Cheri 00:01

I've been looking on LinkedIn at like different organizations that I think might fit the bill like what I'm looking for, and I'm struggling to find a whole lot of things. I've also just been doing Google searches like to find different places to look into.

Introduction 00:19

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44

If there were only a list of organizations that fit exactly what you have identified that you needed out of your next role, wouldn't that be nice? Would that be amazing? This is the point during a career change where so many people get stuck. How do you find the right organizations? I mean, you don't know every company in the world that exists. So how do you know which ones are gonna fit your ideals or align with your values? And how can you find them when you're sifting through every single company in the world? Well, it turns out there is a way to find the organizations that actually might fit, maybe even lists of them. You just have to do some detective level sleuthing investigating to be able to find those. Let's walk through exactly how to do that.

Cheri 01:31

I've figured out that, like, I really do like being a business analyst and I want to be a product owner, which is just the next step. And it's just what I'm doing in my particular role that I'm not happy in.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:42

That's Cheri Thom. When she came to us, she had recently accepted a job that ended up not being what was promised in the interview, and it made her really, really unhappy. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be sharing Cheri's entire story from coaching to landing her ideal role to getting a promotion. And finally, a 'where are they now' update. In this case, where she now, where she's going to share her career progress from when she began working with us in 2020 until present day. In just a minute, you're going to hear a live coaching session between me and Cheri. This is from when she was working on making her career change, a more intentional career change. Before this call, she'd worked with our team to figure out what we call "must-haves" and get incredibly specific with her ideal career profile. This means she had already figured out the types of roles that she was interested in. She also knew that she wanted remote work, and she wanted to work on a software development team for a website or an app that promotes either mental health, or health and wellness overall. Like I said, she'd gotten really, really specific, which it turns out is the key to successfully targeting organizations, you have to have a place to start from right. So then it was time for her to begin finding those organizations that fit all these elements. That's where she was feeling stuck. Okay, let's jump into this coaching session right about now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:13

I think that one of the things I want to have you do here... I've read through everything that you've sent over, I've gone through and done a little bit of investigation on my own. But I am going to want to have you kind of articulate some of the pieces that you want most out of here. And I want to ask you a few questions about that. Particularly, so that we can hyperfocus what's going to be best for you. So let me just start off with a couple pieces here. Give me a little bit of background on what you know you want as it relates to your ideal career.

Cheri 03:54

Yeah. So I have been in a business analyst type role for the last probably 13-ish years. And when I started Happen To Your Career, it was because I was unhappy in my current role. And I wasn't sure if it was the role I was unhappy in, like, I didn't want to be a business analyst anymore, or if it was what I'm doing and the companion. So through working with Jennifer and figuring out my strengths, I've figured out that, like, I really do like being a business analyst and I want to be a product owner, which is just the next step. And it's just what I'm doing in my particular role that I'm not happy in. In the past, I have worked in software development, which I loved. And I would like to go back there. I've also learned that I have a passion for mental health for one reason or another. I was briefly a psychology major in college.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:40

Were you really?

Cheri 04:41

Briefly. Yeah. I ended up having a management of information systems degree, but yeah. So it's always been an interest of mine and I would love to work doing software development in the mental health space.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:54

Okay. Very cool. What was your interest in the psychology side?

Cheri 04:59

I have no idea. It's just how the brain works is so interesting to me. And so I did that. And then probably within the last five years, I started doing yoga teacher training, which I absolutely love. But I did a whole warrior kid series. And it's about how to help kids work through trauma and mental health stuff. And that was the part about it that I loved the most. It's just so interesting to me how, like, the psychosomatic reactions to things, and how kids process things. And just all of it in general, is super interesting to me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:36

I also find it fascinating and curious what some of those pieces were for you about the idea of healthcare companies. Because here's a couple of things I understand. You tell me if this is true. So you're in a small town, rural area, and in Wisconsin, and I think if I understood correctly, that's part of the reason why you've been looking at remote opportunities.

Cheri 06:05

Correct.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:06

There's only so many organizations around that area. Is that fair to say?

Cheri 06:10

That is absolutely correct. Yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:12

Okay. All right. And tell me a little bit about how you've been searching so far.

Cheri 06:19

So primarily, I have been doing... I've been looking on LinkedIn at like different organizations that I think might fit the bill, like, what I'm looking for. And I'm struggling to find a whole lot of things. I feel like a lot of them are based in Canada or the UK. I've also just been doing Google searches, like, mental health software to find different places to look into.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:40

And it was turned up a few though, if I understood correctly, right?

Cheri 06:43

Right. So United Health has, well, they're always kind of acquiring companies or merging with companies. And they have, I don't know, that the Sanvello app was developed prior to it being a United Health company or before that, but it's a really cool tool, you can download it on your phone. And so I just downloaded it, and I've been looking through it, and I just... I really like it. I like it has a ton of different features. So, you know, not the same thing fits every person. So there's just a lot of different avenues that you can take within it. Super interesting to me. And I think, oftentimes people don't necessarily want to talk to a therapist for one reason or another. And this provides them a tool that they can use to help manage whatever it is that they're dealing with. So I love that app. I think it's awesome.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:29

I just spent a couple of minutes looking at that as well. And I had never utilized it. I'd only heard of it. And that was the extent of it. I didn't even know what it was about. But it was really interesting. And it was fascinating. I think that there are definitely more apps and organizations like that out there as well, which is part of what we get to talk about today, right? Okay, but I cut you off, you're gonna say something else, too.

Cheri 07:55

Oh. I was going to talk about AbleTo, which is a company that they recently acquired, and I don't know a lot about it. But they do... I understand they have an app, I haven't seen it. And I also know that they do virtual care and telehealth for mental health patients. So different avenue, but same general idea.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:14

Okay. Any other organizations that you really were interested in one way or another or had found your way to your target companies list? But maybe you've moved them off for one reason or another?

Cheri 08:30

I was looking at Headspace. Yeah, but it looks like all of their people are on site, or they'll have just their therapists are remote. And I think they're based in San Francisco. So that's not ideal. There was one other one I was looking at, I don't remember what it was. But for whatever reason, it didn't fit.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:50

You've done a great job going through and building out a draft of your ideal career profile. And there's a lot on there. But my question is remote work. Would you say that in order of priority, that is probably the most important thing on there, or one of the things that is a must have that makes everything else possible? Help me understand how you're thinking about that.

Cheri 09:15

So I am not opposed to going in the office by any stretch of the imagination, but there just isn't a lot around here. So I live in a town of...

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:23

Closest major city. Help me understand.

Cheri 09:26

I'm in the closest major city. I think Appleton and Green Bay are an hour and a half. Madison is two and a half.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:35

Okay. All right. So something, you know, if you were going in, I don't know, a couple of times a month or something to Green Bay, that's not too out far or too far outside of the zone of travel. It's not like you're traveling to Seattle from Wisconsin or something.

Cheri 09:51

Right. And I actually had never even thought of that. But yeah, that would work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:55

Okay. So remote work, I think would be really preferable because it would free up many more options for some of these organizations that maybe you're even more excited about or more passionate about. However, from a functionality standpoint, there's probably some organizations around the surrounding area that could be doable if it were not 100% remote type situation. Am I understanding that right? Okay, cool. I went through, and I was looking at your ideal career profile and trying to understand is there anything else here. And some of the themes that I took away from it are that definitely combining together your abilities as an analyst, and I think even the potential that you have to grow in that area, you know, you mentioned product development, and the several areas around that, too, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for growth, especially if you're owning a product or in one way or another, I think that there's a huge amount of opportunity for growth, especially from organization to organization, because the scale looks different. That said, I think that there is also a couple other opportunities in there, as well. One of the things that you sent to me that you said you wanted out of this is to try and answer a few questions, but also, at the same time, trying to understand how to go about searching for organizations, or ideas for searching for organizations that could be a fit. But some of those questions that you had mentioned, you said, "Hey, I haven't been reaching out regarding jobs that don't say something along the lines of remote work or telecommute." You ask, you know, "Should you be doing that the organization's may make exceptions?" Tell me what's behind that question first of all, before I try to answer it directly.

Cheri 11:42

Well, I've never really thought about it. So if I go like on Flex jobs, or LinkedIn, or whatever different site, and I am looking at openings, if they don't say that they're remote, or telecommute or something along those lines, that I don't even look any further. I just stopped there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:59

Okay, I think there's really two ways to look at that then. So one way is, I think that's a really great way to initially, either filter organizations or quickly identify whether one has a culture of remote work or not. So I think that your thinking around that is very, very helpful. For that said, though, I think the short answer to your question is yes, organizations do absolutely make exceptions. So I would encourage you to absolutely continue being conscious of filtering for organizations that are likely to have that in their culture already, or as part of how they do work already. That said, I wouldn't rule out organizations that fit in other areas that may make an exception for you. Now more than ever before that is happening.

Cheri 12:48

Right. And it never hurts to ask.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:49

Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly where I was gonna go with that. And it sounds like you already know this. It's just a case of let's acknowledge it out loud. Find some of those organizations that you can begin acting on this, and getting to know, and especially, like you mentioned, Headspace is a good example. Yeah, I think most of the way that they've done business in the past has been a lot of on-site based around a particular area. And that doesn't mean that will continue to be the way going forward in the future. And you know, a lot of what you're interested in doesn't necessarily require that you are on-site. Sometimes there are some roles that do. Everything that you've done is not a requirement, at least consistently, necessarily. So yes, yes, yes, absolutely look at those organizations. Let's jump into a few examples, though, of how to find these pieces. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen on here and just kind of describe to you what I'm doing and why. And we're actually going to search together. That way, you're getting out of this what you wanted an idea of how to go about searching, but also at the same time, then I can kind of show you some of the things that I've found too. Alright, let me know as soon as you can see my screen. All right, cool. So I'm actually just gonna go over here to your ideal career profile. So first of all, I heard you say, you know, searching for like mental health software companies. That was one of the things that you said earlier, right? So one of the things I found is super helpful for searching for organizations is taking variations of different types of words, almost CSI style, and searching for those combinations. Because you might not get it right in Google the first time and maybe not the second time, and probably not the third time, either. But, you know, four, or five, six times down the road, when you tweak some variations, then you can probably get it right. So let's take a variation of that and see what comes up here. So oh, by the way, one of the things that you can do too, is look for suggested searches too so I have my Google Chrome browser on so that it pops up suggested searchers as well. But let's say Mental Health, how about an app since it's a software. That's a more current term that more progressive companies have a tendency to use anyways. So that's going to fit that more progressive type organization is probably going to have more progressive culture, which, you know, that's a far set of assumptions here. But even starting out with words that are more likely to fit are going to be better way to go. So mental health apps, let's just see what pops up here. Okay, so we've got scholarly articles for mental health apps, top 10 mental health apps. Oh, you know what, hold on, that might lead us to a different thing. What if we... Oh, here we go. The seven best mental health apps of 2020. What if we took that and just took that as a search, potentially, again, and said best mental health apps, because that's probably going to get us to a list, or we can click on one of these looks like it was prioritized these 23 mental health apps for stress, anxiety, and more. So here's what's going to happen. We're gonna get a list of apps. Oh, look, Headspace pops right up. Okay, fantastic. We already know about that one. Some of these, I guarantee just if we're looking at apps, some of these are going to be things that are invented by or, you know, coded by somebody in their brother, and they may not be a full organization that is going to be a great fit for you. But there are probably other ones in here too. So we've got Inscape. Have you heard of some of these here?

Cheri 16:26

Some of these, yep.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:27

Okay, the Calm app. Whoo. Yeah, that was really big a couple of years ago, or that's another one. PTSD Coach. Okay, so we've got a whole bunch of them here. One of the things that we can do, we've got the mindfulness app, 10% happier. We can actually go and look for the organizations that fit those. So let's take the, which one was I looking at earlier, let's take the Happify app. Let's see if we can find that Happify app. And then we might have to do a little bit more CSI style work and say, okay, Happify, or we can go find the app itself– Happify apps on Google Play, we can go look at any one of these. So this comes from Happify, Inc. Okay, so Happify Inc., we can now take that information and go to the next step. Happify Inc. Well, it takes us to happify.com. So that's probably the company isn't the same name as the app, apparently. All right, let's go down here. And let's see if we can find what, either a list of their team, or list of careers or jobs. First of all, looks like we have a jobs list right here. Let's go into the team section, it'll give us an idea of how big they are. Okay. We've got a co-founder and CEO. Pretty much all of these are going to have something like that. Head of Happify, Head of Healthcare, Medical Director, Head of Content Strategy, Head of Enterprise Marketing. So part of what I'm looking at right here now that we're on this website, is trying to get an understanding of the size of this organization. Is it possible that they're going to have the set of resources to be able to hire someone like you? Okay, so it looks like they've got quite a bit, quite a few people in their leadership team. That's what I'm seeing up here. So I don't know if this is their entire team, necessarily, but they've got a fair number of people on their leadership team. Let's go over to that job section here really quick, just to get a glance at that. Okay. Happify Health Director of Talent in New York City. So let's see, SVP, Payer of Sales. So they do have some remote for sure. Potential for some remote work. So they list a few different things. So this is an organization that already is doing some remote, for sure, likely is doing remote right now. And there may be an opportunity for them to make an exception. If you found down the road that this is right organization for you, you're right for it. So on and so forth. That's the thinking 17 steps ahead. But that still is where we need to be at, let's not rule out that possibility. We don't see anything saying "We do not do remote work at all costs. We pride ourselves on having everyone under one roof at all times. Because it's..." Yeah, we don't see it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:28

Okay, so instead, we've got a few encouraging signs. And that's all we need at this point to add them to our target list, assuming that we're seeing other things that line up with your ideal career profile, and some of the pieces that you must have or that you're interested in. So if we... Have you heard of this company or this app before?

Cheri 19:51

I haven't, but I'm definitely going to look into it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:53

Okay, fantastic. Look at that. By the way, we did that in what? Three minutes, four minutes.

Cheri 19:59

I wrote it down.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:00

Okay, so, but the reason I'm going into demonstrate it at that level really quick before we get into any other organizations whatsoever, is because that's how all of these pieces work. It is a CSI type process where we get one little clue. And then we use that clue to make a conclusion and then continue our search. And then we get another clue, which leads to another clue, which leads to another clue, and potentially an organization. Now, we're probably going to have just as many organizations, if not more, that we filter out based on what you know about what you want. And that's okay, that's actually a good sign. Because you could spend days and months and weeks and years researching organizations, which by the way, if you're not already doing this, something that is very, very helpful as you're researching organizations is to try and give yourself a time limit. And two ways that you can do that, choose whichever one's gonna work for you. One would be to give yourself a time limit spending on each organization, and then adding it to the list or making a decision to not add it to the list and moving on. And like five to seven minutes is a great amount of time for that, or, and you can literally set yourself a timer like you can pull up a timer on Google and say, seven minutes timer, and then that'll just pop up a timer here. And I can go ahead and start it. And it'll sound really loud and annoying when I get to the end of it. In this case, I'm actually going to close it down so we don't get the loud annoying sound. Really, really easy way to do that. The other way to do that is just give yourself an allotted amount per day. And that way you don't go into the whole spending hours and days researching companies that just aren't a fit for one reason or another because it's easy to get sucked into that. Okay, so we've got Happify, there on the list. All right, five minutes progress. We got one other company. Let's see if we can do the same thing again. Let's go back to what gave us a few seeds here. And let's go back to what was it that we used. Was it mental health app?

Cheri 21:59

Mental health apps, yep.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:00

Mental health app. Okay, we're just gonna search that same thing again. And in fact, I'm gonna put top mental health apps just to see if we can get a few different lists. And even though we're getting a list of apps, somebody has to make these apps which may lead us to companies in the first place. So here we're behind the scenes really quick, just to give you a tidbit of what I'm actually doing here, if it's not already obvious, is I'm trying to figure out okay, how can we get at lists or places where these different organizations might already be found? And what are some of the ways that we can sort of crack that nut? And how can we try it from a few different sides? So top mental health apps. In this case, I just think that this is a super easy way to be able to do it, since I already know that you're very interested in technology and mental health. And we know that there's probably a list of companies someplace on the other end of this list of apps. I gave us a few things, but not too many here. 18 best mental health apps to try and 2020, 10 of the best mental health apps for 2018. I'm also looking at where are these coming from, as well, because that's going to drastically impact the list. This is a place for mom, which I heard you talk about kids, I didn't hear you talk about necessarily, you know, seniors or anything else be part of your passion. So I'm just going to err on the side of what I know about you to try and filter this list really quick here. Let's see best depression apps, best mental health apps for better living, that probably is closer than anything else. Let's just click on that and see what happens here. Okay, so as I scan down the page, I've got a pretty quick list. So we've got Happify, which we've already heard of. What's Up?, which I've never heard of, have you heard of that?

Cheri 23:51

I've never heard that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:53

It's like What's Up?, but... We've got MoodFit, Talkspace, MoodTools, Breathe2Relax. Okay, so there's not a huge amount on here. However, it does give us a few less. So what I would probably do is the exact same type of process. I'm going to rinse and repeat. If I find something that's already working, I'm going to continue down that course of action and until, you know, I've been able to add more companies to the list, more organizations to the list that could be a fit or eliminate more of them. Either way is okay. Either way is good. So let's take one of these randomly here. Have you heard of Talkspace? Okay. Does that... Have you already checked that one out? Is that a potential fit? Or that one's more couples therapy, it looks like?

Cheri 24:41

Right, yeah, I don't really think that's a good fit.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:44

Yeah. What's Up?. Let's see cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. We're getting close.

Cheri 24:48

Let's try What's Up? because it's got a funny name.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:51

It does have a funny name. Okay. Let's do that.

Cheri 24:55

Oh, it doesn't look like they're links.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:57

It does not look like they're links so that's where we have to keep going with our clues. Let's see, What's Up?. I'm not just gonna Google that, I'm going to Google the app too, that way we get something. Oh, What's Up? owns this. Let's see search instead for What's Up? app. Man. That's an unfortunate closeness. When you Google the app I get WhatsApp instead. That's a whole another story for a different data. What's Up? a mental health app– apps on Google Play. So we can actually do the same thing here. Let's see who runs this? It doesn't list a company. Oh, wait, yes, it does. Jackson Tempra. Looks like our first person. Or if that is a... let's find out. Let's go ahead and Google that, as well. Jackson Tempra. Let's see, we've got Muck Rack, we've got Outbrain, Android developer, info on Outbrain. So this looks like an individual then by Jackson Tempra, thought maybe it could be a company name, but it looks like an individual. So I'm gonna say that that's a dead end. And we'll probably move on to the next one. Maybe there's a company there behind there. So it might be worth putting on a list someplace to check out that app and see if it's something you're interested in, because maybe it turns into an organization down the road that you want something to do with. However, for our purposes right now, and just keeping to what's most effective, we're just gonna move on to the next one. Okay, MoodFit. That one says MoodFit focuses on what they call a user's mood fitness. Quick reaction, does that sound like something you're interested in or as a...?

Cheri 26:32

I think it's definitely worth looking into.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:34

Okay, let's look at that, we're going to do the same thing. So this is where I start transitioning the learning over to you. So what are we going to do next?

Cheri 26:43

We are going to Google MoodFit app.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:46

All right, sweet deal. That way, we don't just get MoodFit randomly. And then we see what pops up here, get moodfit.com. Okay, let's see if they are an organization unto themselves. If they are owned by another organization, let's see what we can learn about them. Voted best overall mental health app of 2020. That's encouraging, doesn't say where. So as we scroll down the page here, I'm just looking for other additional clues. That's it. I'm just scanning really quick to try and get a sense of is this something that potentially is worth continuing to look into. User CMS mom, their mom had a really good rating. So that was, I think. Let's see Google Play fitness for your mental health, it's possible that this might be owned by somebody else. So ah, Roble Ridge Software. Okay.

Cheri 27:41

Where have you seen that?

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:41

At the very bottom, it's in very small letters, says copyright 2020 Roble Ridge Software, LLC. So let's see what we can find out about Roble Ridge Software. For all I know, they're like a perfect fit technology health company for you, but maybe not. Let's see what we can learn. Oops, Roble Ridge Software, get rid of that. Type in Roble Ridge Software, LLC, cluster maps, Roble Ridge Software, LLC, apps apple.com. So they probably have a variety of apps on the Apple Store. I'm gonna go ahead and right click on that, open that in a new tab just so we can see if they have very many other apps as well. Nope, they only have MoodFit. Okay, so here's what I would do. That indicates to me that they're probably not a massive organization. They don't appear to... they're the probably the organization behind this. So it's probably worth further checking into. So I would go ahead and add it to your list. And then you can move on to the next one. And then after you've got a list built up, and you have, you know, 7 or 10 organizations potentially on your list, you can start to validate whether they stay on or move off. So far, I think the Happify, the company Happify, you can find the Happify app is probably a good one to stay on and continue checking and probably even reach out to some people in the organization that using the Goldilocks method to learn more about them, and understand if they could give you a good potential fit for the Future. Otherwise, let's add Roble Ridge Software and the MoodFit app and move on to the next one. Okay, let's go back. Okay, so if we had to change our approach here, what other variations might you search? Even though you're gonna be tested when...

Cheri 29:39

I would do mental health software development.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:45

Mental health focus software, fully integrated the EHR, University of Washington, there we go, coding boot camps. That's not quite where we wanted to go.

Cheri 29:57

I've looked at some of these because they develop like EHRs for mental health organizations, some of these.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:05

So anything that since you've already looked at some of these, with what you know now, are there any other organizations that would be going back that appeared to be a fit for one reason or another, but maybe you rolled off the list because of unsureness about remote work?

Cheri 30:22

I think Therapy Notes was one that I looked at that sounded interesting, which I believe was in your search. That's the third one down.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:30

Third one down, Therapy Notes. Okay. That pops up with an ad. Let's see. So they just probably paid 50 cents to $4 for that click. And so hopefully, they're amazing. EHR software for behavioral health. That's cool. From what you remember here, what appears to potentially be a fit and what appears to be a non-fit, or were your concerned?

Cheri 30:57

It's been a couple of weeks since I looked at it. But where I used to work, I worked on an EHR, so I have a lot of kind of exposure to what's going on there. And that's what was of particular interest to me. Oh, here's the problem. I think it's super, super small. But maybe not.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:12

Maybe not. That is hilarious. They have Southpark looking people. This makes me very happy, for some reason.

Cheri 31:21

Because it makes it look like a fun organization.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:25

It does make it look like a fun organization. Yes. So they are not that small. I bet they're larger since they took this team pic. However, we've got some encouraging pieces on here. First of all, there are a fair number of people on their team, they have Southpark looking characters on their page, just amazingly entertaining to me. And on top of that...

Cheri 31:51

Looks like they're in the US.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:52

Variety of positions open. So it's not just one position open. That's another clue to get size of organization too, like, Happen To Your Career, give you an example, we're a relatively small organization, we might post one or two roles at a time, maybe, with the majority of the time we're not hiring directly or don't have roles posted at least. So we've got what 6 roles here posted at just a random snapshot in time. And that means they're probably a small to midsize organization, if I had to take a guess without knowing anything else, just from glancing at the webpage, and the clues that we have in front of us. So this is I think one to add to the list for sure, if you don't have it already. We've got a lot of pieces that line up with your ideal career profile. Plus, I think that's something that you may not have thought of, as well, I know that you referenced on your ideal career profile, part of what you wanted is growth. And you had a few different things that you're looking for as it relates to your personal and professional growth. However, it is many times easier to be able to grow in the... or how shall I say, step into the scope of position in a medium to smaller organization versus like stepping into a fortune 500 type.

Cheri 33:17

Absolutely, yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:19

And then that carries over whether you have a higher title or, you know, you'll get a different level of experience, because it's a small organization. Often it's a lot easier to transfer that to a larger organization if you make another change after that. Right. So I think that those can be a few advantages, just knowing what some of the pieces that you already want to. Okay. All right. So I want to pause here for just a second. And say we've found a few different organizations, a few different dead ends. What do you take away so far in terms of how you can search differently than what you have up till now? So you can continue because our goal here is we need to get a few more organizations on this target company's last, right?

Cheri 34:02

Yes. So one, don't roll out a company just because they don't have remote positions. And two, be a detective. Just keep digging.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:11

Cool. All right. Sounds good. I guess at this point, what would be most helpful? We've got...

Cheri 34:17

Honestly, this is already super helpful. I've just… I felt like I've been running into roadblocks. And so I've never even thought to look at the app store to where the apps are coming from. So that was really helpful. Great idea. And I'm feeling a lot better about this.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:34

I think one of the things that happens for almost everyone that's at this stage where they're trying to align, "Hey, I've got all of these things that I value really highly. And I have an idea at this point of what I'm looking for, but like how do you actually transfer that into reality? Like where do I go to search for that?" And the hard part is, it's not going to work out the same way for everyone. Like, we found an in for you relatively quickly, where it's like, "okay, we can search for variations of mental health software development, mental apps, method, there's probably a whole bunch of others that we can search for that we haven't thought of too." And that said, like that gives us, that's an easy way to get to those lists. And I found that there's almost always an easy way to get to it. It's just so hard to be able to see that and kind of maneuver through it. Usually, it's only a few steps away. But...

Cheri 35:28

I think when I first started looking, I wasn't... I still wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to continue to be a business analyst or in that vein, or if I wanted to move away from something else. I just knew I wanted to do something with mental health. So I think having a narrower focus helps, too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:45

Yeah, absolutely. And actually, that's one of the pieces of advice I wanted to give you, too, before we end here is that as you get clearer and clearer on what you want, then continue to circle back or double back to what you may have looked at before so that you can reinforce that you've moved on and reinforces something there's not a fit. Or you can do what has happened here, which you're like, "Ah, I already know a little bit about that organization. Actually, now with what I know, that's something that could be good, that could be worth taking a second look at", because you're going to continue to refine as you move through this process. So great job, by the way. Great work.

Cheri 36:26

Thank you. This is very helpful. Thank you so much.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:35

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:27

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

Speaker 3 37:32

It was impacting not only my work life, but my personal life. Like, I was snarky with my husband and with my son. And that's not fair to them. I mean, they had nothing to do with it. So I knew something needed to change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:45

When your job begins negatively affecting other aspects of your life, like, your family or your health or self-worth, those are usually red flags signaling to you that it's time to make a career change. But then comes a huge dilemma. And we see this all the time. In desperation to escape your current situation, you end up jumping into a new role, a new situation, another job that's just as bad as the one before. Maybe the names have changed, but the situation is not any better, right? So how do you avoid this desperation in your job search and find a new role that adds to your life instead of draining it?

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:25

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

Sarah Hawkins 00:01

I had just tried so many different things trying to find my niche, trying to find my thing, you know, that I was made to do, and I just never found it. And I just felt like I've been looking for so long and trying for so long, and I've never been able to find it. So it must not be a possibility for me.

Introduction 00:24

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:49

As you're listening to my voice right now, that means that you have experienced some kind of setback in life, maybe many setbacks. And what I've learned is that it's not really about the setbacks. It's about how we react to those setbacks that makes the difference between either reaching our goals or letting them slip away. Now when it comes to career change, even high performers are bound to stumble across a few obstacles before ultimately reaching their new career. In fact, I would say that high performers even will encounter more obstacles because they're often reaching higher. Turns out this is exactly what happened to Sarah Hawkins.

Sarah Hawkins 01:30

So I grew up in the Central Valley of California near Fresno. And then it's really hot here, and there's no rain and no fun weather. And so I was like, "I'm out and I'm never coming back." So I went to Portland where everything is lush and green and gorgeous. And there's rain, and I don't mind the rain in the slightest or cloudy days or invigorating for me. So I loved it there. I went to school at Lewis and Clark College, and majored in psychology and loved being there, stayed about a year later. But I was not able to get my whole family to move out there as much as I tried. And I have a big family and we're all very close. And so...

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:09

You try to import them all to Portland.

Sarah Hawkins 02:13

I almost had my parents and they were looking at listings. And then my sister got pregnant with their first grandchild. So they said, "Sorry, we're not leaving now." So that was unfortunate. So I shortly thereafter decided to come home just because I missed everyone and wanted to get to know my nieces and nephews as they were being born. So I'm glad I did. I mean, I married my husband, met my husband here, and married him. And it's been great. So I'm glad I made that move. But I guess really, my whole career-type story has been one sort of bouncing around because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know what I wanted to spend my life doing. And I could never figure it out. You know, my dad was a CPA, my sister was a CPA. My other two sisters are amazing teachers, my brother's an awesome salesman. But I just didn't really have a thing that I felt like I was really good at that I should pursue. I always called myself a dabbler that I liked to do things for a little while. But then when it started to get too in-depth and too and you know, where you'd have to be like an expert, I just lost interest or it just wasn't worth that extra step to become an expert. You know, and that's the thing with psychology, I love psychology, I think it's very interesting. But when I started getting into the upper-level classes of like, really in-depth stuff, I'm kind of like, I don't really want to do this for a living, you know. And so, you know, I tried teaching for a while and it was like, "Okay, well, now I either need to go back to school and get a credential, or I need to find something else." Because I, you know, and it was like, I don't really like this enough to go back to school again, get a whole new credential, all this more debt. So I guess I just never found anything that I liked enough to stay with it for a really long period of time. So I tended to kind of just bounce around to different things, usually falling into the office management administrative type stuff, just because I'm really good at juggling a lot of things. And I've learned really quickly. And so I tend to just do well in that kind of environment because I am able to help with just pretty much anything they need. But it just wasn't very satisfying, I guess, because there's just not a lot of growth in that, at least not in my path. Because you just kind of jumped around. I did a real estate appraisal for a while and didn't stick either. It was kind of like I did all my classes to get my credential and it was kind of like, "Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life? No, I don't." So I stopped that, you know, kind of a thing. And so I felt like I kept having all these false starts, which made me feel like I wasn't really building much of a resume to where I kind of had to keep starting entry-level places. And so I was eventually being supportive roles to people just coming out of college and I'm in my mid-30s. And it was really disheartening because I knew I was capable of so much more.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:14

Absolutely.

Sarah Hawkins 05:14

But I just didn't ever feel like I could reach higher because I didn't have the "experience", if that makes sense.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:23

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And so now that... 'Cause you've kind of gone through this sort of mental switch, thinking that, okay, it's got to be one or the other almost in terms of, I just don't think that I'm gonna find the stuff that I enjoy. And it's going to be able to have any amount of pay, and all of that stuff that so many of us think. Actually, I just got a phone call just a little bit earlier today where I was talking to a guy, and he said, "Look, I want to make $200,000 a year, and I also want to have flexibility to be able to go in and take my daughter to school" he's got young kids, "and I don't see how I can do both." So he was almost thinking about in terms of, hey, I'm gonna have to choose between these two things, and that they can not absolutely under no circumstances can be an option to do both. And we talked about solutions and being able to, I don't know, consider multiple different alternatives. So I'm super curious about that. Where do you think that that came from for you? Like, where do you think that you initially thought that, "Look, this is not ever going to be a possibility"?

Sarah Hawkins 06:36

I think maybe because I had just tried so many different things trying to find my niche, trying to find my thing that I was made to do. And I couldn't, I just never found it. And I just felt like I've been looking for so long and trying for so long. And I've never been able to find it. So it must not be a possibility for me. You know, that must be the unicorn in the, you know, in the woods, it's never going to be found, Bigfoot or whatever. You know. Yeah, you know, just that some people have something that they just are not to, like, my sister knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was five. I mean, her whole life that's all she wanted to be. And I never had that. And I looked and I tried, and I tried, and I just could never. And I always looked at it as a fault of mine that maybe I was a little too ADD. I couldn't commit. I couldn't stick with anything, kind of an attitude in my mind that it was my fault I couldn't find my thing. You know?

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Hawkins 07:39

Which I don't know if you're wanting to get into this yet. But that's one of the things in the course that was just mind-blowingly liberating for me, was the term multipotentialite. Because you had a webcast on with Emilie Wapnick. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I listened to that. And I was just like, oh, I mean, I was literally running through the house telling my husband, "I know what I am." And that was just so liberating for me not to be fighting that all the time because I felt like I was always fighting. And sorry, for the multipotentialite is just somebody that likes to do a lot of different things. And they're good at a lot of different things. And they don't just have one little niche. And I guess I'd never heard of it in a positive frame before.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:32

They sound like negative, right? You just have that association, "Oh, it's bad to be a dabbler."

Sarah Hawkins 08:38

You just can't commit to anything, you know, you can't stick with it. And so as soon as it's not fun, or whatever, you bolt. And that's not what I wanted. But at the same time, I'm the type that when I'm not mentally engaged, I just die inside. I mean, my whole soul just withers up if I'm not mentally challenged and engaged and excited about something. And so I can only stick with something for so long before I could feel the deadening start. And so I realized that, well, it's because I need to be doing different things that's why I'm wired. And so whether I'm doing that on a personal side to kind of help with so if I'm sticking with a career then do different things on my own or try to do different things within a role to try to feed that need for newness and challenge and all of that kind of stuff so that I don't get the deadening. And it was just really a liberating thing for me to embrace it instead of fight against it. And just like when she said some of the superpowers of... I think I listened to her TED Talk and she had said one of the superpowers of a multipotentialite is rapid learning, super adaptable, and there was another one where they can merge ideas, and I am definitely a rapid learner. I am definitely super adaptable, but I never necessarily looked at those as strengths. And I never looked at that as a benefit to being the way I was. So just kind of having that all tied together was just, I mean, really, I was on cloud nine for like days, just kept telling my husband, "I know what I am." He was just laughing at me. I was just like, you have no idea. I mean, it was just something that, I mean, it was never really spoken other than I would just say, "I'm a dabbler. I don't," you know, but to have it verbalized by someone else and explained and treated positively, it was just a huge leap for me in thinking about what's possible in the future.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:34

That's so interesting. But I think that that's... I feel like that's a big part of what we do, and when we're working with people is really just, actually, almost everything that we do is just helping people align who they actually are with their work and understanding the ways to do that. Because that's a lot of what I just heard you say, is, "Hey, wait, this is actually a good thing that I am this way. And there is other ways to be able to use that to your advantage."

Sarah Hawkins 11:06

Yeah, yeah. And embracing it will make me happier. And more fulfilled if I embrace it instead of trying to fight it. And I think that's what I've been doing my whole life is trying to fight it. And that's something that needed to be disciplined out of me, you know, kind of a thought process. And I was just never very successful at doing that. So, yeah, just really, I'll be happier if I can just embrace who I was created to be. And that's a good thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:35

That is so cool. That is just, and I feel like for everybody that we work with, they eventually get to have that mental switch that you're talking about where they flip over and start thinking about what they do or who they are, or some of the things that they offer as a positive and start going with the grain rather than against the grain. That's probably the easiest way to describe it. But that is something that we, in a variety of different ways, everybody has it in, it doesn't always happen the same way. It's not watching the Emilie Wapnick video, necessarily, or whatever else it might be. But that is our personal goal is to have everybody have that moment.

Sarah Hawkins 12:18

Right. Well, yeah, I mean, and I think you guys provide so many different ways to make that happen. Or to at least facilitate that happening. I do think it does take somebody willing to do the inner reflection and the work. And it's not something where you're just going to sign up, and then somebody from Happen To Your Career is going to tell you what your perfect job is. And you know what I'm saying it's not something that you guys necessarily provide as much as you guys facilitate. And so the person that is wanting the answers needs to do the work to figure it out. And it's a lot of self-reflection, it's a lot of self honesty, it's a lot of looking at things the way you maybe haven't in the past, and being willing to be open to what is your inner self really, truly saying to you. And not just what you hear everybody else saying it should be. And I just think that's an important component. And I think you guys are really good at facilitating that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:18

Appreciate that. Well, I'm curious what, first of all, why, just to jump back here really quick and fill in some of the context, what caused you to want to make this last most recent change?

Sarah Hawkins 13:31

Well, I have had some really horrendous health problems, probably for the last, it's been last 20 years, but the last 10 to 12 have been exceptionally difficult, resulting in me needing to leave the workforce because I couldn't walk anymore and was in tons of pain, and bedridden for at least a year, probably closer to two. And it was a really bad I mean, pretty much praying to die kind of scenario. And so I had eventually come to the realization that I will never work again, you know, I can't even walk and I'm in so much pain. It's not like a wheelchair would help. I thought about that. And so my husband had his own business. And so miraculously, I found a solution to my health problems. And it's a long recovery process. But I've already made so many leaps and bounds back to life that I felt being called to go back to work. And so I had been helping my husband probably the last year or two in his business, but it's not anything I'm really interested in. It was just a way to help contribute to the family. But so I was kind of at a place where it's time to go back to work, you know, out of the house, which was very scary because I had to leave under the conditions of I can't physically do this anymore, which was really hard for me because I always take a lot of pride in my ability to pretty much handle what anybody needs. And to have to gradually be saying, "No, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that" until eventually, I had to come home and lay in bed all day for a year two, was a really, really difficult thing mentally for me and emotionally. And so it was extremely daunting to try to think about trying to get back into the workforce. But it also gave me an opportunity to think about what do I want to do because I kind of had this unique time where I'm not needing to report to another job, really, I mean, I'm working with my husband. But there's a lot of flexibility in that. And so I had the opportunity to really just kind of try to figure it out. Because when I started trying to look for a job, oh, gosh, it was so disheartening, it was just so hard to get your resume in anywhere. And my resume I knew was too vague, but it was because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I just threw everything I've ever done on there, to see if it appealed to somebody that could then approach me with an opportunity that maybe I would want, you know, because they didn't know what I wanted. And so it was really hard to tailor a resume. And so I started looking around to try to find services that could help me figure out what I wanted to do. And you know, it was reading all these articles on LinkedIn, and Glassdoor, and everywhere else just trying to figure out what do I even want to do. Because the idea of going back to just being an admin was just so... I just didn't want to do it. Yeah, it was just like, as I told my husband, I know I need to, I just don't want to at all, you know, and that's not any way you want to start a new job, you know, just something that you just are doing just to make ends meet, and you don't want to do it. So that's kind of what started me on the path of finding you guys was I was searching, you know, I'd contacted a few resume writer people, and just that I'm looking for somebody that can help me figure out what it is that I shouldn't be doing. I am capable of doing a lot, but I just don't know what the right thing is. And I need help. And most of them were like, "Oh, well, once you know what you want to do, we can help you tailor your resume." So I was kind of stuck. I didn't know where to turn, which was why it was so awesome when I found you guys because I was like, "This is what I need. I know this is what I need. And I don't know how they're gonna get me there. But I believe that they will." And so that's kind of what prompted the career change was getting back into the market after being out for, I think, I've been gone for four years from outside employment. And you know, prior to that I was seriously struggling. So work, in general, has a kind of a painful connotation for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:02

Yeah, I didn't realize the whole story. That's amazing, actually.

Sarah Hawkins 18:07

Yeah, it's been... It was definitely daunting, definitely scary. I mean, that's what I would tell everybody when they're like, "You're looking for a job?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm terrified. But I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing." So I'm gonna do it and just trust that it's going to work out. So that's kind of how I got here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:24

So when you started going through, and really trying to figure out what it was that you wanted to be doing, what was the hardest part of that process?

Sarah Hawkins 18:31

I think I still had some limitations in my mind, just because of my physical issues that are on their way to being better but aren't quite better yet. So I knew I was capable of certain things. But I wasn't necessarily confident in my ability to do what maybe I felt like I really wanted to do. So I did the work of going through to figure out my strengths, which was awesome. But it was hard. There was a lot of times that when I first looked at one of the tasks, I would just go, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what I want to do or what my interests are", like I just kind of... And so I really had to dig deep, I guess, and really just sit with it for a while and think about it. And when I was going to the grocery store thinking about it when I was working thinking about it so that I could kind of really force myself to answer the question as if I was in like a classroom or something. And the teacher was waiting for an answer. Like, I've got to come up with something. And so I would start and then before I know it, the thing would be full or it would be multiple pages, you know, where I was like, "Oh, wow. I had a lot more in there than I thought. I just never really..." I think, too, I had stopped when you're as unhealthy as I was and as sick as I was, you stopped dreaming, number one, and you stopped hoping for your future, number two. So for a really long time, I had stopped dreaming about a future, dreaming about what I wanted to do or, you know, even just like traveling or anything like that you just can't allow yourself to go there. Because where are you are you just feel like that will never happen. So it's just disappointment in store if you dream, so you just kind of shut it off. And so it was a really hard thing for me to start it up again, and start thinking about like, "Okay, if I could do anything, what would it be?" Because that's not been an option for me in probably 20-plus years if I could do anything because in my mind, I'm like, "Well, I can't do anything." So I have to temper it with what I'm physically able to do. And so that was really hard for me, I think, kind of getting out of that mindset of, there's a lot of limitations on me. And realizing that, okay, not as many as there used to be, and it won't always be this way anymore. You know, kind of getting my hope back for my future.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:57

That's like a huge... That's a massive, like, most people it takes 15 years sometimes to go through that type of mindset shift, I'm gonna call it, for lack of phrase right now. That's huge.

Sarah Hawkins 21:10

Yeah, it was for me. I mean, it really made a big difference. And, yeah, I just, I really... I learned a lot. I really learned a lot about myself in terms of, I always knew I wanted to help people like that was something that I knew was always something I liked. But it wasn't until I really looked down at all my jobs, and all my projects, and all that kind of stuff, where we have to write down what was kind of the thing I loved about each of those that I saw the theme of, "Wow, I really like helping people." Like, it's really important to me because that's the thing I loved about everything I've ever done, but I didn't ever really make that connection before. And so for me, my dream was always back when I was healthier, right? My dream was always that when I retire, I would love to go do disaster relief, like hands-on helping people at their worst time. But that's a very physical thing. And so I had kind of written that off as well, you know, oh, well. And so I think when I was talking to Lisa, I had called her because it was the time to figure out what kind of companies, you know, you had to figure out what companies you wanted to approach. And I had no clues. So I knew what my strengths were now, which was great, but I still had no clue what I wanted, or what was would be a good fit for me. And I mean, I had like pages of possible careers that I was like, "Oh, I mean, maybe this would work. Maybe this would work, you know." And so I think she called it my runaway train of a mind of just being like, well, there's this, I mean, and they were all over the place, part of that multipotentialite thing, you know, where it was just like, well, I could be a writer, or I could be a logistics operator, or you I mean, it was just like all over the place. And so she kind of helped me zero in and I actually said out loud, which I didn't expect, but I said, "Well, my dream job would be disaster relief or something like that with nonprofit." And she was like, "Okay, hold on, then why are you looking at all these other things?" You know, and I said, "Well, I can't do that. I can't do disaster relief. Like, I'm physically not able." But then she kind of helped me steer me in the right direction of, "Okay, but then there's other things you can get into that can still fulfill that part of you, maybe in the nonprofit world that you can be making a really big positive difference in people's lives that isn't as physical, maybe look in those areas." And so that's what I did. And that's how I got this job. You know, I'd never even really considered nonprofit before, it just was never even anything in my radar, you know. Now I'm going to be the Operations Coordinator for CASA which stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. And so they work with trained volunteers, they pair them with some of the children in the foster care system or that are going through the court system. They're appointed by judges to kind of pair with the child and be the voice and they advocate for the child. So the child's best interest is their only focus. So they don't care what mom wants, they don't care what dad wants, or grandma or anybody like that. They just care what's best for the child. And so it helps the judge make better decisions in terms of what's in the best interest of the child. So it's a really amazing organization. And I would be the Operations Coordinator, and then hopefully in the next year, so bump up to the operations manager. So yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:34

It's super, super cool. And one of the things that I know behind the scenes, too, is that not only did you go through the interview process and go through the entire process really like going from deciding that, "Hey, nonprofit, for me, could be an option." But then you ended up getting the job and negotiating for the first time as what I understood too. Is that right?

Sarah Hawkins 24:56

Yes. I've never ever in my life, negotiated, did a salary deposition anything. I was always of the mind, which part of it and I don't necessarily know where it comes from other than maybe my health problems. I mean, those started probably in fourth grade. And I had a hip replacement in my freshman year of college. And so there's just been a lot of things that just, I think, kind of whittled away my confidence. And so generally, when I would get a job, I was just so grateful that they picked me, that I didn't want to rock the boat, I didn't want to look ungrateful, I didn't want to look greedy. I mean, a lot of the things that are typical, but I just never, ever would dream of negotiating. And so you guys kind of gave me the confidence that it's okay. And you can go about it the right way that there aren't bad feelings. And I definitely stressed about it ahead of time. But I did it because I felt like I needed to push myself in that way and try. And if it didn't work out, then that's probably wasn't the organization for me anyway. And so I did, and they were very receptive and did what they could. And we ended up kind of restructuring the job title. And so the job I was interviewing for was Operations Manager. And so when the salary came in low, I came back and just said, "Well, this is what I was hoping for" you know, kind of did your script and just said, "What can we do to bring this up to get closer to what I'm, you know, looking for?" And so they said, "Well, honestly, not much." And there was a variety of reasons for that. But they said, "Well, let us talk about it and see what we can do." And so they called me back and said, well, they bumped it up slightly, the set opening salary, but then they said, "What we would do is actually demote your title." At first, you're kind of like, what? I'm sorry, I've negotiated. But they said, "We'll demote your title. And then in a year, that opens you up, puts you on a path that you can then get a promotion to Operations Manager, which then would benefit." They would be able to give me a larger bump in salary with a promotion than they would be able to do within the same role as like either a starting salary or a raise.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:16

Based on their infrastructure and their board of directors and everything else like that.

Sarah Hawkins 27:20

Yes. So yeah, so it worked out. I'm happy. I felt like they were willing to work with me. And they're excited about having me come on board. And, you know, because that was a scary thing for me too. Because I was thinking, "Well, I don't know, if I just barely edged out someone else. I mean, I have no idea. And then if I'm being difficult, are they going to then just go with their number two?" And so that was something that was really difficult, really hard for me to just kind of trust that I can handle this. And I can do it in such a way that I don't appear difficult. And it worked out.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:50

Almost a roller coaster that you end up going through in the end you're like, "Yes, I want this job. This is awesome. I don't want it to go away. What if I was gonna.." Yeah.

Sarah Hawkins 28:00

And when I talked to Lisa, on our negotiation call, she was like, "So how are you feeling?" And I said, "Honestly, I just... I had really hoped that there would just be one piece of this that wasn't so hard, you know, that I didn't have to sit there and negotiate or I didn't have to, you know", because it was just something I really didn't want to do, you know, and so it was just kind of I was really, it really took the excitement of the role out of it for me that I was going to have to negotiate because I was like, "Hey, I got an offer." But then it was like, "Oh, they're gonna make me negotiate." So it was like, you know, it was really a roller coaster is a perfect way to put it. I was happy. And then I was devastated. And then I was scared. And I mean, it was just all over the place. But I put my...

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:41

But you did it anyway.

Sarah Hawkins 28:42

Yeah. Anyway, so now I've done it. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:47

Hey, congratulations, again, by the way.

Sarah Hawkins 28:48

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:49

Like that is just super, super cool. I knew part of the story. But I didn't know the whole thing. And that is just what you've done is, actually a lot of the things that you've done, are things that most people won't do over their entire life. So I think that's something to be proud of, personally.

Sarah Hawkins 29:06

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:12

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:04

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

Speaker 3 30:10

I've been looking on LinkedIn at like different organizations that I think might fit the bill like what I'm looking for, and I'm struggling to find a whole lot of things. I've also just been doing Google searches like to find different places to look into.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:23

If there were only a list of organizations that fit exactly what you have identified that you needed out of your next role, wouldn't that be nice? Would that be amazing? This is the point during a career change where so many people get stuck. How do you find the right organizations? I mean, you don't know every company in the world that exists. So how do you know which ones are gonna fit your ideals or align with your values? And how can you find them when you're sifting through every single company in the world? Well, it turns out there is a way to find the organizations that actually might fit, maybe even lists of them. You just have to do some detective-level sleuthing investigating to be able to find those. Let's walk through exactly how to do that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:12

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.

Laura McLernon 00:01

If you come at someone with, like, the "I'm looking for a job" mentality, or like "I need to get out of my current job" mentality, it's hard because they don't know who you are, or like if they can help you or not. And so it makes for a really awkward conversation.

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

When you're trying to step into an entirely new career, relying on your current network doesn't always cut it. And it's a situation we see all the time. You're really excited about diving into a new industry, a new role, but you feel like you're starting from scratch when it comes to building relationships or building a network, and you have no idea where to begin. And your familiar safety net of connections no longer applies. So how do you begin to create new meaningful connections from scratch without seeming extremely awkward or like you're using them to get a job?

Laura McLernon 01:25

How can I build a network in an industry or in a location, or in a role where I have zero contacts from the ground up, and realizing that a network isn't just something you already have, it's something that you can go and actively build in a new field?

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:41

That's Laura McLernon. Laura has worked in many different roles, including partnerships, consulting, training, benefits, and in industries including tech, federal government, education, fitness, and market research. And now, she's a career coach here at Happen To Your Career, and she's phenomenal. And she's also a military spouse. So she's had a lot of experience moving to brand new places and building a network from the ground up. And as you can guess, all this experience combines to make her quite a formidable career coach, and an expert on networking in unknown places, and industries. I want you to listen as Laura walks through her career and explains how she used what we like to call 'test-driving conversations', to build relationships, and pivot into new roles and industries again, and again. And now she gets to use all of this wonderful experience to help our clients do the same thing when they're looking to move into much more meaningful work. Here's our conversation. And she starts out sharing just a little bit about how she took a pretty winding path into career coaching. I think you're gonna love it.

Laura McLernon 02:56

So my career first began in market research, I worked for an international market research company. And it was... I started working there in 2009. So it was like, you know, big time of a recession. So it was one of those things where like, you know, you leave college and you were lucky to have a job. So I felt like I was one of the lucky few. So in that position, I was attracted to it because I had studied international business and international affairs. So it had that global aspect to it. And that's one of the things I love is seeing diversity in the workplace, diversity of thought, as well as like learning about different cultures, different countries, all of that. So the position did have that. But what it didn't have was a lot of the kind of the guidance and structure I needed in that first position. And I felt like, you know, it taught me a lot of things like how to build a training program from the ground up. But I found that I really wasn't interacting with people in the way that I wanted to. And at the end of the day, the subject matter just didn't excite me. And that's when I knew, okay, it's time for a career change. But then it's like, oh, wait, how do I do that?

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:06

What did you find at that point in time as you're having those questions where you're like, "But, okay, I know it's time. But how do I do this?"

Laura McLernon 04:16

Exactly. Right. And so the default thinking is you go back to college career center ideas of making your resume look great. And thinking that if you take just this one like career occupational test, it's going to spit out one answer. And then you just look for jobs that are like that. So I think in this day and age of the internet, I just thought if I Googled enough, I was gonna land and figure it out through Google what my next career move should be. And it wasn't until I stumbled and stumbled many times over in that year-long process that I figured out it's not about finding one answer or even a couple of good answers, it's about experiencing and being able to really get a feel for something before you commit to it, and to see what something resonates with you and something that you could love doing just by being able to immerse yourself in that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:13

So at that point in time, how did you start to do some of that within your career? What did that look like? What went well? What maybe didn't go as well?

Laura McLernon 05:24

Yeah, exactly. So one of my biggest challenges that I've had throughout my career is just that a lot of times I would have very boxton thinking. And part of that comes from the fact that I'm married to someone in the military, and we'd move every two years. For me, that was a challenge, and saying, "I have this, like, giant thing that I have to also factor into the process." And even then, there's been some stigmas for like hiring military spouses thinking we're going to leave after two years. So I kind of started pointing my career and looking at remote work options and saying, "Okay, what could I really do in that space?" And this is around like, 2013-14. So remote jobs were definitely sparse at that time. So I really had to think of, "Hey, how can I find something they love to do that's going to fit in this remote capacity? And that's also going to check these other boxes that I'm looking to in my career?" And so that's when I really started researching things like job search tactics, networking tactics. And that's also when I learned that I might not have a great network right now, and I might be brand new to a place, but how can I build a network in an industry, or in a location, or in a role where I have zero contacts from the ground up, and realizing that a network isn't just something you already have, it's something that you can go and actively build in a new field?

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:45

Let's talk about that for just a moment. Because you and I both agree and have had those experiences where that is very true that being a network isn't just something you have, but you can grow, you can build those relationships, you can cultivate them. There's lots of ways, not just one way, but many, many ways to do that. And what I'm curious about is, what's a particular time or situation where you found that to be true? How did you go about beginning to grow your network?

Laura McLernon 07:16

Yeah, I think back to the word networking, like, if you were to Google image search networking, you would see like people in business suits like handing business cards to each other.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:26

Very awkwardly but with huge smiles. And that's...

Laura McLernon 07:30

Exactly. Right. And I think that's the image that I had back then and I hope that people have cleared from their minds. Because networking is a lot of times done in an online space now, yes, in-person networking events still exist. But something like LinkedIn is an extremely powerful tool to be able to find people who have profiles that you would be interested in talking to. When I say profile, not just their LinkedIn profile, but having a similar background to making a similar career change, maybe you have something in common with them, like they came from your same undergrad or same hometown, and just being able to have that as a directory of people that you could possibly reach out to, and ask them questions about their career. So that's what I found. It's not just about going to a networking event and passing out a business card. It's about being able to find people and ask them questions, and really be able to conduct strong informational interviews and learn about what's their career been like, how did they made a switch from one industry into another.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:30

Tell me about one of the times where you've done that.

Laura McLernon 08:32

Successfully or unsuccessfully?

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:34

Both. I love the answer it was gonna be successful except for you throwing that out there. So now both.

Laura McLernon 08:42

Alright, so with the successful one. So I just found that coming from a mentality or coming from a position of... I'm doing personal career research, right? It takes the like, "I'm looking for a job" pressure off the table, and someone is much more willing to answer questions about themselves when it's in like a light-hearted, "I'm just doing personal research setting." So I use that opportunity to reach out to people and ask them questions about, "Why did you like working at this company? What is something that you did in making your career switch from this seemingly unrelated profession into the one that you're doing now?" And it was through those conversations that sometimes I did find like, "This isn't a space I don't want to go into. I don't like what they had to say. And it doesn't feel like a good fit or picturing myself doing their job, I don't think I would like it."

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:32

What's one of those spaces that you decided, "No, not for me."?

Laura McLernon 09:36

So like my default when I was doing my job search was let me stick to market research and just try a different setting. And that was like the obvious one because it's what I had done and I already had experience in, and in talking to someone who worked for a large market research company. Their job sounded a lot like the one I had and like the grass isn't greener within the industry. So I was like, "Okay, I can like close this avenue. I don't need to go down there anymore. Let's try a new one." And the field I ended up going into after that was working in the Sports Fitness technology area. And I'm a runner, I've run marathons. And so that, for me was something where I was like, "Okay, this might be interesting to see what it would look like to work in this space." And through that when I actually did in-person networking, because I had found myself a bridge job at a running shoe store, a bridge job is like one that, you know, you're not going to do for forever, but gets you from point A to point B. So I was working at a running shoe store, and I would talk to all the sales reps when they came in. And I would inevitably, like end up asking them about like, "How they got their job, what they like about it, what they don't like about it." And so that got me really interested in working in that industry and what it might be like to work in one of those positions.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:44

Very cool. Let's talk about your marathon experience first. I'll tell you that my mom tells me it's around, like, mile 19 to 20-ish or so where she has run a lot of marathons. I've never run, I've tried half marathons, but she says that's the exact point where she starts to question, "is this going to happen where your body just starts to give out in some ways or another?" So first of all, I'm curious what that point is for you.

Laura McLernon 11:14

Honestly, it depends. Like I've done three marathons and I think it has a lot to do with like how the temperature and weather is going that day, and how the scenery is around that time. If you get like a good crowd, like there's a lot of people or like, it's great scenery, it probably distracts you from that. And I think when you get into the boring parts or where they're kind of sparse, or you're like running like a Chicago Marathon, you're running to this industrial wasteland type area, you're like, "This isn't very inspiring." So I'm starting to think more about the pain I'm feeling. But yeah, it's interesting how, training-wise though, I always try to do like negative splits. So in the first part, I started out slower and saved my energy so that anything I have left, I'm dedicating to the last half of it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:55

So that's the other reason I bring this up. Because what I found is that making an intentional career change where the goal is meaningful work that compensates you well, that is a great fit for, not just your work life, but your all-around life. And from a holistic point, it fits. And if that's your goal, I found that it is very much like training for and then running a marathon in many, many different ways. So I'm curious about that for you, you've run more marathons than I have, as it turns out, so we'll go to you for the voice of experience here. What would you say is similar about it? What do you believe is different?

Laura McLernon 12:38

Oh, yeah. So I would tell past career coaching clients all the time, "It's a marathon, not a sprint", right? We've all heard that analogy. And it really is. When you do a career change, you have to prepare yourself for long-term thinking, in terms of being able to know that this isn't going to happen overnight, you're not going to find that one answer in Google and then be able to move forward and push through quickly. It's going to take a lot of time and dedication, each and every day, or a significant number of days of the week, to spend a little bit of time doing those things that are going to help move you closer to the career change. So you know, when you see someone run a marathon, that's months and months of preparation, it's also clearing their schedule to a lot of time for that. It's also making sure that they're doing the things like giving their body proper rest and nutrition. So I would say it's the same thing with career change, you know, you see someone make a big switch from one industry to another, one job to another, and that took months behind the scenes of doing the work to discover things about themselves and then be able to conduct personal research, personal experiments, and then move closer towards maybe even an interview stage and then landing the offer.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:52

As a complete side note.

Laura McLernon 13:54

Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:54

Have you ever run one of the Rock and Roll marathons, perhaps?

Laura McLernon 13:59

I've done a half with them, but never full.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:01

If I ended up running a full any point, I would love to do one of those just because, what you mentioned earlier, the scenery, as you call it, in this case, I think they do a phenomenal job of putting together this overall experience. All the ones that I've run with them have been... they just have bands every, sometimes every quarter mile. And you got so many people that are cheering you on and everything and it really carries you. And I think that is also, in many ways, like making a large career change where if you have that group of people, and they are carrying you forward in many, I don't know, figurative and sometimes literal ways, then it gets so much more, if not easier, at least possible.

Laura McLernon 14:53

Yes, absolutely. Because just like in a marathon, occur change. There's going to be times where there's not a lot of activity, or like you feeling stuck, or you're hitting a brick wall, your body locks up. So we're using the marathon analogy here. And so having people around you, cheering you, seeing that they've done it, this is a trusted experience that you're going to make it to the finish line that can make all the difference and feeling like there's a light at the end of the tunnel when you're having those moments of doubt in the process.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:23

At what point did you realize that coaching was a great fit for you?

Laura McLernon 15:30

Yeah. So fast-forwarding to a job after the one where I worked in the fitness technology space, I found myself living overseas in the Middle East. And I took a job where I was helping people that were transitioning out of the military. And my job was to help educate them, get them set up for success with their VA benefits. So like things that are entitled to them once they leave the military. And one of the benefits that I talked about the most was education benefits or GI Bill, it's a great education benefit. And so inevitably, we would have these conversations about their next education, which would lead us to end up talking about career. That wasn't necessarily part of the job, but that became part of it. Because how can you not talk about your future education without talking about your career? So it was a moment where I was talking to someone about their education and career after the military. And we ended up getting really sidetracked and talking about career and this person had like, really relevant military experience to the civilian world. She had worked in broadcast casting, telecommunications, and I just started like talking about ideas, like, "If you have this kind of experience, you can do something like this, this, this, this, this or this." And it was like this lightning bolt moment that hit me that was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm having so much fun with this conversation. Like, this is really cool." And just to see how what I was telling her wasn't obvious, like, it was also a lightbulb moment for me that, "Hey, this is hard for people. This natural ability that I have, and this skill I personally have had to build as a career changer, this could be helpful to other people." And that's kind of when the clip for me that this is something I was interested in pursuing– full-on as a career coach.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:15

How did you, from there, begin pursuing it full-on, as you said? What were some of the next steps you took?

Laura McLernon 17:22

So I knew in the back of my mind, it was something I wanted to pursue. And when I left that job, I was like, "Okay, this is my opportunity." And another thing that was interesting about that job was I had worked remote for the entirety of my career, and this job was in person. And I had this like, things stuck in my mind that I have to work in personnel because I loved doing that in that job. And so then I kind of gotten this retro, I was like, "Oh, but I have to work in person, and I want to do career coaching, that's really going to limit my opportunities." Like I need to be okay with this remote thing. And I think that that's something that I've talked to my clients about in the past, too, is that a lot of times, we get one idea about our career, and we get stuck on it. And like we have these different 'must' in our mind. And really, when you dig deeper, it's something else. And what I was really craving in my career was one-on-one conversations, not necessarily being remote or in person. So I thought to myself, "Okay, I want to do career coaching in the one-on-one setting. Am I even qualified to do that?" That was like my next question. I have done job searching myself, I know a lot. And for the past two years, I have volunteered for an organization where I had helped people through resume reviews, like LinkedIn reviews, so I was doing it on the side as a volunteer, so kind of like a career experiment itself. And so I was like, "Okay, I need to find a remote career coaching position." And I also kind of want to work part-time because I had my daughter at the time. And I want to work with people one-on-one capacity. So I did use Google searching, like, only in like, lightwaves. Yes, to be like, "Where can I do career coaching in this capacity? And am I qualified?" And what I ended up finding was naturally not through Google searching, through LinkedIn job posts, okay. And this is something I tell people, looking at job postings can be helpful in doing research, but not with the mentality of, "I'm gonna apply for this job" just being like, what's out there. So I would type in the word career coach, and different organizations would pop up. And I kept seeing that one of the organizations that was hiring career coaches was coding bootcamps for profit education, where they needed people to help their new graduates transition from one career into the other. So I was like, "Okay, this is an interesting space. Let me explore it more." And so that's when I did my deep dive and I came up with a list of who are the 20 players in this space. And then I went further and be like, "Okay, who hires remote, who's like remote first versus who's in person?" You know, obviously, if they're in-person in New York City, I can't work there. So I then made my list even smaller, and then I started doing the networking aspect of asking people like, "Do I need to have a certification to work at your company? What kind of profile do you look for in hiring career coaches? Do your coaches work part-time? What kind of hours do they do?" And I ended up finding the company that I worked for. And I did an informational interview with someone that worked there. And they said, "Look, we're not hiring right now. But I'd love to just chat about what we do." And so I did. And it was interesting to hear, it was interesting to hear about the way they worked with their students, one-on-one, how people were making these life-changing career switches from seemingly unrelated professions into software engineering. And, you know, I thought, "Wow, this would be a space I would love to get into." And I was lucky enough that two weeks after that call, they sent me an email and said, "We have created a position. Would you be interested in applying?" And of course, I said, "Yes." And it went from there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:47

So let's talk about a couple of pieces of that, that works. One of the things that I have found myself saying many times over the years is, instead of going and looking for what opportunities are out there, necessarily, find the place that you want to be and then put yourself in the position so that a position can be created for you, or put yourself in the position so that when somebody who can help you or hire you has a need, you're the first person that they think of. And I think that's exactly what you did. You went and, initially, you limited down to these 20 organizations could be a good fit. And then you started going through an investigating. And after you were investigating, you found out information and some of them didn't work. Now, in some cases, people might look at that as a failure. "Oh my goodness! I have to cross this off the list. This didn't work. Oh, my goodness." Yeah, it's actually great. That's fantastic. Because it allows you to hyperfocus what you did. And then from there, it allowed you to be able to say, "Okay, how do I focus on these relative views and find out what would make me an amazing candidate? And do I even want to work in these places?" And then it sounds like, at some point, you've scheduled conversations with people to go in. And one of those turned into exactly that spot where they created a role and said, "Hey, we really think that you could be it." Does that right?

Laura McLernon 22:17

Yes. And I will say in that process of doing research, you know, playing with that list of 20, it's great when you can cross them off because you can't go work for 20 companies, right? Like you need to be pointed and intentional, there's gonna only be one. So in that, the first thing I did to get that list down was I was like, "Who doesn't hire remote?" Okay, now we're down to about 10. And then I kind of, you know, wanted to know more about what they did, their quality of work. And so I went on a website that gave reviews of these schools. And so I was reading what students had to say. And you can see that some students had great things to say about their career team, and also the coursework. And so that was something that I said, "Okay, this is really good to know, this is good information." So when I was in the interview stage, it was just a very easy thing to do to look back at my notes and pull up the fact that, "Hey, I've read about you all on this website where students gave reviews, and I love seeing what your students say." And I don't think many candidates do that type of thing. They don't do that level of research. But I did it for the interview, I had already done it when I was looking at the companies. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:22

Okay, so we just went through that in approximately three and a half minutes, that whole process, if you will. Also, you and I both know that even though it makes for a really nice, linear three-and-a-half minutes, it's not always that easy compared to what it sounds like. So my question to you is, what do you feel like some of the biggest problems or challenges that you've experienced in working with clients? What pops up along the way? And what can we do about those?

Laura McLernon 23:54

Yeah, so I think that one of the biggest mental switches that I really drive clients to change early on in the process is looking for a job, change that to personal career research, right? Because if you come at someone with the, "I'm looking for a job" mentality, or like "I need to get out of my current job" mentality, it's hard because they don't know who you are, or like if they can help you or not. And so it makes for a really awkward conversation. So something we touched on earlier with the like, bad informational interviews or bad outreach. I think I kind of started with that mentality. And so coming at it with the personal career research mentality, it's great because like the person can help you, they already know that they can help you by sharing their story and sharing their experience. So that makes it easy for you to learn and for them to share what they need to tell you. And I've just found that even if you learn something that you don't want to do, that is very valuable research to you, too, because it's helping you point in the direction where they could give you a tip of like, "Hey, if you're really not interested in this particular space, I would suggest this one or look over at this company" and you never know where some of those conversations can lead you, or help point you in the right direction towards your next helpful conversation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:17

In the last 10 years that we've been doing this at HTYC, I found that phenomenon, kind of fascinating, really, that as soon as we flip the switch into, "I am researching. I am experimenting. I'm collecting information. I'm in that type of mode", then all of a sudden things become possible. That's a really, really fascinating thing. It becomes possible to then actually learn what is great for you versus just trying to fit into what you perceive is available out there. But then the other thing that is really phenomenal too is as soon as you start to get some of those inputs and sets of feedback that allow you to really clarify what is right for you, then you start being able to see where those opportunities are, and then it becomes possible to make or create or find one of those opportunities where it wasn't possible before. So it's this really weird situation because everybody knows that they're supposed to do that, like, "Hey, we'll get into experimentation, and I'm going to experiment and collect information." But it's easy to say that, it's much more difficult to, as you said, flip the switch into that mode.

Laura McLernon 26:32

Yes. And one thing I tried to illustrate for clients is the fact that you already have these skills, and you do it in other settings. So let's say that you decide that you want to sell your house and move to a different neighborhood, like you would ask a lot of questions, right? You'd be like, "Where could I find a realtor? What's the housing market looking like? How can I find a mortgage lender in it?" And you ask all these questions, and you do all this research in the same way that you would for your career. But somehow a career like people pump the brakes, and they're like, "I can't ask questions about that, or like people don't want to talk about that." And you'd be surprised how excited people are to talk about themselves in their career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:10

This really... I was gonna say really fascinating study, but that's not quite the word I'm looking for. Interesting at best. But there's this study that looked at how much time we research various types of consumer electronics, like TVs, or, you know, iPods or computers or things like that, and then comparing that to the time that we spend researching our careers or other large life decisions. And it was actually really kind of saddening when you look at the data, most people in the entire world who spent way more time researching the huge flat-screen TV compared to all of those other large life decisions. But what if we flip that? You buy all the TVs, have to pay somebody else to research the TVs for you. But to your point, those skills are there, it's the same thing. It's just different activities.

Laura McLernon 28:03

Exactly. I thought you're gonna bring up the other research that relates to that when you do informational interviews, and you talk to people, and you get them talking about their career and about their life, they've done like brainwave studies. And when someone talks about themselves, it's like the same components of their brain lights up as if they're on like, crack cocaine. Like people love talking about themselves. So if you can drive them to talk about themselves, and their career, like, it's actually like a brain pleasure experience for them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:32

It's one of the reasons that when we are getting people to talk about themselves that they have a higher positive association or higher chance of a positive association with you, and you didn't have to say anything. So ask a few questions. No, don't use that for manipulation, use it for good. But it is definitely a tool in the arsenal because it helps you collect information while at the same time as creating the beginnings of these really wonderful relationships.

Laura McLernon 29:06

Exactly. It's a win-win.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:08

It is a win-win. The other question I wanted to ask you, too, is when you're talking about research, or you're talking about experimentation, it's easy for us, as we mentioned earlier to say, "Hey, that's the mode that I need to be in." But what have you found actually works for yourself or other people to actually be in that mode? Too different, subtle differences, but it can be really challenging from a mindset perspective because we all feel like, "I need to know the answer so that I can go find the answer", which sounds insane. And it is insane. But that's what we do. Like I need to have it all figured out so that I can then go ask questions and look really good to give this person who I'm talking to something to... I don't know.

Laura McLernon 29:51

Right. Yeah, great question. So I think that like a lot of times, like, I need to have the answer first. I think that there is definitely some self-discovery you can do beforehand before you start investing quite a bit into time into something. And then of course, through conversations, right, that's like very low time commitment-wise. But something else that I kind of stumbled into in my volunteer life was I found myself a volunteer position where I was doing career coaching. And it was the same time I was working that job where like the conversations would gravitate towards career. And it was through that volunteering where I was seeing volunteering, maybe five, seven hours a week that I was like, "Okay, I'm actually like gaining experience in this. And I do like this." And it was one of those volunteer commitments where if I found that I wasn't enjoying this, or this wasn't something that spoke to me, I'm sure I could say, "Hey, I volunteered my time, thank you very much." But I kept volunteering with that organization because I enjoyed it. And in my work life, I was doing my job. And conversations would kind of go into career, and I would talk about it. And so within my, you know, eight to four job, I was also having those kinds of conversations and immersing myself in that. So I found a way to kind of do it a little bit at work, and then outside of work. And in my career coaching for software engineers, I would always encourage my students, whenever they graduated from the program, to seek out volunteer coding opportunities. And some people would say, like, "I just spent a lot of money in the school, you know, it's hard for me to think about working for free." And I tell them, "Look, all you have to do is commit for, you know, tell the volunteer organization, I can commit seven hours a week for the next two months", and they're like, "Great. Free coding, free Software Engineer sounds good." And you get something on your resume. And then on top of that, you get to immerse yourself in the field and see what it's really like to work day in, day out. So you know, those all take a little bit more time. But if there is a way that you can find some of those volunteer opportunities, that can be a really great way to immerse yourself and give yourself a timeline of a start and an end that you're going to do that. So it's not like this is ongoing forever.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:06

Those projects, well, honestly, I think that's one of the best things about projects is an indefinite commitment. It's a potentially a lower period of time that you're committing to, it's not forever. I think that's a different thing about projects.

Laura McLernon 32:23

Yes. And that's what I think a lot of people have a hard time deciding to do. It is like, "How can I make room for this?" Like, for infinity, it's like you don't.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:34

Sometimes not even that. Well, let me ask you another question, too. If you were to go back to where put yourself in the spot where before you knew all the things that you know now, maybe even back to that first career change that we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, where you're like, "Okay, I'm pretty sure I need to make a career change here. Not really sure how", but put yourself in that mindset for just a minute. What would you advise people to do that find themselves in that place where they know that they need to make a change, they're unsure where to start, what advice, encouragement, what would you guide them to do with them?

Laura McLernon 33:13

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first part would be just giving them the self-assurance that like, this is very common, and you're not an outsider, or you haven't failed, like, this is something that a lot of people go through. So normalizing it, number one. Number two would be, just letting them know that self-discovery is very important. And this is the time where you can take a step back and say, "Look, I've got to think beyond the skills that I'm doing in this job and think about who I am as a person, and what are the unique talents and abilities that I have, regardless of what job I'm in." And then the next thing I would tell them is just have conversations, have these networking connections where you can build relationships with people who are working on things that you think you might want to do or that you're interested in, but really just don't even know how to get there. And through that personal research and asking those questions, you're going to start to get a couple ideas of what to do next.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:24

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:16

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

Speaker 3 35:22

I had just tried so many different things trying to find my niche, trying to find my thing, you know, that I was made to do, and I just never found it. And I just felt like I've been looking for so long and trying for so long, and I've never been able to find it. So it must not be a possibility for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:40

As you're listening to my voice right now, that means that you have experienced some kind of setback in life, maybe many setbacks. And what I've learned is that it's not really about the setbacks. It's about how we react to those setbacks that makes the difference between either reaching our goals or letting them slip away. Now when it comes to career change, even high performers are bound to stumble across a few obstacles before ultimately reaching their new career. In fact, I would say that high performers even will encounter more obstacles because they're often reaching higher. Turns out this is exactly what happened to Sarah Hawkins.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:22

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.

Jorge 00:01

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

Introduction 00:22

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:47

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

Jorge 01:18

It was very exciting to, for the first time in 40 years of life and 20 years of career, that I find something that I wanted to do. Previous to that experience, I was more of a whatever opportunity comes my way I will take it and that'll be it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:41

That's Jorge. Jorge is from Colombia and has worked in the technological space for over 20 years. He began his career in sales, moved to working as a translator converting Spanish documents to English, which eventually led him to traveling the world working as a partnership professional. When Jorge was surprisingly let go from a company for the first time in his entire life, he began to reevaluate in his career, his identity and wondered if he was on the right track. He was offered a new job less than two weeks after being fired. But for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue to pursue his career in partnerships. So he reached out to us and began working with our team to be intentional about his next career move. He was ready to take control of his career and figure out what type of work would feel more meaningful while also fitting into his life and allowing time for his family. In just a moment, you're going to hear our conversation where Jorge walks through how he conducted multiple experiments, multiple career experiments to pinpoint the path that was right for him. He did such a great job figuring out what would fit him best that ended up with, not one, but multiple job offers. And ultimately, he had to figure out which to choose when they all seemed like a fit, which was another challenge all in itself, right? Let's get into our conversation. Here's Jorge going back to the very beginning of his career.

Jorge 03:07

When my career started, when I just graduated from college, I was just a newly electronic engineer out of a public university in Colombia in Bogota, Colombia, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do, and mothers do what mothers do. So she started to put a little bit of pressure. And I was not in a hurry to start my career, but she did what she had to do. And I had a very close group of friends. And one of them had a company, it was a family company, where they were offering solutions for automation for factories. So basically, what they need was a salesman. And the agreement was a freelance contract, in which I basically earned what I commissioned. And I started to meet every factory, going from fabrics, plastics, brakes, selling these automation solutions. These were actuators, pneumatic, some stuff like that. And it was a great experience because I was outdoors, I was meeting people, I was meeting challenges, meeting many ways to produce solutions and things that people were using. So it was great. After that, I was contacted by a company that needed someone that who translate documents from English to Spanish. And I said yes, and I started just working again per contract. They pay me by based on translated. And after, I don't know, when you were 25 manuals being translated, they say "Hey, you know what, you well translated all these manuals. We need an instructor that actually helps us to onboard many of the instructors that are going to be part of a new project. So would you like to get out of your country and come to Canada, and then go to Venezuela?" And that time that Venezuela was having business with a lot of countries. And I did that. I went to Canada, I learned how to use the systems then went back to Venezuela, and teach a lot of courses in power electronics, IT, and Radars (Air Control Radars). And it was a great experience. It was amazing. I got out of the country, I met many people. And I was teaching and exploring what else I could do with my career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:53

That's fantastic. So then you were in Canada. And what happened next? Where did you...?

Jorge 06:01

I went to Venezuela to actually do the work, just onboard the instructors within the system, just teach them how to use the systems. And so they could replicate that with the several cohorts that they were going to use the systems. IT, power electronics, and air control radars. So that was very interesting. And of course, I mean, I met them. And this was the state-owned, non-formal education of the country. So technical education. So basically, all the electricians, air control, traffic personnel, IT, like at the level of support, and stuff like that. So these were technical roles. So they needed to train the next generation of those people. From there, when I left that company, I started to work again with by the chance of luck with multinational organizations. And I went to a big project from Lockheed Martin with the Colombian National Aeronautics organization for the change of air configurators in the country. That was a big experience, it was a one-year project that taught me a lot. When I finished the project with Lockheed Martin and the Civil Aeronautics of Colombia, the next transition was to a big seller operated in the country, the biggest one in the country, which is a regional operator is owned by a family, the same family, you may know them, Scott. And I entered into the wrong department. During department basically, as an engineer, I had to make the test, the technical test to ensure that the connections, the signaling, the voice, and the data was working fine. So any user of another network will run into our networks and our users will run into theirs. So basically, if every test was okay, we sign an agreement of collaboration in which we allow that and both companies will gain revenue out of that. So that's the basic partnership deal. Later I knew that that was going to be my first approach foreign ships. And that will define later on my interest to work and develop in the partnership space.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:32

So here's what I'm curious about. What was the role that you were in or the situation that you were in that led up to you making this most recent career change?

Jorge 08:43

I got the opportunity to work for a big company that is the leader in detection technology. And for that role, I had to do a bit of a mix between project program management and partner management. And I did both things with, I will say, success within the organization. And everything was going okay, the numbers were going fine, the projects were being delivered, but the pandemic hit. The pandemic hit and things started to change. The supply chain started to become slower. The raw materials become more scarce. And the different demands for equipment was starting to become less and less. Let's say that volumes lower down and the company made the decision to cut some roles. I was in it. And that put me in a situation that I have never been before. I had several career transitions, but this was the first one that it was forced on me. I mean, I was let go. So it was the first time that I was fired from a company. And being the first time at mature age, because I was fired when I was 42 years old, for me, it was a scare, it was scarier, it was challenging. And much of my identity was tied to the role. So it was very difficult to actually absorb the experiments. So I came to the conclusion that I needed help to actually make that integration and to understand and move forward, I was not going to be able to do that myself. So that's where I started to look for options, coaching options, and a couple of companies came up and Happen To Your Career came in a podcast, and you were discussing precisely that, how to make career transitions and how scary they were and how you kind of know where to get help from. That conversation made me decide that Happen To Your Career was the place that I wanted to seek that support. So I reached out and I started to make the career transition. But the funny thing is that I was fired. And two weeks after I was fired, I was offered another role in a startup to develop partnerships. So I said yes because I wasn't sure at the time that I wanted to pursue, that I wanted to continue to pursue my career in partnerships. But I liked it. So I said yes. And during the exploration phase of the Happen To Your Career process, I found out that partnerships was the thing that I wanted to do. And I was in the right space. The only thing is now, okay, now it was a great realization. So okay, great. For the first time in several years, I know what I want to do. And now it's only a matter of finding where is the right place to do it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:17

So I'm so curious about that. Because, first of all, you and I both know that is not a small amount of work to get to that single realization that, "Hey, this is where I want to be." This is where I want to spend my time in terms of what functionally you want to be doing, working, etc. So that's awesome. And kudos to you for the amount of work that goes into that, even get that realization. And I heard you say that, at that point, it was more of a question of "where". Where do you want to do some type of partnership? And, what I'm curious about, though, before we go into the "where" is what allowed you to realize that partnerships was right for you.

Jorge 13:03

Yeah. When we started to make the strength assessments, several things came up that were very interesting, like the social aspect of my personality, how I wanted to help, contribute, collaborate. The other thing was the leadership, the leadership aspect, and how to bring that cohesion, that cohesive vision to teams.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:28

Sure.

Jorge 13:29

And then I started to kind of do that exercise where you make your interest, your strengths, and your passions, and where those kind of intersect. And I started to kind of link that to different options of roles that may feed those intersections better or less. And I remember that we did this with Phillip. And it was like, five roles. One of those was product management. The other was served as the labor management, sales manager, partnership management was there. And we started to assess several companies that had those roles. We didn't close immediately, we just opened the options. And we started to explore what companies may be needed in those roles. And based on the descriptions of the responsibilities and the challenges of those roles, we started to see what interested me the most and we made the checks that week. And it was not something like above just came out of nowhere. It was just that week after a week we were discarding those roles that were less and less interesting to me. And at the end of the day, the lease was clearly that partnership roles were the ones that actually feel the most expectations on my list. And I was like, "Okay, let me explore a little bit more of these." So I started to explore more, what was on the space, who were doing this type of roles, in what companies, what was the progression of these roles? And I was like, okay, so this is what I want to do now. And then I started to just focus on those types of roles.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:28

That is pretty great. So here's what I'm hearing, you initially started out with your strengths, and then defining what it is that you want. And then from there, as you started getting into what we would refer to as career experiments, one of the, it sounds like one of the exercises that led up to that along the way was our, well, we've got a couple of different names for this exercise, but in particular, it's like your strengths, passions, and excitements, etc, that exercise allowed you to realize that it was more in this area of relationships, partnerships, people, and that interacting with people in that particular way. So then when you went into experiments, later on, it sounded like you had five potential areas that you had identified. And then every single week, as you got more and more information, as you were identifying smaller scale experiments that allowed you to chip away at each of those five roles, or five ways to contribute, we'll call it, and then you kept finding that you were left with the partnership's type of roles. Is that right?

Jorge 16:38

Yeah, exactly. And for me, the approach was, what roles would actually include the most of my interests? Because I tend to see things in a potential way. I like to see things in a variety. For me, variety is important.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:56

Yes.

Jorge 16:57

So the roles that were including most of those things, those were that actually we started to keep. And in those that were less, we started to trim away. So it was a list of roles in which partnerships, the partnership that was included. And then we started to chip away those that led that reduce that variety. And partnerships just paid the bill.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:27

I appreciate that. Because a lot of times, it's not obvious how this happens. And to your point, it was many, many weeks, where we're chipping away at the marble in order to come out on the other side with the statue that is sort of shaped like partnerships, in one way or another.

Jorge 17:45

Exactly. And I started to make calls, I talked to product managers. I started to get to colleagues that were doing sales. And I started to try to understand how would I fit into those rooms. And it cannot always, every conversation that I had with them, it was like, "But I can do that where I'm standing." And "But I can do that with what I'm doing." And if I develop this skill, or if the field keeps progressing, as it seems to be progressing, I'm going to be able to be exposed to these other things. So that level of potential that the role had during the experimentation, which is, it involves also research because you do a lot of this by research and experimentation is also by research, ducking and finding out that it was also affected.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:43

Very cool. So you went through a variety of different types of experiments. And I think to be clear, it wasn't just you set up one experiment, and then boom, you had an answer. And voila, skated off into the sunset. It was an entire series of experimentation that even got you to this point that we're talking about right now. So what do you feel like for you was most surprising or most challenging during that process? What did you find?

Jorge 19:16

Well, just, I mean, the most surprising thing was just realized that I ended up when I started. That was the most, like, surprising thing. But at the same time, it was very exciting to, for the first time in 40 years of life and 20 years of career, that I find something that I wanted to do. Previous to that experience, I was more of whatever opportunity comes my way, I will take it and that'll be it. But now that realization come, it was different because focus is key.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:59

That is really cool for so many different reasons. But it sounds like this was almost a dividing line, if you will, in your life where you are now for your career, pursuing things in a much more intentional way where you're seeking it out, as opposed to evaluating what is coming your way and saying, "Do I want to do this or not?" One's very narrow focus in terms of its binary, it's yes or no, do I want to do this? Which is very different than saying, "Okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to identify where in the world, what organizations, what opportunities are available for me to do what I want to do in the way that I want to do it." Which is the new stage of your life that sounds like that you've entered. Is that right?

Jorge 20:50

Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. It was a very different approach. It was the vital line. It changed the way I see how my career will develop in the next few years. It gave me, I don't want to say like purpose, because I kind of had before, like a general purpose, you know?

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:15

Yeah.

Jorge 21:16

I have been working in my career since 10 years ago. I made a conscious decision on upscaling every year and looking at ways to become a better contributor to my career as an engineer or as a commercial person. But it was more of a "what is on trend, what are other people doing? Okay, I'm gonna do that." This time around is different. This is okay. This is under my terms, under my conditions. I'm going to upskill myself, and I'm going to continue what I was doing 10 years ago, but it is going to be focused on this goal, on this framework, or on this picture.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:02

But I think it's, I mean it's very much the difference between intentional and what's available. Nicely done. That's not a small feat at all.

Jorge 22:15

One of the things, one of the conversations or recurring conversations that I have with my friends and my family, is how it only took me four years of my life discovered what I wanted to do when I grew up. So it is not a lesser thing. But it cracks everyone I tell this story, because, okay, it took you just 40 years. Cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:43

Now, the reality is I think most people are in that place, it's just not socially acceptable to talk about it.

Jorge 22:51

It might be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:53

Yeah. So I mean, I really think that's awesome. And obviously, I'm highly biased. So there's that too. But I wanted to ask you about this other piece of your story, too. Because after you did some initial experimentation, after you validated that partnership, and that type of interacting with people and that type of relationship building is right for you. After you have that validation, it eventually led to multiple job offers, right? If I understand correctly, four of them. So, what I'm really curious about is for people on the outside looking in, help us understand what you were evaluated. And when you got to the point in time where you had multiple offers coming in, and they rarely all come in at exactly the same time on the exact same day. So, emotionally, it can be up and down as you get another one and another one. But help me understand what you were going through at that time and how you evaluated what would in fact be right for you.

Jorge 23:56

Yeah, that's cool. And just for clarification, it was not four just three.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:01

Okay.

Jorge 24:02

Three offers.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:02

Three offers.

Jorge 24:04

And it was, I think it was a wave, you know. Most likely the job market has these waves, in which there are a need for certain types of skills and there is a search, and if in a lot of words and then it goes down. So when we started to, we were clear intention, we were clear on the path that I wanted to take. So now it was time to focus. So what organizations are looking for this type of role? In our mind, it was clear that he was tech companies, software companies, technology companies that we wanted to focus so I decided to network, apply, and an interview. And although that process led to the first wave of three companies selected me to go to second and two of them or to the third stage, and then silence, nothing happened. So I was like, oh my god, what is wrong here. So then it was a low, and like, downward spiral or trend that nothing happened. And we just kept having conversations, kept connecting, kept sending emails, kept sending applications, and all of a sudden one came back. And they interviewed me and they passed me to the second stage. And between second stage and third stage, it took them a long time, and then another came up, and they say, "We want to move very quickly." And they moved me very quickly, up until third stage. And at that point before third stage, and final offer, another company came in, "We need you, and you are a perfect fit. And this is the offer." And I was like "Wait, wait, wait." Let me process this because I mean two other processes that are well-advanced. And I need to take this one step at a time. So they say "Don't worry, this is a structured company, a structured process, but you seem like a very good fit. So I'm going to schedule you for the two phases because I know that you're going to need them. And we are going to go through the adding and we're going to talk." So I went through the two phases, like in a week or something. And then when this company, this last company made an offer, I was going to say to the other two that, "Okay, I had an offer. Okay, you guys want to continue this or not?" But I was going to do that with the second company. And then I received that offer. So I had two offers. And I was like, "Okay if I have two offers, wouldn't it be cool if I had the better one to just compare the whole three?" And that's what I did. And I call the dealer one and they say, "Yeah, your offer is ongoing. But it's going to take time. If you can give us the time to give you the offer, then..." they told me, "you're not going to regret it." But the other two started to, you know, that they already extended enough. So it is started just press and press and press so I can have gain time, like two weeks or we can have to study the offers. Phillip came into the picture, we reviewed them, we kind of compared them, we matched them to the strengths and what I was looking for as an ideal, and we waited. That we want to make this to wait more and expect that there are one or do we want to just take a decision. So I say I want to wait. So let me test one more time if they're willing to extend the offer or not. And they wanted two extra weeks. So I said, "No, it's not going to cut two extra weeks to try an offer." So I say "Thank you, not thank you, I'm not going to be able to wait for your offer." I declined that. And I remained with two offers. With those two offers, I compare them. One was very interesting, but it was in a NASA field, technology field. So the chances it was a very, very good offer, but the chances of new technology and the new space, it was risky. So the second one was in a very established industry ripe for digital transformation. It had several factors that appealed to me. But as usual, you have some doubts, but at that point, you cannot... I mean the time of experimentation ends. And sometimes you need to make a leap of faith. So with the information I had, I chose the third one that they offered. And here we are.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:09

First of all, that it's challenging to, if you haven't been in a situation where you have two or three or four offers, then it's hard to appreciate the almost up and down sort of roller coaster type of feelings. It really is. So it's a really wonderful situation. It also creates desirable problems where you're trying to evaluate, "Hey, do I continue to talk to this organization?", "Do I not?", "How well does this line up?" And to be able to make ultimately decisions with limited information. However, I think here's the thing that a lot of people miss that is really really cool about your situation. At this point, you had already gone through no small amount of work. So you had already decided that, okay, functionally, in partnerships will align much, much better with where you want to be spending your time. And then you'd already gone through some measure of vetting these organizations. So you had at least an inkling of an idea that these organizations could line up with what you wanted. So it wasn't as if you're evaluating three offers that just had come to you and said, "Hey, all right, we really want you to, we really want you to be here." And you're like, "Well, I don't know, maybe." It was a you-sought-this-out and then got all the way to three different offers that you'd already validated to some degree, what that they had portions of what you were looking for. So that's really cool. I just wanted to acknowledge that upfront. And so in that situation, if other people find themselves with multiple offers, what advice would you give them? What helped you through that process? What advice would you give them overall?

Jorge 31:02

I will say that, in that situation, or in any situation, that you have several alternatives to date, there has to be some inner conviction, inner values or core values that serve as a core that you go back, without that, every single decision in your lives gets complex and complex. And I think that reviewing those core values, reviewing those, that purpose that you have, helps you to assess the decisions and make those decisions, assess the opportunities and make the decisions. But even in that case, you may not make the right decision. And that's okay. Because what you have is a core value, you are so open to re-evaluate your own purpose and core values, but also to accept that whatever expectations you may have, when you make the decision may change. And those changes may not be bad. It's just another opportunity to grow. And to continue that experimentation, which in life, I think, and we were talking about this, and we were discussing where we started to talk, I guess that is a main component of life, just continue to experiment, and continue to test life experiences in life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:30

Well, I think what's really fun is that as you accept, like, I don't know, you did all of this really wonderful work. And as you got to the point where you had multiple offers, and then used all of the information that you had accumulated to make an educated decision about which way to go, is that as soon as you accept that, that new role, that new opportunity now becomes the next experiment. And then you get to see, and I think you've done a really nice job with us over the last six months, you get to see...

Jorge 33:03

That's a great way to put it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:08

I think that for people who are way back where you were before you made this most recent change, and they are wanting to make their first intentional career change, what advice would you give those people about the career change? Or how to even think about this more intentional way of living or working?

Jorge 33:34

I think that if I'm not sure if I'm qualified to give advice, but I'm gonna give my best. If anything is, you need to have a curious mind with yourself. And that is not always something that it comes across as something you need to do. Most people tell you to be curious about the world, but few people tell you be curious about yourself. So I think that if anything, be curious about yourself, be curious about what you want, and can, and excel, and will excel to give to the world because every single one of us has great potential. So if anything, just be curious about yourself and be willing to explore and be willing to discover that potential to that experimentation that you so great described as the next step. Just continue experimenting.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:39

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:32

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

Speaker 3 35:37

If you come at someone with, like, the "I'm looking for a job" mentality, or like "I need to get out of my current job" mentality, it's hard because they don't know who you are, or like if they can help you or not. And so it makes a really awkward conversation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:52

When you're trying to step into an entirely new career, relying on your current network doesn't always cut it. And it's a situation we see all the time. You're really excited about diving into a new industry, a new role, but you feel like you're starting from scratch when it comes to building relationships or building a network, and you have no idea where to begin. And your familiar safety net of connections no longer applies. So how do you begin to create new meaningful connections from scratch without seeming extremely awkward or like you're using them to get a job?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:33

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:01

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

Introduction 00:17

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:43

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:03

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:41

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:08

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:56

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:04

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:48

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:19

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:35

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:24

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

Speaker 2 36:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:46

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:19

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

Amy Dickerson 00:01

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

Introduction 00:18

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:42

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

Amy Dickerson 01:10

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31

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

Amy Dickerson 03:06

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:37

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

Amy Dickerson 10:45

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:11

Absolutely not.

Amy Dickerson 12:12

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:50

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

Amy Dickerson 14:32

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:25

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

Amy Dickerson 15:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:05

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

Amy Dickerson 18:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:34

Just another 15 years, just most of the lifetime.

Amy Dickerson 19:38

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:05

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

Amy Dickerson 24:19

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:53

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

Amy Dickerson 25:02

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:40

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

Amy Dickerson 27:52

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:42

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

Amy Dickerson 28:53

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:06

As it turns out.

Amy Dickerson 29:07

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:06

I love that.

Amy Dickerson 33:06

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:41

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

Amy Dickerson 35:02

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:38

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:37

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:23

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

Introduction 00:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:30

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:52

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:43

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:13

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:46

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:59

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:18

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:00

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:36

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:35

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

Bob Kalish 00:01

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

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:45

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

Bob Kalish 01:50

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:10

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

Bob Kalish 04:01

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:18

That's amazing. That was your son?

Bob Kalish 04:21

That was my son.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:23

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

Bob Kalish 04:34

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:09

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

Bob Kalish 05:21

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:53

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

Bob Kalish 06:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:43

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

Bob Kalish 07:49

Well, 24 years at one company.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:51

Oh, 24 years at the same organization.

Bob Kalish 07:54

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:17

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

Bob Kalish 08:28

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:34

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

Bob Kalish 10:05

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:22

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

Bob Kalish 12:24

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:59

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

Bob Kalish 14:37

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:42

You're not the only one.

Bob Kalish 14:43

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:26

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

Bob Kalish 17:17

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:58

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

Bob Kalish 18:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:38

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

Bob Kalish 20:06

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:23

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

Bob Kalish 23:14

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:08

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

Bob Kalish 25:23

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:32

It creates that connection, right?

Bob Kalish 26:33

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:25

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

Bob Kalish 28:53

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:25

I am not surprised at all, Bob.

Bob Kalish 29:28

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:32

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

Bob Kalish 31:04

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:55

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

Bob Kalish 32:25

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:53

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

Bob Kalish 35:34

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:27

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

Bob Kalish 37:42

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:48

Yes, as it turns out.

Bob Kalish 37:49

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:15

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:07

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

Speaker 3 39:13

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:25

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:52

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

Bobby Grimm 00:01

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

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44

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

Bobby Grimm 01:39

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:49

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

Bobby Grimm 02:27

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:35

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

Bobby Grimm 04:43

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:01

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

Bobby Grimm 05:11

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:50

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

Bobby Grimm 07:36

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:33

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

Bobby Grimm 08:40

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:52

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

Bobby Grimm 10:04

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:49

I could really see you digging into it for sure.

Bobby Grimm 10:52

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:44

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

Bobby Grimm 12:26

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:40

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

Bobby Grimm 17:58

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:41

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

Bobby Grimm 21:58

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:59

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

Bobby Grimm 22:25

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:23

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:15

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

Speaker 3 26:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:35

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:42

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

Jason Bollman 00:01

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

Introduction 00:17

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:42

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

Jason Bollman 01:37

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:56

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

Jason Bollman 02:58

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:23

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

Jason Bollman 04:32

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:21

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

Jason Bollman 05:28

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:07

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

Jason Bollman 06:27

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:42

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

Jason Bollman 07:48

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:17

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

Jason Bollman 09:59

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:48

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

Jason Bollman 11:04

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:16

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

Jason Bollman 12:29

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:53

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

Jason Bollman 14:25

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:14

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

Jason Bollman 17:36

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:51

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

Jason Bollman 20:00

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:20

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

Jason Bollman 21:54

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:54

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

Jason Bollman 22:15

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:24

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

Jason Bollman 24:06

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:13

Amazing. Anything else that you want people to know?

Jason Bollman 25:18

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:34

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:26

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

Speaker 3 27:32

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:46

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:42

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