10. Three (3) Options to Overcome the Fear of Failure and Create Growth in Your Career and Business

Jette Stubbs: we are focused on our fear of failure. And we're starting to take any idea of failure personally. That's what I want to talk about today. So how, if you are applying for jobs, if you get over a hundred rejections, if not a single employer calls you back, how do you not start to think? Is something wrong with me?

[00:00:19]It's normal to start to think that, but the point is it's not true.

[00:00:24] so today I want to talk to you about taking failures personally, and the fear of failure. This idea when you start to ask yourself what's wrong with me, why can't I do this? We have this really bad habit of only talking about our successes, only talking about the awesome parts of our lives. And  I have a few different entrepreneurship groups that I am a part of. And one of them really emphasized the importance of talking about all of the things that go wrong as you're building out your career and you're building out your business.

[00:01:02] And it just hit home. Because no matter how successful you are, you get to a point where you start to question yourself, you're starting to question whether things will fall from underneath you and when you're on your journey to becoming successful, you really start to question, who am I to do this? Am I too old? Am I too young?

[00:01:21]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:01:23] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:01:24] where we talk about how to find what you love to do and turn it into ways to make money, whether that's a job, freelance service or a business, so you can live life on your own terms. 

[00:01:36] Am I not smart enough? Am I not qualified enough? Will people look at me and laugh and think I'm stupid? Who am I to do this? I'm just going to be rejected or laughed off. That is a common fear that I think not just you face, like we all face. And how did we go about that? Because the truth is we haven't made it normal to really talk about that.

[00:02:02] When we're taught to go and pitch ourselves to market ourselves. And even with some of the things that I teach you how to put your best foot forward. But that doesn't mean that you have to put up this like false facade of everything's perfect. The truth is there is a messy middle. There's a middle where it's a gray area.

[00:02:21] It's not black and white. It's not okay. Your bank account is flesh and everything is amazing. There is a messy middle while you're building it out. There's a messy middle that we all go through. And it's so important to recognize that there are real challenges that we face. And that's why you come and you listen to a podcast.

[00:02:41] That's why you pick up a book. That's why you go. And you watch YouTube videos because there's this messy, middle where you both are questioning whether you have the skills, but you also are questioning whether you should allow yourself to take the next step. You're questioning. If you should allow yourself to talk about yourself boldly and proudly, and talk about your successes on your resume, whether you should allow yourself  to pitch yourself, to venture capitalists.

[00:03:11] So you can get funding for your project or whether you should allow yourself to change careers. There's this point where we are starting to question who am I to do this and that messy, middle, that point where we are questioning  ourselves. And 

[00:03:29] we are focused on our fear of failure. And we're starting to take any idea of failure personally. That's what I want to talk about today. So how, if you are applying for jobs, if you get over a hundred rejections, if not a single employer calls you back, how do you not start to think? Is something wrong with me?

[00:03:49]It's normal to start to think that, but the point is it's not true.

[00:03:53]okay. So on our journey to talking about how not to take failures personally, and actually just not to see it as a failure. So lesson number one that I want to give you is when you are building out your career or business, I've talked about this concept before really people are paying for you to help solve their problem or help them achieve a goal.

[00:04:16] So when they're rejecting you, they're not actually rejecting you. Employers can not reject you. Companies can not reject you. Clients cannot reject to you. They are rejecting your pitch for how you solve their problem, which means you can tweak your pitch. I think we too often make the mistake of mixing up ourselves with our work.

[00:04:42] We are not our work. Our work is something separate from ourselves and you can tweak the same way. You can write a sentence. Like I am rich. I am poor. I am whatever you can write an essay for school, but you are not that essay. You can tweak and improve the essay. You

[00:05:00] can also tweak and improve yourself and how you interact with people, but it's much easier to tweak and improve your work than it is to work on yourself in the self-awareness that you need to improve yourself as a human being.

[00:05:12] So you are not your work. So you need to separate that out. And when you're going out and applying for jobs, if you're not hearing back, they're not rejecting you, which you need to think about is what is wrong with your message? What is wrong with how you're selling yourself and talking about yourself?

[00:05:28] Because people are not rejecting you. They're rejecting that message isn't grabbing their attention, or maybe it's just not getting in front of them too often. I'll hear people say though, Oh, I just need to get the interview. Oh, I just needed to get in front of the client. If the client heard me speak, then they'd want to pay me.

[00:05:47] Oh, if I get in front of the employer, if the employer heard me speak, they'd want to pay me. And let me tell you, if you are not getting to the interview, there is a reason. There's a reason. There's something wrong with how you are selling yourself. And it's stopping you from getting to the interview.

[00:06:04] Because if you were selling yourself effectively the way you claim to sell yourself in that interview, you would be getting the interview 

[00:06:13] because yeah, you would know how to write down how qualified you are. You would know how to write down car and star stories, where you talk about who the company is, the situation or the problem that they're trying to solve. The tasks that you solve the piece of the puzzle that you bring to help them get to where they want to go, the actions you took and the results that you delivered for the companies you've worked with in the past. You would know how to talk about how your education and experience adds value.

[00:06:42] You would be constantly focused on solving a problem for the company. So it would be more of a no brainer for them to contact you. If that's what you were doing in your interview, the way you claim to sell yourself, then you would be getting interviews because you'd be selling yourself like that in your resume.

[00:06:59]If you're not getting interviews, you don't know how to sell yourself and selling yourself is a separately learned skill. So I know there's this problem.  Like It's all connected this idea of putting ourselves out there and experiencing rejection, but the need to put ourselves out there so that we can build the careers that we want so that we can have the lives that we want.

[00:07:24] So lesson number one that I wanted to want you to take away from this is it's not that anything is wrong with you. Your work is separate from you. You need to tweak how you sell yourself. You can probably land the job that you were interested in or a stepping stone to that job, with the skills and education that you have right now, if you learn how to sell yourself, and if you learn how to market yourself effectively, but most of us don't know how to market ourselves effectively.

[00:07:55] We're not taught how to market ourselves or sell ourselves or find jobs. We are taught and given a general education. And that's what we're going to be talking about over the next few episodes, how to rethink that education and how we approach education. So stay tuned for that.

[00:08:14] And you're not going to go and learn it typically by going to business school or going to get a university degree or even going to a career center. 

[00:08:24] Sometimes the people who work at career centers don't always know. The best and most effective tools to sell and market yourselves. So when I was working in a university environment,  the career center at the university that I was working with said that they wanted to stop having youth or students focus so much on coming to the career center to learn how to sell themselves and start to learn more from people within their industries, because they realized that they didn't have all of the expertise that they needed.

[00:08:58] And they didn't have all of the industry specific knowledge that they needed within the career center. But often we go to these career centers and we follow these very like old generic templates for how to write a resume. That honestly don't work that well. And then people will come to me and I'll teach them how I write a resume, how I write a sales page, how I market myself.

[00:09:22] And then they're like, Oh, this is so different. And there's almost like a pushback. Everybody else is saying I should do it this way. And so to be more concrete with my examples, like people will write for a resume. They'll write a history of tasks that they've done before, instead of a history of stories where they've delivered results for companies that compel other companies who are experiencing similar problems to work with them. Is the power in that storytelling, in those results that you're delivering and showing that you're thinking of the big picture for what that company is trying to achieve, that adds so much value.

[00:09:59]Okay. Let's get back to this idea of taking failures personally and realizing that it's not, you. It's what you were taught. It's the tools that you were given. It's the tools that you are really not given to understand how to narrow down your career choice, how to sell yourself effectively, how to grow the career or the business that you want.

[00:10:22] When was the last time you were taught, how to find what you love to do outside of this podcast. When was the last time that you were taught in a super practical way, how to sell yourself effectively in almost any scenario?   If your answer is, I can't remember if your answer is, I don't know, then you just weren't given the tools and that there's a huge gap because then we'll look at people who are super successful and we'll say, Oh they're just super smart.

[00:10:55] But the truth is they have access to tools. They were taught something. Maybe like for me, I had the advantage that my parents were entrepreneurs. That was an advantage. And then I built on everything that they taught me, but part of it was being exposed to it, to know that it is possible. I didn't grow up thinking, Oh, the only thing that I could do is work a minimum wage job.

[00:11:18] Or the only thing that I can do is work a job in general. I thought I always knew I had options, but I had to go out and learn how to build out those options. I had to go and develop those skills and even giving myself the permission to go out there and learn is a huge step that a lot of people like that you may have that you may need to take for yourself.

[00:11:42]  So when, whenever we're facing obstacles in life, whenever we're starting to question ourselves, we have three options.   So we can do nothing. We can do something or we can have someone else. You can have someone else do it for you. You can do nothing. You can do something or you can have someone else do the heavy lifting for you or do it for you.

[00:12:11] And I've seen this pitch a few different ways. So I've seen, if you get into business, you'll hear,  you can do nothing then you can have. Do it yourself where somebody just gives you knowledge and then you totally do it yourself.

[00:12:24] You have done with you where you have support. So like you have a coach, you have somebody who supports you and guides you along the way, or you have done for you where you pay somebody to do all the heavy lifting and you just give them information and then they go ahead and do the work. 

[00:12:39] So for example doing nothing B you just sitting there and often that can mean like you try and a Netflix and chill and ignore the problem and act like it doesn't exist, whether you're Netflixing and chilling by yourself, or you're,  Netflix and chilling with your favorite cuffing partner.

[00:12:55] It really doesn't. It depends like whatever you're doing, you're ignoring the situation and you're trying to bury it instead of really addressing, okay. So one is to do nothing. And do nothing could mean avoiding it. It can mean a lot of things. It can mean sitting in our anxieties. 

[00:13:13] It's going to say we're doing nothing because well, people said we can't do anything. So we're just going to listen because they're the authority, 

[00:13:20]Then the next option is do it yourself. So you will read a bunch of books. You will listen to audio books, you'll watch podcasts. You'll go on YouTube. You will treat Google and YouTube. Like it's your own personal university. And you will try to DIY your way into a better situation into your problem being solved, into understanding how to write a resume and to understanding why employers or clients aren't getting back to you. Why your sales calls aren't working, you will DIY your way into success through trial and error, and trying to see why all of the different techniques and tips and pieces of information that you can get online fit together, and which ones work for you and which ones don't.

[00:14:04] And it will take a, it'll take a long time. Then you can do done with you. So I would say DIY and done with you are definitely fall under the, do something category. You are doing something. If you DIY it. Yes. You're choosing the more trial and error route that could be because of financial resources.

[00:14:22] Maybe you don't think you have the money to pay for something, but let me say something. If you have the money to consider going back to school and spending like five, 10, 15, 2000 thousand dollars on the degree, if you have the money to buy another iPhone, if you have another, the money to go on an expensive trip, you probably have the money to help you solve whatever problem you're trying to solve.

[00:14:49] Often it's aware. Yeah. And we allocate our money. That is more of the issue and what we think of as being worthwhile. So I'll see people invest like $10,000 in an education, but not be willing to invest like. 500 or a thousand dollars and understanding like how to sell themselves effectively and writing resumes or writing cover letters or doing sales pitches, or even pitching to venture capitalists to get the funding that they need.

[00:15:16] They'd rather just go in cold and DIY it and trial and error it instead of getting feedback. And then after they graduate with that next degree, they're still, they still don't know how to sell themselves. They still don't know how to market themselves. So they get one degree after the other. And you probably have people in your network like this that have multiple degrees, but you don't see their career progressing because they don't know how to sell themselves.

[00:15:39]They only built out their education. They didn't build out their experience. They don't know how to sell themselves. So they don't have a good looking LinkedIn profile. They don't have an effective resume. And so they're not getting access to a lot of opportunities and they think, Oh, I just have to keep on going back to school.

[00:15:53]This is when you'd want to do something that's probably done with you. If you're in that cycle and you've already tried to DIY it, there are a lot of things that you probably need to unlearn that are ineffective for you and your career growth or your business growth.

[00:16:08]And then the final one is have someone else do the heavy lifting for you. So when you have someone else do the heavy lifting for you, this is like when you  pay for a marketing service or when you have to know when you can pay for a Netflix subscription.   I don't know why. I think most people have Netflix.

[00:16:28] That's why I use Netflix as an example so often, but when you pay for a Netflix subscription, Netflix is a subscription where you're not paying to create shows. You're paying to consume them. You want it to be done for you. So you have entertainment at your fingertips when you pay for someone to write your resume, which I never recommend by the way, because you need to learn how to sell yourself for yourself and not have somebody else do it for you.

[00:16:55] Every time you need a resume update, you'll have to go and get somebody else to do it. And the truth is you won't sell yourself the way you should in an interview because you won't sound like your resume. If that generic resume that they're going to write for you even gets you an interview. There are a bunch of resume writing services out there that will say, Oh, I'm going to write this resume for you for $200 or more.

[00:17:17] It can get quite expensive, like $600, things like that, depending on your career level. And they'll say, I'll write this resume for you. But if you remember from our previous podcast, I talked about how every job description is based on solving. So a resume is a response to that problem. It's a history of solving similar problems or building out your skills, qualifications, and experience to solve that problem.

[00:17:41] If you're trying to hire a resume writer to write you a generic resume that applies to any and all problems, that's like me saying, okay, you need help with surgery. I'm going to go take out my ice cream truck resume and try and be your surgeon. Cause you know, a one size fits all.

[00:17:58] It's a good resume. I paid a good, I paid a resume writer, good money too, to write my ice cream truck resume. So clearly you should hire me to do surgery for you. Don't you see that this is that I have qualifications that is what's coming across.

[00:18:17] When you use a generic resume to apply for a bunch of jobs, it just doesn't come across well, and it doesn't need to be this overwhelming time consuming process where you are applying to. 1,000,001 jobs you need to just apply for a few jobs that you really care about or focus on the clients that you really want to land in your business and sell them on how you will add value, sell them on how you will help to solve their problem.

[00:18:43] So that's what you need to be doing. And when you have someone else do the heavy lifting for you, this is a good idea. In some scenarios, like when you pay for a Netflix subscription, you don't want to be making every movie that you watch. You just want to watch the movie like you want a done for you service for that. When you are doing like professional photos you probably may just want somebody to take the photos, know the angles, know the shots that you need, and then just have professional photos, so you don't have to think about it again. 

[00:19:12] There are times when you want somebody to do a done for you service, but there are other times when you want to walk away with the skills so that you can use them for the rest of your life. And that is when education comes in. That is when you should pursue either self study or an online course or mentorship or coaching, or looking for an expert who can help you.

[00:19:37]And that can be through Jewish, traditional education through post-secondary education. It can be through paying for online courses or paying for coaching. It can be through a bunch of, through a variety of different sources.

[00:19:49]But, okay, so now I've walked you through what the different options are. So you have do nothing, do something and under do something you have, do it yourself or done with you, where you have support or have someone else do the heavy lifting for you. So well, that's a done for you service or product. So let's go through some of the obstacles you can face with each of these options that you'll have in life and how, and when you can consider each one, but also how to think about you're shifting how you're thinking about whether this is a success or failure that you're taking this path and getting outside of your head  to stop you from thinking what's wrong with me to saying, okay, how can I solve this problem? 

[00:20:34] How can I make this situation better for myself? What are the tools and resources that I need to pull together? And part of that is like when I coach clients, one of the things that I really like to do is I'd like to sit down and say, okay, when you are about to take this step, when you're about to go out and network with people, for example, or when you're about to shift how you're selling yourself, write down all of the fears that you have, write down all of the negative thoughts that go through your head and the next coaching session that we'll have, we'll go through and debunk each one of those fears, we'll spend the first, like 15 to 20 minutes of the coaching session, debunking those myths, debunking, those fears, those insecurities, and giving you like phrases that you can say that will help you think about it differently. 

[00:21:19] So we'll help you like a phrase that you can say before you get into the networking meeting. So before I go and I review your resume and we get into the really nitty gritty of how you're selling yourself, we'll say, okay, let's get, let's talk a little, some of these mindset shifts that you need to be making, because there is a combination of super practical advice.

[00:21:37] And a lot of the things that I end up repeating when I'm coaching people, I put those into videos and online courses so that when you and I speak, we're more focused on the hands on lessons and fine tuning, the unique obstacles that you are experiencing.

[00:21:54]So let's start with the doing nothing option. What are some of the obstacles that you can face here? So first, when you're doing nothing, when you choose to do nothing, so let's say you are facing an obstacle in your life. You are trying to figure out, okay, you need a job. Let's go with that. One.

[00:22:12] Most people have experienced that. Even if you're an entrepreneur, you've experienced it. You need a job or maybe you need clients for your business, but for simplicity, because I think most of us have experienced it. Let's go with the job example. So one thing that we'll do is we'll sit in our insecurities.

[00:22:27] We'll be like, Oh my gosh, I got all these rejections. Nobody likes me. No employer wants to hire me. What am I going to do? The bank accounts running low. I don't know what to do.  We just sit and we dwell and we let those. Insecurities turn into negative thought patterns and it just becomes one thought after the other.

[00:22:45] Oh, maybe there's something wrong with me. What if I fail? What if I, maybe I shouldn't do this because then if I actually do it then I'll know if I actually go and apply for all these jobs. If I apply for these dream jobs that I have, and I don't get a single call back then that means I'll never have my dream job.

[00:23:02] And all of these negative thoughts will just go through your head. They're not true. But what they will do is they'll stop you from picking up a book, a podcast anything. It'll stop you, and it'll make you afraid to go out and talk about what you want to do and what your goals are. So you can gather people to support you in achieving those goals.

[00:23:26] You may try and avoid the situation like I mentioned earlier. So if you're doing, if you're stuck in the, do not things phase, you may try and avoid the situation. So you'll drown it out with the Netflix and chill session, or you'll try and do your favorite activity or you clean or you'll do something with your kids, if you've got kids.

[00:23:43] You'll do anything other than addressing the issue. And I think all of us have been in that procrastination phase. I have been there where we are just not doing the thing. We are not doing the thing we are. We put it on our to-do list day after day, and we just don't do it.

[00:24:03]Then if you're not avoiding it. Then you're going to say it's outside force. It's other people. You feel like you have to work in a system, you have to wait your turn. So who are you to apply for these dream jobs? You're not qualified to do that. How dare you apply? People would just laugh at you.

[00:24:19] You hear about people free of debt, insecurities, chaos, and drama. You hear about people like leading these awesome lives. And to be honest, I always find it comical, but people always think of me and they'll be like Oh my gosh, you're so confident. Like you're so you don't seem to have any insecurity.

[00:24:37] Some of my friends genuinely think that sometimes they're like, what insecurities do you have? And it's not that I don't have insecurities. It's that I pursue my goals. So one promise that I have made to myself is I'm not about settling in life. I want to live my best life. We are only here once that YOLO concept.

[00:24:55] So I'm genuinely trying to live my best life. That means I want good people around me. I want to. Spend my life helping people to have better lives so that when I die, I know that I will have made an impact in the world. And it would have been an impact of helping my fellow human beings be in a better situation and live their best lives.

[00:25:20] And not in some I don't want to be that person that goes down for being like in a Ponzi scheme or that ruthless business person who live their best life by, consuming a bunch of wine and stealing from a bunch of people. That's not me. I want people to be saying like, Oh, I remember Jack.

[00:25:39] Cause she really cared about me or she stopped. And she helped me when I was, struggling with something on the subway or, Oh, I remember that face from somewhere and it was something positive.   That's the memories that I want to be creating. So I want to spend my days creating as many of those memories as possible.

[00:25:56]  Often we get caught up thinking the people we project, Oh, that person doesn't have any insecurities. I want you to know everybody has insecurities, no matter how successful they are no matter. And I'm not saying I'm super successful. Like I'm building and I'm really excited about building. But I've faced obstacles as I've been building. And I've shared some of those obstacles with you. 

[00:26:20] So it's really important to see that even when you think somebody has no insecurities, when people you think have it all together, the truth is like one, I'll be honest with you. If you directly asked me if I had insecurities, I would tell you. But if, even if we were close friends, I may not bring up some of my insecurities.

[00:26:41] It's not that I'm trying to hide them from people. It's more so that. If you, aren't trying to pursue an entrepreneurial life, if you aren't trying to live your best life. If I see that you are like caught up in a cycle and you're not trying to  break out of that cycle. When I say that cycle, I see you are like going home.

[00:27:05] You say you want to live a different life, but all you're doing is going home and watching TV all day. And so this is like pre pandemic talk clearly, but let's say pre pandemic, all you're doing is going home and watching TV all day. And you were spending your evenings, your weekends on your couch.

[00:27:20] And then you were talking to me about how you wanted to live a different life. And you wanted me to come and talk to you about my insecurities. Like what type of support could you give me in breaking through those insecurities? If you're not trying to break through your own insecurities too? So when I talk to people about my insecurities, it's more so people that I'll find who can help me talk them through who are working through their own insecurities in a really structured way.

[00:27:47] So they're saying, okay well, I was reading this book or I was talking to this person, or I was doing this meditation exercise, whether that's an internal work, whether that's gaining additional knowledge from the environment or people who have done what what you want to do before you you're gathering information from somewhere.

[00:28:05]So that's well that I would go to, to share my insecurities  or I'd go to therapy, something like that. A lot of times we think people around us who are super successful have no insecurities because they're choosing not to share those insecurities with us, but that's not the case. They still have insecurities.

[00:28:23] Everybody has insecurities. Everybody has self doubt. And a lot of the myths that we have around, like why we are quote unquote failing, although failing, isn't really the right way to think about it. You can rethink if you just started to even ask them the right questions.

[00:28:42]So with doing nothing, we talked about the internal, the insecurities, where it feels like you got the angel on one side and the little devil on the other, whispering in your ear and seeing how awful you are and giving you all these negative thought patterns that will then become like a tunnel vision.

[00:28:58] And you can't see outside of it. Eventually, if you don't catch yourself in that cycle, then you have the avoidance, which is tied into like that, those internals in that little devil in your ear, that little devil in your air will cause you to sit down, not doing anything. And you won't try and gather any information, any tools, any support systems, and you'll trap yourself in your own silence.

[00:29:19]Then you'll have three. So we talked about internal avoidance and then we have the outside forces. So you'll say, Oh you have to work through the system. You have to wait your turn so you can get the good job. And you'll see all these other people who seem successful when the truth is they have tools that you don't have access to yet.

[00:29:39] They know things about how to sell themselves.    They're just in a different stage of their growth. But if you take steps, you can get to that stage of growth too. But you need to allow yourself to believe in yourself, to take those steps.

[00:29:51]So when you do nothing phase, these are the three questions that I want you to ask yourself. One, if it is a genuine problem that you care about, are you doing nothing? Sometimes parts of our life are okay and we're genuinely happy. Sometimes it's okay to do nothing. You don't always have to be like, there is.

[00:30:08] Some areas of your life, where you may feel like this is good. And all you want to do is take a healthy and like proactive approach to maintaining it.  If you're in a relationship with somebody you want to check in every four months or six months and say, Hey, are you still happy in this relationship?

[00:30:26] Or is it still meeting your needs? You want to be intentional about how you're pursuing that. If you're in a career, you want to say, okay, six months into this job, am I still happy in this? Is this really what I want?   Have my values changed? I have what I want out of life change. So when you're in this, do nothing phase, I want to ask you, I want you to ask yourself, are you doing nothing?

[00:30:53] And if you are doing nothing, is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? Cause if you need to do something, then you need to be intentional about it and build out a plan. And sometimes that can mean an accountability partner or coaching or mentorship so that you can start to think about how to break through.

[00:31:12]And like coaching is, it's like these podcasts, except for it's two-sided, it's just, it's talking through your problems and, but we get to go super specific into exactly what you're experiencing and the obstacles that you're facing and addressing them head on. 

[00:31:27]So one, if you're doing anything, are you doing nothing?

[00:31:31] And if you're doing nothing, is that a good thing or is that bad thing too?

[00:31:39] . When you're sitting in these insecurities, ask yourself, would this decision matter five years from now? Or what I really like to ask myself is when you are 70 or plus. For me, I would just say, depending on your age, 70 may not be that far away from you.

[00:31:56] Most people, as soon as podcasts are millennials ish around there, but let's say, just say 40 years from now, 40 plus years from now, if, or if you were on your deathbed. So I don't expect you to be on your death bed 40 years from now, let's say 60 years from now. Would this decision matter. Would this be a big deal? 

[00:32:17] When I picture myself like my 70 year old self I picture somebody who has made an impact on other people's lives. I picture somebody who is very confident in themselves and loves rocking their gray hair. May I add, I'm probably going to be like bra-less living on an Island somewhere enjoying the warmth and gardening and being active and dancing every Friday night, if not some other nights in between.

[00:32:47] I'm going to be living the best 70 year old life that I want to live. And so I think will this person be proud of the decision that I'm making right now? Because I need to make my decisions that are going to lead up to be being that person.

[00:33:02]And then it's three, if I'm doing nothing. If I were to choose to do something, do I want to do it myself? Or do I want to do it with support and guidance? Or do I want somebody else to do it for me? I'm going to usually say, do it yourself, or do it with support or guidance. Unless, like I said, there are some scenarios where you do really want done for you.

[00:33:26] But the thing with done for you is you want to make sure whoever is doing it for you is a reputable source. You want to make sure that you're looking at feedback and testimonials that they've worked with people in similar situations to your own. Ideally, this doesn't always need to be the case, but there's some trust there and that you know enough about whatever they're doing so that you can tell whether they're doing it well or not,  

[00:33:48]because let's say you pay for resume writing service.  If you don't know what a good resume looks like, how does that help you? You could think you just paid for the best thing ever, but you don't know cause you don't know what good one's supposed to look like. Then let's say you pay for marketing services. Like when I first started my business, I started, I considered paying for marketing services.

[00:34:11] I have a positive message that I want to share about how I want to help people. So how do I get this message out there? And I thought about paying for marketing services, but one of the issues was, I didn't know enough about marketing to discern if somebody was a good marketer or a bad marketer.

[00:34:26] So I could have gotten duped out of like thousands of dollars. So I said, okay, I'm going to spend like a year and a half learning about marketing, learning about how to sell myself on line and in short snippets and getting that message out there. And it was Rocky. I have an Instagram account.

[00:34:45] It's not the best. It's like my deep, dark hidden secret, but it's a place where a lot of people found me early on. And I didn't expect  my message to resonate with so many people so quickly. I didn't expect like my story of having 90 days to find a job or leave the country to resonate with so many people so quickly.

[00:35:02] I didn't expect any of the obstacles that I thought I was putting out there to try and be vulnerable and show this messy middle of building out a career business to resonate with so many people. So I got totally overwhelmed and I shut down like both emotionally and I just stopped posting on Instagram and has been like this.

[00:35:20] There's give and take with trying to show back up there until I decided to just do a podcast and be like, I'm just going to imagine, I'm just talking to you. One-on-one in my bedroom, maybe not in my bedroom because that's a little creepy, we're just having a conversation and having a zoom call and chatting, and that's what this podcast is going to be like.

[00:35:44] And it's going to be me showing up and giving super useful advice, hopefully that you will find helpful. So when you are choosing to stop doing nothing and to do something instead, who are you getting your advice from? That's a really important one.  

[00:36:02] So the next one is do something. So if you're going to do something, this is what I want you to think about. This is where you have to choose between doing it yourself, or done with you.

[00:36:11]Do you want that DIY, do you want done with you?

[00:36:15] Which will probably be quicker if you choose the right person to support you than DIY, or do you want to have somebody else do the heavy lifting for you? 

[00:36:25]So doing it yourself, you read podcasts, books, YouTube videos, the issues with that is you're always trying to put pieces of the puzzle together. So you're getting different pieces of information from here and there. So I want you, as you're considering. This DIY approach to figure out what pieces of information are you really missing. And it's hard to know that sometimes if you're pursuing something new.  

[00:36:50]I remember the first time I wrote a resume because I'd never really written one before I had just went into interviews and spoken with people and I didn't really sell myself.

[00:36:58] I just said where I went to school, I said, I am a student at and then I talked and they said, Oh, you seem nice.   It was basically a dirt cheap salary that they were giving me. So I didn't have to sell myself super hard to get into it. And I got the opportunities. So when it came to writing a resume and trying to figure out how to do this whole career building thing with no connections, no person just willing to give me a living wage just because I told them I graduated or just because I said I was a student, it just giving me a chance. How do I actually convince people to want to pay me? It was a whole different ball game, learning how to write a resume. When I wanted to learn how to write a sales page, I was like, okay, I'd usually have a half an hour phone call with somebody.

[00:37:48] I can't  turn that half an hour phone call into one page of text. How am I going to do that? It works, but. Still learning how to do that. To this day, I had somebody recently come up to me. I had a few people and they'd be like, you have such an awesome website.

[00:38:02]I really loved the vibe of your website. And I was like, Oh, you don't know how much work went into that. Learn how to do that. Learn how to market myself effectively learning how to sell myself, but also having the confidence. Cause I was really passionate about this idea of mixing story and mixing who I am and what I've been through into all of what I'm pushing out.

[00:38:22] And I was trying to figure out well, which my story is not PG 13. It's not the type of story that you typically have when you're listening, when you have kids in the car or whatever. So how do I incorporate this into what I do? It was a big, it was a big question. So when you're considering doing this whole D I Y approach.

[00:38:47] Think about who are you choosing to learn from?  I'd start. If you're going to start by yourself, I would say start by listing out the problems that you're experiencing and what you're feeling, and actually write that down because we process things better.

[00:38:59]Typically when we write it down and we could almost say you read it back to ourselves, like we're reading. A letter to a friend, give yourself that week in between, or a few days in between and go and read your own notes and you'll look at yourself and be like, Oh, I didn't realize I was thinking that super obvious thing that I shouldn't say to myself.

[00:39:19] Oh, I didn't realize I was saying something like saying how stupid I was for something that was so simple. And you'll just start to look at yourself differently. I'm not saying you need to write in a diary every day or journal every day. You can do it if you want to, but  write down the obstacles that you're facing each week.

[00:39:37] And the things that you didn't do that you want to do and write why you didn't do it, write down why, and then see if you have those same reasons the next week. And then you'll start to see patterns within yourself that you can start to work on breaking. Then when you're looking on breaking, working on breaking those patterns, what I want you to ask yourself is the people you're choosing to learn from whether that's books, podcasts, resources, courses, freebies, whatever you choose to learn from has this person done what I want to do?

[00:40:06] Or do they have the tools? Have they supported other people in doing what I wanna do? Are they supportive? That's a very important piece because sometimes you have people like I was working on a project and it was a female leader, like CEO and a tech space. And there were so many people that were just like, you are not a tech person and you're a woman.

[00:40:28]What are you doing? And she would be in pitches and she'd have that experience. And I was just, I always empathized with her, but it's it was really important. Like when I spoke with her about it, I said, you have to choose who you want to get your information from. So yes, those people have done what you want to do, but they have their own biases against you.

[00:40:54] As a woman, as somebody who's "not" in tech, they have all of these thoughts that have nothing to do with you have much more to do with how they were raised to think- their issues. But the truth is like with all the things that are coming up now, it's these things have existed for centuries, but the more prominent news coverage around issues around racism It's really important for people to recognize that these biases are there.

[00:41:22] And when you're choosing somebody, are they supportive? Are they encouraging of your development? That doesn't mean they're going to say yes, you don't want a yes person who just says yes to everything you want. Somebody who's going to challenge you to grow. Who's going to give you constructive criticism.

[00:41:35]You're going to get more access to that. As you do more of the done with you services, where you have actually dialogue with somebody and giving you feedback. So you want to ask yourself, has this person done what I want to do, or have they supported other people in doing what I want to do? Are they supportive in general?

[00:41:53] So are they supportive of you and you growth? And then two, you setting goals? So the same way I said every week, write down the things that you're not achieving and see those gaps start to see that you're not checking those boxes, just doing that activity will make you more mindful. And it's not about sending you into some insecurity spiral.

[00:42:11] It's more about helping you build out effective strategies for addressing the things that you are currently ignoring and trying to outreach. Like I keep on using this Netflix and chill example, which is a tad inappropriate, but like you're trying to Netflix and chill these problems away. And for the record you can Netflix and chill by yourself, just get some popcorn.

[00:42:30]So whether you're doing once you're doing something and you're trying to learn something, are you trying to do it all by yourself and actually not looking at external resources? Because I don't recommend that.

[00:42:42]  So then the third question that I'd want you to ask yourself is are you keeping an open mind as you build. So one, you've chosen some people who have done what you want to do, or have supported other people in doing what you want to do. Then you have set some goals for yourself, and this is really important.

[00:43:07]I should back up a bit when you're setting your goals, when you're trying to do something new, when you were trying to land a job, you've never landed before. When you're trying to pitch yourself into an opportunity that you've never had before, it can be really intimidating. You don't know how to set your goals because you don't know what you don't know.

[00:43:23] You don't know what you're supposed to be doing. You don't know what you're supposed to be changing. And so what I want you to do is to write down, like I said, write down the obstacles that you're facing and write down what you think you need to learn or what you think you don't know, write down what you don't know.

[00:43:39] So you can start to build out a plan, whether that's networking, whether that's training, coaching, resources, whatever it is. I almost do it or I do it. I don't almost do it. I do it like an Excel spreadsheet. I say, okay, these are the fears that I'm having. First. I write them down on paper because easier to write down your paper, my fears on paper, because on a computer screen would just seem super legit.

[00:44:00] I'll be real. Initially it seems super legit and intimidating. So I write it down on paper and then I type it up in a Google spreadsheet and I say, okay, this is the fears that I'm having. And then I build out ways to overcome it. Or the gap would knowledge that app. So a gap in knowledge could be how to write a resume or a gap in knowledge could be how to sell yourself or how to justify salary or how to justify price for your business and these, whatever that gap is you say, okay what do I don't I know maybe it's how to set the price.

[00:44:37]How do you set the salary, choose what the actual amount should be. And then the second step is how do you explain that and get employers to agree to it. But what if the employers offer a super low? What if the employers offer super high, then this is where you can get stuck. So people will get into this.

[00:44:53] I'm going to DIY at phase in particular which DIY is not bad. I always encourage self-education. I just am talking about some of the obstacles that you can face during the way, so you can DIY it and you can get in this cycle where you're constantly trying to figure out what you don't know. And you're constantly listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, and it's almost like a new form of procrastination.

[00:45:17] You'll listen and listen, and you'll never act. You'll never do the thing that the  person's teaching in the podcast. You'll never do the thing that the person's teaching in the YouTube video. And you'll your life. Isn't really moving forward. You've now got all this new information, but you're not acting on it.

[00:45:34] And that's where definitely a done for you service can help, but again, there, I gave you some of the obstacles before we've done for you services. And, but is were done with you can have a benefit because then you have some coaching and support and some somebody who's being mindful to say, Hey, you now know enough, go out and try, stop avoiding that networking session.

[00:45:58] Stop avoiding those client calls. Stop avoiding sending out that sales pitch, stop avoiding making that request for a salary increase. And this is how we'll do it together. That is the conversation that's honestly, why I love coaching because I can help people through those conversations, but I can also give them all these tools.

[00:46:15] So those conversations become far less daunting and far less scary. 

[00:46:19] So let's recap for done with you. 

[00:46:25] You're going to ask yourself, how has this person done what I want to do, or have they helped somebody else do that? And are they supportive when they'd be coaching me or supporting me through it? Too, am I setting goals?

[00:46:36] And if I don't know what the goal should be, am I writing down what I don't know, and building out a plan for filling in those gaps, that will help me figure out what I need to know. Three, are you keeping an open mind as you build out this plan? So are you setting limits on what you think you can achieve?

[00:46:55] Are you saying yes, I'm going to shoot for the stars or are you still having these underlying beliefs? Like I remember I was coaching somebody I think this was an in person. So it has to be pre-fund dynamic.  And she said I could never make $120,000. And they said $120,000 is not an unrealistic.

[00:47:13]There are lots of people who make $120,000. So it may seem unrealistic right now, but have you allowed yourself to build out a plan or you can get to a salary of $120,000 or get to a business that makes you $120,000.  Is there any plan that's in place? And she said, no. And I said if you aren't even letting yourself build out a plan, then yeah,  you may never achieve it because you're not even allowing  the possibility for it to happen.

[00:47:42] Let's go to have someone else do the heavy lifting for you. So I think I talked about this a bit, but first when you having somebody else do it for you, did it, did you do your research? Does this person know what they're doing too? Do you know? I know enough about the topic to make sure that you are getting your value for your money.

[00:48:01]Do you know enough about it? Have you listened to enough of what they're saying? Is there some sort of trust factor that is there that you think this person is knowledgeable enough to help you get to where you want to go? Have you seen some testimonials? Have you heard some stories? What is the trust factor?

[00:48:16] And sometimes, honestly, I'm not even going to be like, don't bet on a business that doesn't have a testimonial, people start somewhere. But maybe that means you won't get charged as much as a person who does have a bunch of testimonials, and, who has a huge track record. So you want to find some sort of compromise where you feel like, you know what's in it for you.

[00:48:37] And you're super clear about the value that you want to get from it. You've confirmed with them that this is the value that they think they can give you. It's never any guarantees. You know what you'll be receiving from them, like in terms of tools, resources, is it going to be there? Are they going to be asking you questions?

[00:48:56] You know what you need to give them. So let's give more concrete examples. So if you paid for a marketing service or you paid for somebody to write your resume, you need to know what information you need to give them about yourself. You need to know what information needed to give them about your work history, your accomplishments.

[00:49:14]Are they going to be having a phone call with you or are you just going to be sending them your current resume? If they're, if you're just sending them your current resume and not even having a conversation, don't buy that resume writing service. It doesn't make any sense because they're not adding any value to, they're not talking about any of the results you delivered.

[00:49:31] Writing and good resume if you were to write it with somebody, requires a conversation or some sort of information that's being gathered from you. And usually if you don't know how to sell yourself to write your own resume, then it should be a conversation where they're drawing that information out of you. So did you. Did you do your research?

[00:49:50]Do you feel like you can trust them to deliver some results for you? And this is where people always get a little uneasy will it work for me? Will it work for my situation? Is this right for me when you're to choose any sort of done for you product, like when you use Netflix, you probably chose your Netflix subscription because you knew a bunch of other people had Netflix.

[00:50:07] Maybe you went by a friend and they had their Netflix subscription and you're like, Ooh, this is easy entertainment. And it's a lot cheaper than cable. And you weighed out the pros and cons and you got your Netflix subscription. If you don't have your Netflix subscription. I'm not a Netflix ad person.

[00:50:20] And I don't even watch it that much. So yawn is like maybe once a week or something like that okay. I lied maybe twice a week, but yeah. So did you do your research, do you think you can trust this person? And then do you know enough about yourself so that you can make an informed decision about whether they are actually helping you or whether this is an effective use of your money?

[00:50:43] Because when you have somebody do it for you, it does help to push things forward. If you have somebody write an effective resume for you, yes, it does help because you will now not need to spend the time writing that resume. But then when you get into the interview, you'll need to learn how to sell yourself.

[00:51:00] So then you'll need to spend extra time in your interview prep because you didn't learn how to sell yourself through the process of writing your own resume. Also, if you like, when you land that next job, the next time you need a resume update, you need to go to somebody and ask for that help and ask for that support again.

[00:51:20] So for the record and for contacts, like I don't offer resume writing services. Like I won't write your resume for you. I offer online courses and coaching so that you can learn how to sell yourself so that you can walk away with those skills for the rest of your life. And when you're thinking about this idea of taking fears, taking failures personally, or what's wrong with me, or who am I to do this?

[00:51:45] I want you to know you are capable. You just need the tools to learn how to sell yourself effectively and how to narrow down what you love to do. You are absolutely capable of doing this. You're capable of building out a career or a business, which you need are tools so that you can learn how to narrow down what you love to do and sell yourself effectively.

[00:52:08] It's just unfortunate that we aren't given those things through a traditional education system. And then we're taught to internalize,  whether we have a successful job as our own personal success or failure, instead of looking at it like, Hey, do we have the tools that we need to do this?

[00:52:27] Do we have the tools that we need to make a pitch? Do we have the tools that we need to write a resume? Do we have the tools that we need to solve this problem for this company? And then how do we fill in the gaps where we don't have, and then realistically, like what opportunities can we create for ourselves where we are not putting limits on ourselves and what we can do so that we can get to where we want to go or so that you can get to where you want to go? I do have the quiz on my website. If you wanted to see how many of the top 15 progress killers you're making, I don't have the quiz set up so you, I collect your email address. To be honest, I just wanted to put it out there initially and see if people enjoy it. 

[00:53:05] If people take it and if you do want to sign out, I probably should have I need to add a little subscription thing if you want to sign up and know what's going on with me or some of the products that I'm working on or some of the things that I have available.

[00:53:18] Cause I do often design new online courses or packages based on questions that people bring to me. Or I adapt what I have within my current offerings and expand it to answer commonly asked questions. So if you, honestly, at this point, I would say, if you want to reach out, just like hop on a call I never have high pressure sales calls.

[00:53:38] It's always just about figuring out where you are now, where you want to go and how, and if we can work together and figuring out if it's a good fit.  I want to see what that help could look like. Maybe that means I'll bring you on a future podcast episode and I'll say, okay, let's do a live coaching session and you tell me your questions and maybe we'll change your name to, I don't know, Jane DOE or some other really cool funky anonymous name, or we can just use it first name and have a coaching session where we talk about some of the obstacles that you're facing so that other people can learn from your scenario.

[00:54:12] There's also, if you go to my website, so jettestubbs.com/contact, there is a speak pipe option. So that's my SpeakPipe. I think it's speakpipe.com/heyjette. So Hey, as in, hello. Hey and then J  E T T E. You can leave a 92nd question and just let me know. You can leave some feedback or you can tell me what's on your mind or you can yeah, just shoot a question and I can answer it in one of the upcoming podcast episodes.

[00:54:42]We're not taught how to market ourselves or sell ourselves or find jobs. We are taught and given a general education.  And that's what we're going to be talking about over the next few episodes, how to rethink that education and how we approach education. So stay tuned for that.

[00:55:00]So this was an awesome chat. Thank you so much for your time.  

[00:55:04]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:55:06] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:55:08] where we talk about how to find what you love to do and turn it into ways to make money, whether that's a job, freelance service or a business, so you can live life on your own terms. 

[00:55:19]this is a career and business podcast, but my two main goals for what I want to offer you are: one  the tools to build a career that aligns with who you are.

[00:55:30] So you can make money in a way that funds your life goals and the lifestyle that you want to build for yourself. Two, to have healthier relationships with yourself and others. 

[00:55:41] Because I think that if you have your financial resources together and you have good people around you, you can live a happier life.

[00:55:50] Subscribe and leave a review if you are enjoying the podcast.

[00:55:55] if you know somebody who you think may find this useful, please feel free to share it,

[00:56:00] with a friend.

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