Themes discussed in this episode

• Normalizing career uncertainty
• The importance of self-discovery
• College isn’t always the right choice
• Ways to stay motivated in the career search
• Skill-building > job titles
• Handling rejection and career stress

Featured Guest

Expert Guest: Kerry Doyle, the Career Dad

What He Does: He helps parents and teens explore their intended career path before wasting thousands of dollars on college tuition. He’s not anti-college, but he helps young people consider the many career avenues available since college isn’t the best choice for everybody.

Connect: You can find him on LinkedIn and his website

Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show

4:00 – Normalizing career uncertainty: Knowing your career calling in your twenties is VERY uncommon. It’s better to explore what you might be interested in to find the right fit rather than search for that perfect career.
9:00 – College isn’t always the right choice: From trade schools to excellent jobs that don’t require degrees, there are tons of options out there. College may not be the right choice for you; it’s just a matter of doing your homework and exploring your options. Kerry can help you do that!
10:00 – The importance of self-discovery: Strengthfinder assessments, career counselors, and talking to people in your intended industry are great ways to figure out the right career path for you.
18:00 – Handling rejection and career stress: Consider rejections as learning experiences. Take the lessons learned, learn to pivot or shift directions, and keep it moving.
23:00 – Skill-building > job titles: Entry-level jobs and jobs that aren’t your dream job can be the best option because they teach you tons of skills AND can get your foot in the door. Don’t turn down a job just because it isn’t perfect.

Top Quotes

6:40 – Kerry: My advice is to look for that experience beforehand, before you make the investment. I’m not against college. Do some homework before college, something that you’re not used to doing. Get out of your comfort zone. And don’t assume that college is always the right choice.
7:30 – Kerry: We’re responsible for our careers, our own lives. It’s not the teachers and parents anymore. It’s us.
10:00 – Kerry: You can connect with them digitally, you know, through LinkedIn or something, but explore and get in conversations with people, go meet with them in person or through Zoom or something, and find out what it’s really like.
12:00 – Kerry: There are a few reasons I wouldn’t put all my weight into the assessments. One, it’s a snapshot in time and our personalities and our interests change over time. It’s also based on theory. Yes, it’s based on statistics and behavior and surveys and other things, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to sync up with you.
14:00 – Lori: A good career counselor is probably an even better option. Someone who can sit with you and ask you questions like, do you like to make things with your hands? Are you a woodworking kind of person as a hobby? Well, then maybe skilled trades would be a good place for you.
18:00 – Kerry: You take those moments that are difficult and you look at them as learning experiences and say, okay, I need to strengthen that or maybe shift here, pivot here, whatever. But it’s all a data point.
20:00 – Lori: One of the things that I would suggest people do is find people in the industry that you think you’re interested in. Connect with people either that you know or on LinkedIn and ask for an informational interview.
22:00 – Kerry: Anything new to us can be scary, and it usually is. But that fear gets magnified the longer we think about it, the longer we overanalyze it. Once you take the action, that fear gets reduced. And the more action you take, that fear gets reduced and reduced and reduced to zero.
23:00 – Kerry: If you get to know more people, whether they have an opening or not, they will refer you to somebody else when they hear of an opening. So the side door, the stepping stone jobs, that’s more likely to happen than going to a job posting and saying, oh, there’s my perfect job. I’m going to apply for it and get it.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Transcript

00:00
Lori
Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot. Today, my guest is Kerry Doyle. And Kerry is starting a business called Career Dad, right? Is that what it’s called? TheCareerDad.com. Yes, Career Dad. TheCareerDad.com.

And so what we want to talk about today is how it can be really difficult to find the right career path when you’re just out of high school or in your early twenties. So we’re going to focus on what happens after you’ve graduated.

Maybe your friends went off to college or maybe you went off to college and decided it wasn’t for you. Or maybe you’ve been out of college for a few years and you still haven’t found that sweet spot where you belong, you make good money, and you’re happy. And what I want to start out with right off the bat is finding the right career is not as easy as people make it seem. Right, Kerry? It’s just not that easy.

01:00
Kerry Doyle
Correct. Sorry. Yes, it’s not that easy. It can be simplified. I think people overcomplicate it. But even when it’s simplified, it’s still not easy because you have emotions and other things that come into play.

Lori
Yeah. Right, and the perfect job that you think would be great for you might not be a fit, or it might not be available when you’re ready. So I’ll tell you a little story about my early career days.

I envisioned being a radio DJ. I was going to be on the radio. I didn’t even think about television. Had a broadcast degree, really loved radio, loved the whole DJ thing. And then I realized that in order to make it in that business, you basically have to work in teeny tiny towns, making teeny tiny money, sitting in a room by yourself. And I’m a major social animal. I’m like, I just love being around people.

02:00
And so what happened when I got out of college is I was kind of at a loss. What should I be doing? And I decided that advertising was probably a really good place for me. So I sent out, I’m serious, probably one hundred fifty resumes. That was back in the day when you sent out a paper resume in an envelope with a cover letter and you waited for them to call you back.

And I got a call from that first batch of a hundred that I sent from a company that did outdoor advertising. Now that’s billboards. And not only was it billboards, which is the poor stepchild of the advertising media, but it was outdoor advertising ads. targeted to the black ethnic market, which back in the eighties was not very popular. And it was on the sides of liquor stores and grocery stores in the city.

And I, I had no choice. I needed a job. I took the job and I was so lucky because my boss in that position basically taught me everything I needed to know about sales. It was absolutely amazing. I really had a lot of fun in the job. Um, I was, um, his punk rock account executive. He called me cause I had the hair and I was all like, you know, just out of college. And, and I stayed there for three and a half years because I learned so much. I was able to make a little bit of money.

03:00
And as soon as I started to get kind of bored and kind of like, okay, I need to look for something else and opportunity in television production came up. And that’s where I spent the majority of my career. Um, First out of college, first thing out of college, that wasn’t an option. I didn’t even know who to talk to or who to communicate with to try to find those jobs.

But once I was in the industry, then I kind of got the lay of the land. Three and a half years later, I kind of knew where to go and an opportunity presented itself. So the first thing that you end up doing that’s a career job might not be the career job.

So today we’re going to talk about a couple of things. We’re going to talk about how normal it is to be uncertain about your career in your twenties, some self discovery tips, building some resilience so that when you get the no’s that you’ll get, they don’t take you out. They might knock you down, but you stand back up and keep going.

04:00
And then I want to talk a little bit about how you can continue to grow your career once you do get that first career job. So, Kerry, let’s talk about how the current situation in society tells young people that, oh, there’s a job out there for you and you just go find it. Live your passion. Live your dreams. Is that realistic?

Kerry:
I don’t believe so, no. If you pick up many career books, talk to many career counselors, they’ll tell you, find your passion, find your calling, find your perfect job. And guess what? There isn’t one perfect job.

And in terms of callings, unless you’re in the clergy or something, it’s very rare as well. The responsibility is on us as people to find out what’s in the market and do the homework and find out what fits. And there won’t be just one perfect fit for everybody. There are multiple.

05:00
I mean, there are thousands and thousands of career paths, fields, and jobs. really depends on the situation so you might think oh I I like medicine I want to go into medicine and you get in there you get into the situation like yeah this isn’t quite the right fit well maybe it’s not medicine maybe it’s the people in that group you’re working with you know it can be so there’s so many different variables people want to find that perfect thing and it just doesn’t it doesn’t exist people will find the right fit after experimenting multiple times

Lori:
Yeah. And I also, I found a statistic that people will change jobs, most people, twelve or more times in their thirties. And when I think about that, I worked at McDonald’s, then I worked in media production, then I worked in outdoor advertising, then I worked in video production. And now I work in social media and I do a podcast. I mean, we all have lots of facets to who we are.

So you have to find a job that matches what your interests and talents are. Not always easy. So I also think some people make it look really, really easy when it’s not. So if you see people on social media that are out there, oh, I just got out of college, got my perfect job and I’m making millions. They’re not sharing the dark and ugly side of it, right?

06:00
Kerry
Right, right. Well, yeah, exactly. And the other thing is the default path is find something you’re interested in, get a degree, go out there. Well, you thought your DJ path was going to be different than it actually was after you got the degree. Yeah. um so the other things we all and then once you got into your outdoor job you said you learned everything from sales from the person you worked with, that’s how everything works.

Get experience and learn from the experience. It’s on the job experience. We don’t train people that way we say hey go to kindergarten through twelve and then plus four more years and a hundred grand and then go start working and get that experience.

My advice is look for that experience beforehand, before you make the investment. I’m not against college. I’m just saying do some homework before college, something that you’re not used to doing. Get out of your comfort zone. And don’t assume that college is always the right choice, right?

07:00
Lori
Absolutely. It depends on the career. For the last fifty, sixty years, it was pretty much the default path. graduate from high school, go to college, or you’re going to end up in a low paying job, that dead end job. It’s not the case anymore.

You know, I believe in education. I believe in higher education. I just don’t believe that is the default path. I believe there’s so many other options for education. And I believe we are responsible for it, not the college. They’re not responsible for finding us that perfect job. We are.

Kerry
The other thing is, Lori, as you said earlier, you didn’t know until you got there. We tend to lean towards careers we’ve been exposed to. Our parents, our friends, something on TV. We know what we’re exposed to. And my advice is get exposure and say, well, how do you get exposure? Well, Talk to people, network, explore. Again, we’re responsible for our own career, our own lives. It’s not the teachers and parents anymore. It’s us.

08:00
Lori:
Right. Absolutely. Well, and I want to tell a quick little story because my son, he really thought that he was going to work in corporate America in the automotive industry. He graduated from University of Michigan.

He had done a internship at Stellantis/Chrysler. He was overseeing dealership operations in their service department, and I think it’s called parts and service department. And he was excited. They had actually given him the three shirts with the three brands on them, and he was going to graduate and then go to work for Stellantis, and he was all excited about it.

And then the pandemic happened. And those jobs just disappeared. There was nothing there. There were no jobs. He went to get what he thought was his pandemic job as a service advisor at a Chrysler dealership. He knew all about it because he’d been on the corporate side in that area. So he went and got the job and he thought, you know, low paying, I’ll just kind of hang out here until Christmas. things open up a little bit in the automotive industry.

09:00
And what happened is fast forward four years and he is a service advisor on Alfa Romeo and Wagoneer. He’s making six figures. He is a hundred percent commission and he did not need a college degree for that job. What he needed was a passion for automotive and he loves helping people with their cars. And that’s probably the business he’ll stay in. He may become a service department manager. They make even more money.

But there are a lot of industries like that one that you wouldn’t know. I had no idea that a service advisor could make six figures and also that they were commissioned only. I mean, it’s crazy. But there’s a lot that you don’t know if you don’t explore.

So how do you suggest, Kerry, it’s based on your experience, how… young people, you know, before or after college can try to figure out what industries they’re most interested in.

Kerry
Well, I would recommend before or at least early on in college to explore more than, you know, after, after spending the hundred, hundred, hundred K. Yeah, we could have gotten away without spending that hundred K. So exploring, again, it’s not easy, but it’s fairly simple and straightforward. It’s doing things that may not be in someone’s comfort zone.

10:00
All the way through high school, people were given an assignment. Study, take a test, do a report, do an assignment, get an A. Life is good. Maybe do some extracurricular activities. Maybe join a sports team. it’s all pretty much spelled out for you.

So if you want to explore the work world, there isn’t a cookie cutter approach. It’s a bit of trial and error. We do have LinkedIn where I would encourage everybody, even in high school to get on LinkedIn and start networking and start exploring and have, get real conversations with real people. Everybody wants to be, you know, doing this with their phones.

Guess what? Use it the old fashioned way and make a phone call. You can connect with them digitally, you know, through LinkedIn or however, but explore and get in conversations with people, go meet with them either in person or through Zoom or something and find out what it’s really like. You would have found out if that existed back in the day, you would have found out what real life is as a DJ if you were able to do that exploration. We have so many ways to explore.

11:00
So anyway, LinkedIn is one, but friends, family, other social media networks actually make connections with people and talk with people. I just feel like the human contact, you know, we’re, I read something that says we’re digitally connected, but socially disconnected, socially isolated.

And I believe that, That is where young people are comfortable being digitally connected, but they’re socially isolated and they don’t have the same habits you and I were forced into.
You’d walk down the street and knock on the door and say, hey, you want to come out? Now it’s, you know, this on a phone. So, you know, it’s, it’s getting out, it’s, it’s some of it’s going back to, it’s using technology where it helps. But it’s, it’s doing some good old fashioned communication.

Lori:
And looking at your passions, what do you really love to do? I know I’m a social person. I’m so social that social media was just a natural thing for me to get into. I always loved to write. So I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer in any job I had typically ended up handling the marketing too. Sio lots and lots of writing, wrote a book.

12:00
What do you think about tools like personality assessments and, you know, those kinds of things, the, like, what color is your parachute? I think is a book out there that still gets a lot of kudos for being a great tool for investigating what your personality and skills, how they match up with a particular industry or career, right? What do you think of the tools that are out there?

Kerry:
Well, uh, I believe, and even, even what colors your parachute, which is probably the longest standing, uh, best-selling career book that has actually changed over time. And the author, uh, Richard Bowles, I believe his name is, he actually says, take, you know, you can use some of these assessments, but don’t, um, rely a hundred percent on them. Don’t, don’t rely heavily on them. They give you some information, some general.

But he also advises to explore on your own because there’s a gap and there are a few reasons I wouldn’t put all my weight into the assessments. One, it’s a snapshot in time and our personalities and our interests change over time. It’s also based on theory anything based on theory it’s yes it’s based on statistics and behavior and surveys and other things, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to sync up with you I’m naturally an introvert and a very shy person I.

13:00
You know, those tests told me I should be behind a computer or in doing programming or something. But you know what? I also liked to teach and I was afraid to stand up in front of an audience until I took a Dale Carnegie class and it forced me to do it. And I found out, you know what? I love teaching. And I love getting in front of people and talking to them, but I was scared to death to do it.

So if I relied on an assessment, they would have told me, stay behind a computer, stay behind a screen, do something that is not with people because that’s my natural inclination. But once I was exposed to it, I enjoyed it it scared me yes it was uncomfortable yes but I learned to really love it.

I feel like and uh the author of what colors your parachute also agrees I’ve read the I’ve read many career books um that one included um that there’s some good information but it’s not the end all be all you need to explore yourself.

Lori:
I think StrengthsFinders is a really good one for anybody on the planet, basically, as soon as you’re old enough to take that one.

14:00
Not because it’s going to tell you what career you should explore, but because it will call out what your strengths are. What are you really good at? And I found it to be so accurate. It gives you five strengths. What are you really good at? And what happens, if nothing else, is you come out of that experience of taking this assessment and getting your results feeling really good about yourself. And there’s nothing wrong with feeling god about yourself and your unique skills. So I would highly recommend StrengthsFinders. I know there are all kinds of different tools out there.

A good career counselor is probably an even better option. Someone who can sit with you, ask you the questions like, do you like to make things with your hands? Are you a woodworking kind of person as a hobby, well, then maybe skilled trades would be a good place for you.

The Carpenter and Millwrights Union has an apprenticeship program. Maybe that’s something to explore. And just because you explore it doesn’t mean you have to stick with it your whole life. I have had three very distinct careers in my life. And Kerry, I’m assuming you have too, right? You’ve had more than one.

15:00
So let’s talk about what happens when the search gets really hard. How can someone, a young professional or young wants to be, you know, want to be professional, how can they keep their inspiration, their motivation, their resilience when they’re sending out resumes and trying to figure out nothing’s happening? Because that will happen. It will happen.

Kerry
Well, a couple things. You know, you said it’s hard. It’s nothing worth doing, I think, in life is easy. Everybody wants the easy button. So I think understanding that and expecting that there are going to be challenges along the way, expecting that and understanding that up front is part of it. Yes. And then also being able to control what you can control.

16:00
You said you sent out one hundred fifty, two hundred resumes back in the day. So if you flash forward to today, we don’t send out paper resumes and envelopes and lick the stamps anymore. But we make connections with people, whether it’s LinkedIn, phone, in person, whatever. it’s still a numbers game and it’s, you can’t get discouraged on one. You, you have to do them over time. And then again, you control what, how many people have you reached out to? How many interviews have you gone on?

You can’t control what they think, how they react. All you can control is what you can do. So if you say, oh, I sent out two resumes or I made two connection requests on LinkedIn, I made two phone calls. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. Or even I made a hundred, but nobody called me back.

17:00
Guess what sometimes people are busy and you follow up that’s another thing I don’t think people are used to okay oh you know what they’re automatically going to call me back I emailed them or I called them they’re not they’re busy call them again it takes persistence and yes It gets exhausting.

Yes, it gets discouraging. It’s difficult. Again, but it’s a good life lesson forever because it’s not a one and done thing. That is going to be the rest of your life. I’m experiencing it now. I’m making a bit of a change myself. And it’s, you know, it’s, I think… It’s exciting and discouraging at the same time. It’s challenging, but it’s, you take that, you take those, I say, I shouldn’t say discouraging.

18:00
You take those moments that are difficult and you look at them as learning experiences and say, okay, I need to strengthen that or maybe shift here, pivot here, whatever. But it’s just, it’s all a data point.

Lori:
And one of the biggest piece of advice I would give people is just keep going. Don’t stop. And you may have to take a bridge job. You may have to take like that or advertising job. I thought I would be there for six months. I needed revenue for my personal revenue. I needed a job. I needed insurance. I needed the things that come with a job. So I took it. Did I expect to like it?

19:00
I actually had gone into the meeting, the last meeting I had with David Laster, who was my boss, who was an amazing human being. And to tell him that I wasn’t taking the job, but I had connected with him. I’d had three interviews. I felt like I owed it to him to tell him in person.

And that shows you what a great boss he was because he had created a personal connection with me that I felt obligated that I had to go tell him in person and walked out of there with a job. It was like, what just happened? I’m so fortunate that that’s the way it worked out because the things that he taught me, I use every single day. And a lot of it is relationships. I’m going to kind of veer off of our outline here.

20:00
One of the things that I would suggest people do is find people in the industry that you think you’re interested in. For example, I was interested in broadcasting. And find people, connect with people either that you know or on LinkedIn that And ask for an informational interview.

I know, Kerry, you and I both, if somebody, some young person approached me on LinkedIn, nobody ever does. But if somebody did and said, hey, I would just like to talk to you about what your aspect of the business is like, I would take a twenty minute, thirty minute call happily. And you’ll find most people do because you will stand out by asking for something like that. You will appear to be more of a goal getter kind of person. And it’s really helpful.

21:00
You don’t know who they know either. So don’t hesitate to reach out. It’s part of being in a successful career is being fearless when it comes to making connections. And you might as well start now. Even if you’re scared to death, do it anyway. I mean, that’s one thing I always, I lived by the mantra when I was in my twenties, feel the fear and do it anyway. because it’s not going to kill you. At least it probably won’t kill you. I don’t know. Maybe it would.

But most cases, you’re not going to die because you picked up the phone or you sent an email and you asked somebody for something. Give them the opportunity to say no. Don’t say no for them. I learned that in my charitable work. Don’t say no for them. Let them say no, right?

22:00
Kerry:
Absolutely. And mentioning fear, anything new to us, It can be scary, and it usually is. But that fear gets magnified the longer we think about it, the longer we overanalyze it. Once you take the action, that fear gets reduced. And the more action you take, that fear gets reduced and reduced and reduced to zero.

Lori
Until it’s just what you do.

Kerry
Exactly. And I’m glad you brought up the informational interviews. That’s kind of what I was leaning toward when I said make connections and conversations. I think you’re actually more apt to get a job in that route, being proactive when talking with people and creating relationships.

23:00
Most jobs are hired from people who know people. If you get to know more people, whether they have an opening or not, they will refer you to somebody else when they hear of an opening. So the side door, the stepping stone jobs, that’s more likely to happen than Going to a job posting and saying, oh, there’s my perfect job. I’m going to apply for it and get it. Be proactive. Talk to people before the job is posted.

Lori:
Yep. And I’ve, I mean, how many people have you heard that are C-level executives or, you know, on the board of these major organizations and they started out as the receptionist or the mailroom? There’s a reason they talk, you know, maybe they don’t talk about it as much as they used to, but the mailroom used to be a really big deal.

24:00
Mailroom was like the entry level position and those entry level spots, even if they aren’t exactly what you want to do, will get you in the door. And that’s part one. I mean, that’s the most important step is getting in to the industry that you think you might want to be in and playing around a little bit, seeing what, what you might be able to create.

So anything else that you would offer encouragement or anything else, Kerry, resources, let me know. What do you think?

25:00
Kerry
I will do that. Well, I think I’m actually creating a pool of resources at thecareerdad.com. And there are good books. There are good tools out there.

But I guess I would like to add an interesting little story since you mentioned the mailroom. I got my under undergraduate degree in marketing. So I wanted to go into marketing. My first job was Coca-Cola in marketing and I hated it.

So I worked there for a couple of years and thought marketing’s not for me. So I went back to school, got my MBA in finance. And while I was interviewing for jobs at financial firms, I worked in the mailroom at an ad agency because I knew the people there. And I was just part-time. I was working in the mailroom.

26:00
They made a joke, MBA, mailboy always. I was working in the mailroom with an MBA in finance. That’s great. And one of the vice presidents pulled me aside and said, Kerry, what are you doing interviewing these finance companies? He said, you don’t belong in finance. You belong in advertising and marketing. He says, we don’t have anything here because I’m going to set you up with an interview with a friend of mine at Donor Advertising. Would you go over there and talk with them? And I said, sure. I went over there, got a job. I never ended up in finance.

Lori
That’s awesome.
Kerry
The mailroom is where things start sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

27:00
Lori
And even the proverbial mailroom. Right. Which I’m not really sure what that means now. What is what is the mailroom now? It might be like an coordinator or a junior project manager. I mean, you just never know.

But I would like to just encourage you, if you are in that place where you’re in your twenties, you can’t find that that career path that you thought would be easy. Keep going. Consider bringing in a career coach. Consider, you know, really studying up on how to find that perfect career. Google is your friend. I would even say chat GPT is a great place to look for options.

28:00
If you do your strengths finder and you find that you have these five particular strengths. I would drop them into chat GPT and say, Hey, what job would I be great for with these five strengths and see what it says, but just continue to explore. Don’t give up. You will land in a great place. So any last words of wisdom, Kerry?

Kerry
I just, I’d like to echo your advice there and all of those things were great advice, but then if chat GPT or somebody points you in a direction, then you, reach out to somebody and actually talk with them and get that informational interview. Find out from their perspective what their day-to-day life is. And if you can shadow them for a day or they become a mentor, they’re happy to talk to you.

29:00
More people are happy to help you help young people out than you think. Yeah, they’ll make time. They will make time. Yes, exactly. And just don’t think you’re going to find that perfect job. You’re going to find something that’s a good fit for that, for that point in time. And then you’re going to grow and you’re going to learn and you’re going to probably adapt and change.
So yeah, nothing’s forever.

And have those twelve jobs before your thirties. Right. So it really, it does. We all have lots of them. We all have lots of them. So that’s what we’ve got for you today.

30:00
. Please visit my website at workmomsays.com. That’s where the podcast lives. You can go all the way back to the early silly episodes. They were really fun. We’re a little more serious now. And I also have a contact form there., If you have a particular question you’d like me to answer, a guest you’d like to suggest, or any other things that you might want to talk to me about, please get in touch with me there.

I am also an open networker on LinkedIn at Lori Jo Vest. And Kerry, you’re an open networker too, am I correct? Absolutely. Awesome. So catch up with us there. And thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Lori.

Who is our ideal listener?

This podcast is for young professionals, so they can learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

What value can people get from listening to this podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

                                                                                                     

Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.

Episode 26 – “The Origin of Work Mom Says (Plus a Sneak Peek at My Upcoming Book)” appeared first on Work Mom Says.