EP 169 | Power Career Moves with the Career Contessa

EP 169 | Power Career Moves with the Career Contessa

Welcome to episode 169 of The Retirement Years on Profit Boss® Radio! In this episode, we’re providing you with a proven guide to move forward and make power moves in your career.

With all the uncertainty and unrest in the world, and the changes people are making in their lives, whether out of necessity or by choice, now is a perfect time to make big changes. However, even though women make up 50% or more of the workforce and the workforce is less defined than ever before, there are still so few great resources on this topic.

Lauren McGoodwin, is an author, speaker, colleague, and friend. She’s the founder and CEO of Career Contessa, where she provides career development resources for women who are job searching, soul searching, leading, managing, or trying to find new ways to advance within their careers.

Today, Lauren joins the podcast to ditch the platitudes and talk about what it truly means to build a career that grows and changes with you, the unique challenges that women face when it comes to finding fulfilling work, and how to start making moves, big and small, to bring your life and career into alignment with what you really want.

Here’s what you’ll find out in this week’s episode of Profit Boss® Radio

  • The difference between “finding your purpose” and “finding your passion” (and which one Hilary absolutely hates!) – and what it really means to build a multi-dimensional career that grows with you and your interests.
  • Why many women find it so hard to find careers that they really love – and what Lauren learned from her extensive research in this field.
  • Why any move made proactively and with intention can be a power move – and why so many of the most successful and fulfilled women make intentional moves every day at a micro and macro level.
  • Why a power move doesn’t need to be dramatic or life-changing – and can be something as simple as asking for a mental health day, asking to sit in on a project, setting new boundaries, or learning a new skill.
  • The big lessons Lauren learned from launching Career Contessa in 2013.

Resources and Related Profit Boss® Content

Call for Listener Stories

Hey Profit Boss® Radio listeners! If you reach a financial goal you’re proud of, tell me about it! I will continue to share listener win stories throughout 2019. Remember, the Profit Boss® community is here to support you and that includes celebrating with you when you accomplish something incredible.

  • If you crush a specific financial goal, I want to hear from you.
  • If you’re thankful for something that has happened in your financial life or career, I want to hear from you.
  • If you are making big financial or career plans, I want to hear from you!

Your financial success is possible and so many of you are already making that a reality! So, don’t keep your wins to yourself! Share them with me so that I can air them throughout the year on Profit Boss® Radio.

Email your audio clip to media@hilaryhendershott.com. And we’ll be in touch if we plan to air your story. Thanks, ladies!

#AskHilary

And let’s not forget that this show is powered by you and your stories and questions. Every month I’ll be doing an #AskHilary episode where I answer listener financial questions.

  • So, what’s that top of mind money question that’s been pinging around in your brain?
  • Where have you been stopped?
  • What have you been arguing with your spouse or significant other about?
  • What tip or tool aren’t you sure about?
  • Do you have questions about saving? Spending? Budgeting? Investing?

Pick up your mobile phone right now. Yes, right now. And open your voice recorder app. Yep, go ahead and open that app and record yourself asking me that question. Just say your name, first name only is okay, and then what city you’re from, and then ask away.

Anything you want to ask. And once you’re done recording, export that beautiful little recording and email it to media@hilaryhendershott.com. I can’t wait to hear your questions!

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Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

Hilary Hendershott: Welcome to Episode 169 of Profit Boss Radio. Exciting stuff for you today. It seems like the perfect time given all the uncertainty and unrest and changes people are making in their life and being forced to make because of the coronavirus pandemic for me to be providing you resources to support you to move forward and make power moves in your career. So, here to help me in that endeavor is Lauren McGoodwin, colleague and friend of mine. She’s the founder and CEO of Career Contessa, and I will be giving away copies of her books until they’re gone so stay tuned for instructions about how to get us to send you your free copy of Power Moves. A little bit about Lauren. She founded Career Contessa in 2013 after experiencing a gap in career development resources for women who might be job searching, soul searching, leading and managing, or trying to find new ways to advance within their careers. After all, women account for 50% or more of the workforce and the workforce is less defined than ever before. So, it seemed crazy to Lauren and totally outdated that a resource for us didn’t exist, so she created it.

Lauren is formerly a university recruiter for Hulu. She has a Bachelor’s in Education and a Master’s in Communication Management. And she lives now in beautiful Redondo Beach, California, where she meets her 10,000 steps a day goal and lives with her husband. To claim your free copy of Lauren’s new book, Power Moves, just please leave me an honest review on either iTunes or Google or Yelp, and then visit the show notes for today’s episode at HilaryHendershott.com/169. Click on the link, give us your contact information, and we will send you a signed copy of Lauren’s new book. Now, heading into this season, it is, gosh, the beginning of September 2020, already the longest year ever in existence, and life sure has changed this year and I’m hoping I can help you change and transform it even more.

We’ll be talking more and more about my upcoming Wealth Multiplier course on this show and ways that you can get coaching from me and my team directly. I invite you to consider having this be the last year that money is an area of struggle for you, an area where you don’t get what you want. That’s what I’m most interested in for you is having you get 100% and more of what you want. Stay tuned again for more information about the Wealth Multiplayer course. You can also check out the sales page on my website. It is live today and find out more details about this six-month intensive one-on-one mindset and cash flow coaching experience. Enjoy my interview with Lauren McGoodwin.

[INTERVIEW]

Hilary Hendershott: Lauren, Miss Career Contessa, welcome to Profit Boss Radio.

Lauren McGoodwin: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Hilary Hendershott: I loved your book, first of all, and I noticed first off in the title the phrase Career of Purpose. So, what do you mean? What’s a career of purpose? And who are some of your favorite role models who are living a career of purpose?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yes. I feel like people either have a love-hate relationship with the word, you know, find your career purpose. And then like the other one they love-hate is find your passion, right?

Hilary Hendershott: I hate that one. I’m just going to tell you.

Lauren McGoodwin: No, I do too. And that’s why I find it funny because I think sometimes people read it quickly and they’re like, “Passion, purpose? Yeah.” So, I picked purpose on purpose because, for me, when I think about building a career of purpose, I think about building a career that aligns with your values and it intertwines with your interest and it’s something that you’re good at and it’s using your strengths and your skills and so for purpose, like when I think about building a career of purpose, it is multi-dimensional. It is something that grows with you as you change your life stages and your career interest changes. And so, that’s really important to me is not telling people to go chase down this one thing because we are not fixed beings. So, I think when it comes to building a career of purpose and people who were really good role models, I mean, honestly, a lot of them I put in the book there’s a whole chapter about power women, power moves, power women.

I mean, I have the best job in the world because I get to talk to so many women about their careers and how they got there and what they do. And so, for example, Rosanna Durruthy who’s now the VP of Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging at LinkedIn, like she’s built her career of purpose by following not only what she’s good at but also recognizing that anytime she gets to an inflection point, she follows her curiosity. So, I really appreciate people who are able to also articulate that this purpose isn’t maybe something they’ve written down on a piece of paper, but they can start to recognize like when they’re going to make that power move or when that inflection point is coming or when they feel like they’re kind of getting to that place where they need to bank a pivot. Usually, maybe they’ve hit some sort of status quo at work or something like that. So, I mean, there are so many examples of people who are doing, I mean, you’re an example of someone who’s doing work within your purpose.

So, they don’t all have to be entrepreneurs either and that’s also, I think, important to kind of showcase is that there are people who are able to work within their purpose and it’s not always for themselves.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, and when you say for themselves, you mean because they own the business, right?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, as an entrepreneur.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. And I think at that level, the level of the women you’re talking about, that their careers are entrepreneurial, that they’re doing what they’re doing inside a corporation that has many employees and other strategic objectives but that they’re engaging many of the same design techniques, tactics that entrepreneurs do. And by the way, how did you get them to let you publish those pictures of them?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yes.

Hilary Hendershott: Who drew those?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. So, someone who worked for us as a graphic design assistant one summer, she was awesome and we’ve stayed in touch. And she works with me on like any big, big projects we’re doing at Career Contessa and I was like, “I kind of have this big project. I have this book. Would you help me with it?” Because in the book, there’s a lot of like worksheets and graphics and illustrations and she helped me with all of them. Her name’s Paige Gutierrez and I went to her and I was like, “So, I want to include these interviews with women but I think it would be really fun to include illustrations.” I think she was like, I was like, “Can you do that?” So, we actually had to go back and forth a few times with some people who were just very funny about like is that what I look like? I don’t want to be that as an illustration. And the reason why I went with the illustrations, I was published as an illustration in an article like years ago and I was joking that I’ve never looked so good in my life is when I was in illustrations. So, I wanted illustrations but also, I did want to surely make that part of the book feel personal. These are humans that I’m sharing their stories versus like a worksheet and things like that.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, we got Paige a little shoutout, didn’t we?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yes. Paige is awesome. By the way, she can illustrate even though I don’t think she really wanted to do it.

Hilary Hendershott: Perfect. The reason why I asked about the word purpose is I think of it as somewhat synonymous with the word calling. So, your purpose on the planet or your calling on the planet versus find your passion, I think it’s kind of platitudinal but I worked pretty intensely with a coach last year and I’m currently in the process of redesigning my entire business around what I articulated as my purpose. And, yes, it already was purpose-driven. Obviously, I’m interested in empowering women around money, and so are you but defining it that specifically was super powerful and clarifying. So, I’m glad we talked about that. And it sounds like you’ve gotten some interesting reactions to the title you chose. So, why are women so challenged to find careers that we love? What is the deal? Did they take some people aside in high school and give them the secret keys? What’s going on?

Lauren McGoodwin: No. That’s the unfortunate part and a big part of my book is actually spent on this like pre-research, right? The research of like, how did we get here? Because it seems to be that all of us feel and when I say us, I mean, us women. And I should preface like I wrote this with a lot of research based on the millennial generation but even if you’re not a millennial, you’ve been shaped by some of these characteristics that have shaped the millennial generation because we’re such a massive generation that we naturally impact everybody else. So, whether you’re a baby boomer, Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y, like everybody is now being kind of shaped by these characteristics that kind of came about while the millennial generation was growing up. For example, like we were the first generation to be “tech-savvy” and to kind of have everything instant, on-demand. We were the first generation to grow up with sort of like more of us went to college than any other generation before that.

And that was when, of course, the education system started to change where it was no longer like, “Oh, just go to your state school and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg and there’s plenty of spots.” All of a sudden, it became really competitive, which meant a lot of people were raised to almost be like overscheduled. And so, what happens is like your whole life is there’s a game plan, you’re following it, you’re checking off the boxes. It’s kind of like this game of life or this game of school that you’re playing. And the promise or the sell is that, “Hey, X plus Y equals success.” So, as long as you have the X and the Y, you’re going to be successful.

Hilary Hendershott: That’s the rub, isn’t it?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. And so, what happens is for a lot of people is it’s about managing expectations and a lot of us experienced this expectation hangover. So, it’s not that we actually are so unhappy or that we’re not getting what we wanted or what’s out there. It’s that we were sold this “dream” of it was going to be like this you were going to have. And part of that is when I talk a lot about this in the book too about like ditching the myth of the dream job like it doesn’t exist. And part of that is because when you fantasize about this dream job or this dream career, it’s engaging and your boss is amazing, your commute doesn’t suck, and your coworkers are awesome and you’re best friends but like that’s not the reality. And so, what happens is like if you’re only fantasizing about all these positive pieces and there’s none of the negatives like hellish commutes, and absentee bosses, and co-workers who you just can’t communicate well with no matter what you seem to do, etcetera, etcetera, and even worse obviously for underrepresented groups, there’s discrimination that I didn’t even just mention. I’m just talking about like on a human level like not liking your coworker and whatnot.

So, we don’t imagine or those parts aren’t part of the fantasy and so then we’re not prepared for them. So, I think what I found at least and I kind of started the book like this is that we become obsessed with this self-improvement and thinking that like this is because we’re not working hard enough. This is because there’s something wrong with us. But really, the expectations are those things that kind of set you up to fail to begin with. And all of us were sold this collection of expectations that just don’t exist. And even if you went into it with your eyes wide open and being like, “Oh, yeah, I know that when I graduate is going to be tough.” You don’t know what you don’t know. And so, I think that kind of, in a nutshell, encompasses the whole first section of the book, which is in a lot more detail and specifically how we got here. But the message of like there was a woman’s book that I quoted in the book and it’s like women of our generation were told that they can be anything and instead they heard you have to be everything.

You know, that is very, very real about the messaging that we were sent, the media examples, the way our relationships were with parents, with coaches, the feedback. And while school might have been set up like that, work wasn’t set up like that. Real-life isn’t set up like that. And so, it’s kind of a dramatic expectation hangover that you have to experience.

Hilary Hendershott: Expectation hangover. I don’t want to say I like that phrase, but it is a phrase that I definitely don’t like the phrase but it communicates. It’s like, okay, you were expecting and I felt that too. When I was in my early 20s, I graduated, you know, I busted my butt and I got one B in college and seriously, when I graduated from college with a 3.9 GPA, I thought I can write my ticket. It turns out the joke was on me. So, let’s talk about power moves and obviously, power moves are leverage points. And you say you like to think of power moves as major or big, notable, or medium, and daily or small. The impression I got when I read that sentence is, “Oh, I got it.” So, if I’m taking Lauren’s coaching, I’m infusing my voice, my perspective, my choices, my conversations with these power moves, but essentially, advocate isn’t the right word but constantly being an advocate for myself and moving. I mean, I guess it’s a little bit of politics, but strategizing to move forward toward where I’m trying to go. What do you say?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. I mean, I like to describe power moves as their actions, behaviors, habits. They can be a lot of things but the main part is that they’re made with intention. So, you are intentionally making that move. It’s about being proactive versus reactive, right? So, whether you get up in the morning and you decide to go through a morning routine, that’s an intentional move that you’re making to set your day up for success or to help you be more focused or to get more clarity on what are the three things you need to prioritize today. That’s an intentional move versus waking up and just starting to react to everything that comes your way. And what I found in my research is that women who were successful and fulfilled which is a big, important piece there, they’re successful and fulfilled, they had a tendency or the thing that they had in common is that they were making intentional moves, not just at the big moments when you think it matters a lot, of course, but really, they were making these intentional moves every day on the micro-level.

And that’s really important because it’s the small steps, the small habits, the small actions, the small behavior changes that add up to the bigger ones. And so, it’s like if you want to do something big or you want to make big moves, I actually found that the best thing people can do is actually start by thinking small or acting small. And so, that is I think the importance of understanding power moves is that they’re available to anybody. Anybody can start making them today, right this second, and that they I think a lot of times when people think of power moves, they just think of the whole like walking out on your boss and quitting your job and then being like, “Oh, shoot, what am I going to do?”

Hilary Hendershott: It doesn’t have to be a power move they’ll make a movie about.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Of course, there are dramatic power moves and the ones that are life-changing but I always looked at this as like, well, if you’re going to make those life-changing big moments as big power moves, why can’t you actually be incorporating those on a regular basis? And that’s what they look like. I think part 2 of that question is like, “Well, then what does that look like?” And so, that was kind of what the book was about and trying to explore is like, “Okay. Well, what are these like daily medium and big power moves? And what does that mean?” And I do get to a point in the book where I start to talk about like you have to look at power moves as an overall approach to your career. It’s a way that you approach your career. I use this metaphor of like, I’m sure you remember, like when they would talk about, it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. It’s like power moves have to be the same thing. They’re not a quick fix. They can’t just be this one and done thing. They have to be part of your career lifestyle. They have to be part of how your overall approach moves in your career.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. And when I looked at your list of power moves, there were, for me, corporate life was so bad that it sort of kicked my rear end out of there pretty quickly, but I did make those power moves. You know, I had the hard conversations with my boss. I resigned from a position I hated. I did ask for a raise at one point but ultimately, I just went out on my own and that turned out to be right for me but it’s certainly not right for everybody. So, let’s give people some examples of the big medium and small power moves, and then there are some I have specific questions for you about. So, what are just a couple of big power moves?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. So, the big ones are, yeah, quitting the job that you hate, asking for a raise. For right now maybe it’s telling your employer, “I’m a black woman and what I’m going through I need the support of having a mental health day today like I’m grieving. I cannot come to work.” It’s doing another big power move could be asking to sit in on a project or join a project that maybe you weren’t invited to but saying I want to have a seat at the table. A medium-power move could be setting boundaries and saying no to something that you normally always say yes to which I know is particularly hard, especially for women. Another medium power move could be taking an online course of learning a new skill. I had a friend who her job is kind of just naturally coming to an end at the end of the project, and they’re not going to renew her. So, her medium power move is sort of saying, “Okay, what is it that I want to do? Okay, I want to invest more time in this skill.” So, she’s taking online classes in order to make that transition.

And then I should finish this. So, the daily or small power moves could be a morning ritual, maybe a nighttime ritual, maybe a daily power move for you is that you keep a work journal. At the end of every week, you write down three things that you’ve accomplished and three things that you learned or you wish you could improve upon or something. So, small is definitely more I think like habits and behaviors. As you get up to like the medium and the big, they’re more actionable, right?

Hilary Hendershott: Yes. Quitting your job is…

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Pretty clear how to do that.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, exactly.

Hilary Hendershott: Actually, a work journal was one of the things I did want to ask you about. Maybe you just answered the question. I said what sorts of things should you be writing in your work journal? At the end of each week, I write three wins and three failures. And that’s just I track that for my mastermind group that I’m a part of, but it’s a work journal. Three things you succeeded at and three lessons you wish you could have learned?

Lauren McGoodwin: You can really honestly do a work journal however you want. That works. I like to also think about things like did I get feedback on anything? What are the things I want to focus on next week? And a lot of times if people are making goals, I’m always going to recommend like if you’re going to make goals, make sure you have your employer’s buy-in so you’re aligning your goals with what’s important to them. The other thing for a work journal is you could track interpersonal skills like did you have any tough conversations? How did you feel this week? So, things you learn, things you got wins, things, events, anything that didn’t go well, all of that is helpful. There’s no real right or wrong way.

Hilary Hendershott: But you’re not keeping notes for your future HR attorney. You’re not…

Lauren McGoodwin: No. I mean, it always helps to have a workaround that you can kind of go back on because then you basically have this paper trail to be like, “Oh, yeah, I did kill it in that presentation,” or it was because I spoke about that thing that I was able to get on this project, which led me here. So, like it can help in your annual reviews. Absolutely. There’s also an interesting statistic that I forget where I read it, but it was like humans forget like 90% of what they learned within a week and like 75% of what they learned within like the next day. So, by keeping a work journal you’re also like going to be able to kind of like have a better, I guess, pulls on like what it is that you’re getting done each week.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. I got to this point where I noticed I was reading books and never taking action on any of the tips, never letting any of it soak in, just getting through the books, and I thought, “This is useless. I need to actually take it slow and let it soak in, like let this impact my life.” What is a whisper network?

Lauren McGoodwin: So, a whisper network, they’re very handy, is basically, like a group of people like the whisper network I’m part of is five people on a text message. You’re not anonymous on the text message but you keep it a secret, the text message that you have, and you can basically use that network to share salary information or like project information. So, an example of this would be at least with mine, there’s five of us on there. We know who each other are but we don’t share the information publicly at all. We don’t invite people into the group, and I might share, “Hey, I got invited to speak at this conference. Here’s how much they’re willing to pay me. What do you guys think of that?” Another person might say, “Oh, I’m working with this brand and they’re paying me this much. Here’s the scope of the work.” If you were working at a workplace, it might be you and some other people in a similar industry. It might be like, “Hey, I’m asking my boss to get on this assignment, here’s what they’re offering me. In exchange, what do you guys think of it?” So, it’s basically like a quiet networking group where you guys are agreeing to keep the information that’s shared in that group a secret. This happens a lot with salaries within workplaces, sharing how much you make and your bonuses and that kind of stuff.

Hilary Hendershott: I’ve also seen those kinds of threads within the Ladies Get Paid Network. Have you heard of Ladies Get Paid?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. I know Claire.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. I think I was on one of their slack channels for 15 seconds or something and that’s basically what I saw was, “Look, this is my offer. Should it be more? And how do I get that?”

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, good. So, first of all, obviously, you’re the kind of career expert where you’ve done your homework, you’ve spoken to the people, and they’re highlighted in your book but what are some of the big lessons you’ve learned running Career Contessa? I think you started in 2013.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. So, I launched Career Contessa as a side hustle. I was actually getting my masters while I was working full time and when I started working as a recruiter, which I loved and I was at the very end of my master’s program and I was writing my thesis on millennial women and career resources and Career Contessa was the prototype of that master’s thesis. I fell into some loophole for grant money and I was able to create it. I really loved it. Basically, my hypothesis was that kind of like the beginning part of my book is like, hey, millennial women are doing everything right based on like what we were told it was going to be like when we graduate and that we could be everything. We would have equal opportunities, but now that we’re in the workplace like this is not what you told me it was going to be. Is it even possible to have this successful and fulfilling career? Or is this like the new reality of like, hey, you’re working 30 years somewhere 9 to 5 until you die kind of thing?

So, with all that research, I basically realized that one of the things that did not set up not just millennial women, but millennials, in general, was that the Career Resources we had. You go to school and the career center’s telling you this, this, and this. Again, it’s not the reality as a recruiter. I was seeing that also wasn’t the reality. So, I started Career Contessa as a thesis project. I kept it going because I was like, “Well, maybe I’ll leverage this website into like a new job opportunity.” Obviously, I leveraged it into a lot more because I eventually left. I was working at Hulu as a recruiter and I eventually left Hulu to work on this full time. I have learned so much. It’s also sometimes I look back and I’m like has it really taken me, so I left Hulu in late 2014, almost 2015 like have I really been working on this like full-time for almost six years? Like, there are days where I’m like I’ve gotten nowhere, and then there are days where I’m like, “No, I’ve accomplished a lot,” like I haven’t like sat around on my butt for six years. And so, I think that…

Hilary Hendershott: It’s almost seven years, by the way.

Lauren McGoodwin: Oh, yeah, you’re right. Oh my God.

Hilary Hendershott: There you go. It’s another year of your life.

Lauren McGoodwin: That’s even scarier. But I think some of the big takeaways I have in no particular order things like listening to your gut like the times I have not listened to my gut it is backfired badly.

Hilary Hendershott: Really?

Lauren McGoodwin: I think I’ve had times where I’ve wanted to be a little bit more aggressive with things and I just wasn’t able to because I have a self-funded company. So, there is a frustration of wanting to move faster than you can move but there’s also a silver lining in that and that you have to be a lot more thoughtful of what you’re doing because you have to be scrappy. You don’t have endless resources. With coronavirus happening, that was a huge massive shift for everybody and I think one of the things I was grateful for is, a few years ago, I started to realize like I need to diversify my revenue streams like something could happen or this thing could happen. I don’t want to be tied to like any one platform or revenue stream or anything like that. And so, life-shifting with coronavirus wasn’t nearly as painful because of that. I definitely made some good moves but, again, that was also like following my gut. It was saying, “Hey, I’m going to invest resources in this area over here,” and people being like, “Okay. That seems like a waste of your time.” You know what I mean? And having to kind of fight against that a little bit.

Hilary Hendershott: When you say follow your gut, how do you know? Is it when you’re as an entrepreneur, when you hear something or you get like a down mode and you think that’s what’s next? Is that your gut talking?

Lauren McGoodwin: I mean, I guess I can only speak from my experience and what my gut feels like but it definitely feels like, for example, I created something called The Salary Project. That was just like my gut saying, “You know what, I’d rather be kind of cool to create some blog posts where we share the real salaries of people.” And I bet you they would share it anonymously through like a Google document with us. That was just my gut being like, “That sounds cool to me. I’m really excited about that. Let’s do it,” and like quickly making it into something that we could throw up in a blog post. That grew and now it’s an entire database. To go to our developers and ask them to build that was a bit of a fight because I think everyone was like, why do you need this? You’ve got this Google Doc, but having it as a legitimate database, it’s like one of our number one ways of growing us as a company and it’s an amazing tool for people and they can’t be an amazing just as a Google Doc.

So, like there are just some things I feel like where you fight for it and like when people ask you to back up why you want this thing so badly or what are you going to use it for, this or that? It’s like sometimes I don’t always have that part of the answer, but I have the answer of like this tool needs to exist like this doesn’t…

Hilary Hendershott: You see it. You have the vision.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I’m a really visual person. So, I think that’s another thing is like what’s been nice about my career at Career Contessa versus as a recruiter is like it’s much more creative. It’s much more visual. I’m building things a lot more than I was as a recruiter. So, yeah, and I can also describe it as like I’ve done some marketing things before where I’m like, “I don’t really feel like that’s me.” That’s not really my voice like no way would I do this without like someone else pushing me and saying like, “No, no, this is the way I did it. This is the way I did it.” And when I did it, it backfired and I was like, “Ah, I should have listened to my gut.” So, I feel like maybe the times when you don’t listen to your gut, it’s always a lot louder, but you learn to pay attention to when you’re like, if any part of your little antenna is going off saying like, “I don’t know,” like you should listen to that part of it.

Hilary Hendershott: Perfect. And this is going to feel a little bit like backtracking but I did want to highlight my favorite small power move. You said to say, “Excuse me. I’m not done with my thought,” to an interrupter.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: So many days, I wish I had known what to say. No, I just keep talking. If someone interrupts me, I literally just talk louder and keep talking. But I remember the days in meetings when it seemed like somebody wanted to win the meeting and there was always somebody who was willing to interrupt me and dominate.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, I interviewed this woman once who she said what her strategy is like if she’s about to say, “I’m going to the park,” and someone starts to interrupt her, she says, “I’m going, I’m going, I’m going, I’m going,” because at some point, people look at you because they’re like, “What is going on over there?” She’s like, “I just pause on whatever word they start to interrupt me on and repeat it nonstop so that they truly recognize it.” I was like, “That’s so gutsy.”

Hilary Hendershott: Yes. That really is gutsy.

Lauren McGoodwin: I know. It makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it.

Hilary Hendershott: Kind of clear the room. Yeah.

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah, exactly.

Hilary Hendershott: And I did also want to let listeners know I was surprised and impressed with the amount of the book that you dedicated to the fundamentals of power moves, which aren’t really power moves. They’re more like self-care and even the chapter about shutting down the critical voice and how to deal with it in small ways to tweak it over time so that it evolves into more of a coach than a critic and I really thought, “Wow, this is really comprehensive in terms of what people can expect from the book.” Okay, perfect. So, to get your copy of Power Moves, please go to HillaryHendershott.com/169. We’ll include links to everything Lauren, but it’s the book and CareerContessa.com, right? Anything else?

Lauren McGoodwin: Yeah. So, the book is PowerMovesBook.com and then CareerContessa.com and @CareerContessa is on pretty much any and every social channel you can think of except for TikTok. I’m not doing that yet.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, good for you. Are you on Pinterest?

Lauren McGoodwin: I’m on Pinterest.

Hilary Hendershott: Good for you. I’m impressed. Very good. Okay. Thanks for being here.

Lauren McGoodwin: Thank you for having me.

[END]

Disclaimer

Hendershott Wealth Management, LLC and Profit Boss® Radio do not make specific investment recommendations on Profit Boss® Radio or in any public media. Any specific mentions of funds or investments are strictly for illustrative purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice or acted upon by individual investors. The opinions expressed in this episode are those of Hilary Hendershott, CFP®, MBA.