a while longer. So there's, it would be easier to continue or at least it would be normal to continue. But because I have now a record of having walked out that door and announced it day after day. I'm going to do it again today. It's a reason to do the thing that really matters. So that would be one suggestion I have for you is specifically that at 4:30 on Mondays you stand outside, wherever you're going to meet, and you don't just call your daughter and you say to everybody, it's entrepreneurial hour, whatever it is, you're going to call these on hour...

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:19

It's gonna have a name, don't you worry.

Greg McKeown 38:22

And so everybody knows this is what's happening. Of course, it will build for people anticipation for when they turn 12. So you're going to, you know, all this routine and culture in place to make it easier for you to do it and harder for you not to do it as it goes on. But it also becomes this moment of, well, instead of, how do I do it at 4:30? Well, we'll start at five, it's only an hour. Well, if it's only an hour, I guess it could be done it, you know, Tuesday, whatever. I think when you name it, you want to name it 4:30 at Monday entrepreneurial club, or something. So that you build into it, this non negotiable place in your life. And I think from this conversation, I actually suspect this is sufficient. There are many other things you could do to increase the chances of execution, if it were necessary, you could say, well, we're not going to start with an hour, you could say, I'm going to start with one minute, but we'll do it at 4:30 for one minute, until we have got that habit in place. You know, there's all sorts of things. But I think that your intent is already aligned. It's already been talked about for years, you know why you're doing it, it's already, in fact, already was put on the calendar. So you're really just looking for the final pieces to be in place to make this consistent. Maybe one thing I think you could add, is that you say, Okay, if we do it every week for X amount of weeks, then I get this prize, or we get this benefit, or you have something totally fun, completely frivolous just has to be enjoyable, so that you're incentivized to not miss one week, right? You know, you've got five, six months into this, you've got six months left, you're not going to miss a week and that to me what we just did, is a miniature essential intervention. Maybe that's too strong of a word for it. But it's just... this is what essentialism looks like. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. But it definitely needs to be what matters. Why does it matter? What's the concrete specific change you want to make? Let's reinforce that change once we've named it so that the system will support execution rather than, well, it only happens with a lot of effort. This is the ideal, and that's essentialism.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:42

I love it. I love it because it's showing not telling. I appreciate both the opportunity to work on something that I feel is important. Well, at the same time as getting to have this conversation, I have so many more questions that we just don't have time for right now. However, I wanted to ask, where can people go? Where can people go if they want to find the podcast which is out now? I think five, six episodes in.

Greg McKeown 41:09

It's just been out for just 10 days, just launched for at the same time just to give people some options of what to look at. And we're just still learning, as I said about what we're doing. People should just go to essentialism.com. They can sign up for the newsletter there, they're going to learn everything else about it. They can sign up, you know, to anywhere that people listen to podcasts. It's available everywhere, and subscribe so you can be part of the journey, and part of this sort of mass intervention that we're trying to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:40

If this is not your first episode of the Happen To Your Career podcast, you've probably heard somebody on here that their first step to work that they absolutely love, that fits their strengths, and they're excited about was going through our free eight day mini course, to figure out what fits you. And we've had now well over 30,000 people have that as their beginning step to identifying what they want in their lives. And you can do the exact same thing. And if you're interested in that, it has some really amazing questions to get you started in becoming clear on what you want and what you need in your career. And it's a great way to kick it off and determine what is most important for you, moving forward. You can learn what you're great at so you can stop wasting time in your job and start working in your career, even identify some of the internal blockages that are keeping you from fulfilling work, and wealth and career success. And begin narrowing down what you should be doing for work that's fulfilling to you. All you have to do is go to figureitout.co that's figureitout.co and get started today, enter your email an voila, will send you the very first lesson. Head on over there, figureitout.co or you can text happen to 44222 that's happen to 44222.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:18

Over the years, we've shown you a lot of career changes that most people would consider impossible. We know from being on the inside of these, that it can be really challenging to think about, how on earth someone would make this career change from one drastically different occupation to another or how they might go and get what most people would consider to be a... impossible dream job, and many, many other things between. So that's one of the reasons why we take great pains to show you how it works from the inside. For example, how does someone go from identifying a list of organizations that they might want to work for, and getting an opportunity with their number one company on that list?

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 44:09

I work with Wanderlust and if you're not familiar with them, Wanderlust started as a yoga studio, but now has branched out and produces festivals and events throughout the world.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:21

That's Tanya Malcolm-Revell.

Tanya Malcolm-Revell 44:24

I got myself into a position where I am now a part of the production team involved in bringing Wanderlust into Europe and presently into London, into the United Kingdom.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:36

Tanya's story is super interesting because she was trying to find her ideal opportunity in a completely different country. She's from the US, but her husband and her work relocating to London. The way she found her opportunity is even more interesting, especially since she ended up working with her number one organization that she had said "hey, this is where I want to work." So listen close throughout this conversation, as she shares exactly how she did it. All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click Subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically. Even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week, adios. I'm out.

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