12. How (if and when) to pursue an education and answer, "What Should I Study?" at any career or business level

Jette Stubbs: And honestly, It can be super awkward. It's it's me putting myself out there. I wasn't sure. I'm sharing with you true stories about myself and my life when I'm sharing this podcast. But I want to say thank you so much for those of you who have left reviews and the reviews are coming in from different countries.

[00:00:19] So you may not see all of the reviews popping up when you look at the Apple podcast reviews. Somebody left a review, that said career advice with heart. And it literally warmed my heart. Thank you so much for doing that. And I also have had. Some of you reach out to me and like book calls and say, after listening to this podcast, although you did not know me at all before, you wanted me in your life in some capacity, as a friend, as a coach, as someone that you can work with so you can learn from. Last week somebody said I walked so they could run. And honestly, to have somebody get on a call when you just put yourself out there and you weren't sure how people are going to respond and say something like that, it's one of the best feelings ever. 

[00:01:06]One thing that I would like to share with you are some thoughts. So I'm going to be jumping back into reading a section of the audio book or book that I'm working on.

[00:01:16]You were accidentally told lies. We spend our lives doing things or making decisions based on a bunch of assumptions that are often untrue. And we don't spend the time to question why we do some of the things that we do. 

[00:01:33]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:01:35] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:01:36] 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. 

[00:01:48] Secret number 23, 

[00:01:49] you were accidentally told lies  

[00:01:53] I don't remember where I heard this quote from but the most useful thing that you can do in life is to unlearn what is untrue.

[00:02:02]We spend our lives doing things or making decisions based on a bunch of assumptions that are often untrue. And we don't spend the time to question why we do some of the things that we do. 

[00:02:15] I'll have people that I've worked with.

[00:02:17]Not even, you don't have to work with me, but they won't want to invest any money in learning how to market themselves or learning how to sell themselves. But then they'll go and they'll get like a $10,000 degree and a $20,000 degree, or they'll go and get like a hundred thousand dollars MBA.

[00:02:34] And at the end of that MBA, they still have no idea how to sell themselves or market themselves effectively. And so they're still struggling to access opportunities that they want because it's so deeply ingrained in us. That education is the path to success. The education is what you need to do. And the more degrees, the more stamps that you have, the more the more degrees you can hang up on your wall, the more successful you'll be.

[00:02:59] And if you're not getting a job, that means, Oh, you have to go back to school. Cause clearly you're not qualified enough to enter the job market, but that's not true. Were you taught how to confidently find opportunities around you or he taught how to confidently make money by listening and solving problems for people or companies. Were you taught, how to confidently use education as a tool to achieve your goals, not as a path to a job.

[00:03:26] Do you feel confident doing all of the above? Do you feel comfortable doing all of the above three things now?  One, were you taught how to confidently find opportunities around you to where you taught, how to confidently make money by listening and solving problems for people or companies?

[00:03:48] Three. Were you taught how to confidently use education as a tool to achieve your goals? Not as a  path to a job.

[00:03:57]Do you feel confident doing all of the above three things now? If your answer is no. Then you were not given the tools to succeed. Yeah. If instead, you were taught any of the following things. 

[00:04:12] One education is a path to success. 

[00:04:15] Two success comes from hard work.

[00:04:18] Three. If you come from a history of not having enough, you cannot be enough.

[00:04:23] Four. Separate your personal and professional life and a 

[00:04:27] five. If you want to achieve your life goals, set it up so that when you achieve X, you will be happy. So when you buy your house, you will be happy when you have your kid, you will be happy when you achieve whatever goal you have set for yourself, then you will start to be happy.

[00:04:44] Then you were taught myths. 

[00:04:46]And through no fault of your own, even if you are well-educated quote unquote well-educated you were misled because you were taught these lies. It wasn't a conspiracy. You were probably taught by people who were taught to believe these lies too. 

[00:05:02] Believing these lies affects how you see yourself, how you pursue money, your life goals, relationship building, what you believe is even possible for yourself to build a career that aligns with who you are.

[00:05:14] You need to find out who you are and what you want out of life. You need to remove the false beliefs that keep you trapped within the current place you are in. More importantly, you need to be able to distinguish and ignore voices that are trying to say, you should act like this, or you should be someone else, or you were not good enough.

[00:05:33] You need to be able to distinguish between:

[00:05:35] who you are versus what society expects of you, 

[00:05:38]Jette Stubbs: your definition of success, versus what you were told success looks like 

[00:05:45] your path to achieve success versus the path you were taught to use to achieve success.

[00:05:52] Ultimately you were distinguishing between who you are, what you are capable of, which you are capable of and what you want out of life versus the stories you were told to believe about yourself and success.

[00:06:06] So secret number 24. Myth education is a path to success. Education is not the path. Education is a tool solving problems that are important to people is the path.  Let's look at an example of Safeway, Sam and moneymaker Maria.

[00:06:26] I've changed. The names I've changed some of the numbers, but the basis of the story, if they also changed the field of study, but the basis of the story is true. So Sam went to school to study aerospace engineering. Aerospace engineering is about learning how to make things fly, like airplanes, rockets, drones, or robots on Mars.

[00:06:47] Sounds smart. He worked hard and received a PhD. After 12 years of university, Sam never worked a regular job and only did a few extra activities. Sam thought he spent 12 years studying and received good grades. So companies would be excited to hire him. But when he spoke with people who worked at companies, They said, Sam, I understand you spent 12 years in university, but you focused on research.

[00:07:14] Unfortunately, even if your research works, it won't be applied to a real aircraft for another 20 to 50 years. Right now you haven't solved any current problems. And the thing about research is it's all about finding out if something works. So there's a possibility that you could spend three years researching a new design for a plane wing only to find out it's a bad idea.

[00:07:43] In that case, we wouldn't be able to use any of the work you've done for the last three years, but still we'd have to pay you for those years of work. We need to do research, but it's not making the company any money to pay you. Where is the money supposed to come from for your salary? If you think about it, even successful researchers solve problems, that's why they become successful or famous.

[00:08:12] So Sam was devastated after you heard that? When Sam graduated, his first job paid $45,000, and that was the best job offer he received. Sam was frustrated. He had 12 years of debt from university, so he went to coffee to see his friend   Maria, and Sam went to high school together and start a university at the same time.

[00:08:33] Maria studied in university for four years. Received her bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering and stopped. Over coffee, sam asked, how did you find a job after graduating Maria? Maria said. While we were studying for our bachelor's degrees. I became interested in solar energy and I started to work on a solar powered cars and electric planes.

[00:08:55] I joined a school club where we built and model different designs for remote control planes. We competed in international competitions and companies would attend while I talked to them about work and internships. I'd also talk about the problems the companies were working to solve.

[00:09:11] So I'd asked the company representatives, like what were some goals that the company was working on to achieve. At one international competitions, a company representative said solar powered self-driving cars are a big one. My company is also trying to make drones fly independently in bad weather. I wasn't really interested in solar powered cars, but the drone project sounded exciting.

[00:09:34] I read about articles about how to stabilize drones in bad weather. I had to learn agile project management, machine learning, and how to design the shape of drones to best navigate weather. I went to conferences, read articles and books to learn these skills. And I joined some clubs for drone racing to test out what I had learned when I graduated.

[00:09:54] My first job paid $55,000. Now eight years later, I'm a machine learning engineer and I make $105,000. And I have a small team who I work with. And I work with a drone manufacturing company. We also do rogue drone detection to help people find unwanted drones, which could be security threats in their area.

[00:10:19] So let's look at this eight years later when Maria was making $105,000, sam was sitting across from her, at the coffee table and saying, how did you do it? Cause he had just signed a contract for $45,000 after those same eight years, his first paying job for $45,000. While she was making $105,000.

[00:10:41] So what did they do differently? Sam is more educated than Maria is on paper, right? Maria and Sam were the same age, studied the same thing at the same school, but Maria made much more money than Sam. Sam studied for eight extra years and had the title of doctor from his PhD. In eight years, Maria had increased her salary from 55,000 to 105,000.

[00:11:06] She made an average of $80,000 per year for those eight years, that's $640,000. In eight years, Sam had incurred an average of $7,000 per year in debt. While he continued his studies, he had negative $56,000. He was about to start making $45,000 per year. Learning to solve problems early on in life can make a huge difference in your earnings over your lifetime.

[00:11:37] Sam relied on education to help him make money. Maria had built her career around solving problems. Maria had used education as a tool to solve problems. Companies cared about problems that also excited her. Let's look at this another way. Have you ever heard the glory stories about millionaires and billionaires who dropped out of university or high school?

[00:12:00] Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook or bill Gates from Microsoft are often two common examples used for people who left university. They both found problems. They wanted to solve and built tech companies to solve those problems while I've never spoken to Mark Zuckerberg or bill Gates, I guess that when choosing between continuing or dropping out of university, the main question was will this education helped me grow my business and learn how to solve this problem for people.

[00:12:29] So Facebook's mission. If you go on their website is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. And I'm assuming that's through the technology that they're offering. So Microsoft's mission. If you go on their website is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

[00:12:51] It was to bring the technology of computers to everyday people into their households. So when they were saying,  should I go back to school or should I continue my education? Or should I go and continue my business? The bigger question was, will this education helped me learn how to solve this problem?

[00:13:12] And I'm not saying that you shouldn't pursue education. We're going to talk about how, if, and when you should think about pursuing education. So education systems right now, give you a general education. If you specialize in business or in health, then you will receive a general education in that subject with the way our education.

[00:13:29] With the way our educational system is currently set up. You are not taught how to seek out and solve problems for people. They almost treat that like it's a special class. So you'll go to a special business class to learn how to solve cases, case problems, and learn how to solve real world problems.

[00:13:47] Or you'll go and listen to a special talk with industry. Or if you have a special branch within your university or your school, they may call it experiential education where it's bridging the gap between academic theory and real world applications. And it's often described as learning by doing, it's almost like a special branch.

[00:14:06] It's not something that's ingrained within the educational system. So when you do go to school, you are taught to learn or memorize information and repeat it in standardized tests. You're not taught how to think critically. So are you noticing a trend? It's not about how long you were in school.

[00:14:29] It's about whether you were using education as a tool to learn how to solve problems. People care about then choose the problems that won't burn you out and that you are most passionate about. So bottom line, Maria used education as a tool to figure out which problems were important for companies and out of the problems companies cared about.

[00:14:51] She chose the one that excited her the most. She could have pursued solar power driving cars, but she was more interested in drones. So she found the problems related to drones. I've worked with people in Sam situation and all hope is not lost. So if you are graduating and you have multiple degrees and you went back to school over and over again, but never actually built out your experience, you're not alone.

[00:15:19] There are so many people like you who think, okay I didn't get a job. I should go back to school, but they never volunteer. They never do anything to actually build out their experience, to speak with companies, to build a network.

[00:15:30]And like I said, I've worked with a lot of people in Sam's situation and all hope is not lost. Sam has a lot of knowledge after 12 years of university, but now he has to find people with problems who will benefit the most from the knowledge he offers for to aerospace engineering. PhD candidates that I've worked with, they use their knowledge of applied math to solve financial problems for banks and consulting firms.

[00:15:56] So they took their experience going in and link. I don't know what the correct word is, but like dissecting large amounts of data and numbers.

[00:16:04]So they took their experience dissecting or working through large amount of data or numbers. And they apply that to financial consulting and working with financial numbers to understand interpret financial data. So instead of working in. Instead of working in aerospace engineering or working on aircraft or hardware, they then took that information that where they would usually be computing numbers for the design of the aircraft, for the shape of it, and to make sure that the air flows around it well, and they use that skill to then buy dissect or look at financial numbers.

[00:16:40] Dissect probably isn't the right word. The issue is when you study for years, without looking for problems you can solve with your education. Eventually when you transition from school to work, you'll end up spending more time unemployed and looking for problems to solve later on.

[00:16:57]What do you think would have happened if as a child, the mustache man was taught to find and solve problems. What if the focus wasn't on an education that costs money, but on finding and solving problems that people care about?  What if you were taught how to find and solve problems to make money, to fund a life you love.

[00:17:19] The blueprint we should have been taught is to solve problems that people or companies care about and ask for money and benefits in return.  This is how you will create financial success. Bottom line education is a tool for you to exert your control self study, and design your own educational path.

[00:17:41] Don't just let it be designed for you. So don't just go to university or go and study something and say, you tell me what I should learn. You tell me what I need. Design your educational path. Look for the things that are exciting you and then say, okay, what else? What people or what companies are in this field, what, who I can I speak to?

[00:18:00] Who can I ask for an informational interview? So I can start to understand the types of problems that are existing within this company. So I can build out my skills. I think education and university education has a really beautiful time to start to learn and understand yourself because you have this time where you are old enough to make decisions for yourself, but at the same time, yeah.

[00:18:21] You are investing in yourself to give yourself freedom, to just focus on learning so you can learn anything that you want, that you were interested in. You just need to be tying it to real world problems. And if you're doing that in theory, you can make money even before you graduate.

[00:18:38]So have you ever struggled to figure out a problem? You try to find information you need. You go to a search engine and type in your question or problem. Like you go to Google and you type in your question and you go and you search through the first page for answers. But. You don't see it. Sometimes the answer you need is the first thing that pops up on the first page.

[00:19:02] Sometimes you have to go through multiple pages and often we don't do this. We won't clique next. Oh, it's not on the first page of Google. So I don't see it. sometimes you have to go through multiple pages and websites to find the answer you need. Search engines like Google, YouTube, and Amazon allow you to type in a question or problem.

[00:19:23] And find a website, video, or book to help you solve your problems. That's why they're so popular. They're basically problem solving machines. That's why we use search engine so often. When you find answers through a search engine, you are self-educating to solve your problem. You were choosing what you'll learn and designing your own education path to solve your own problem.

[00:19:46] The main issue with learning through a search engine like Google Yahoo, Bing is you have to filter through a ton of information to find the right information. You need these search engines, hire teams of people to create algorithms, to increase the chances you find the information you need quickly. You also have to know, to ask the right questions, to ask the search engine so you can get the right information and to ask the right question is to word the question in a way that other people are asking it.

[00:20:18] So if you want to find an answer to the question, you need to ask it in a way that it is most commonly phrased and they try to make the algorithms smart. So if you phrase it differently,  you'll see suggested questions you put in a typo into Google and they'll correct the typo and it says showing you answers for, and it'll try and guess what you're trying to actually ask.

[00:20:40] So these are really important things to think about a traditional academic education brings together a bunch of quote unquote experts to give you a general education on a topic. The experts design a curriculum to teach you the foundational information about a topic. They filter out the important information for you, so you can progress and learn more.

[00:21:02] That's the theory behind it, right? With a general  traditional education you learn   generally about a topic. In high school, you learn math, English, science to learn things that are supposed to in theory, be generally useful or so that we can have an educated population who can make informed decisions.

[00:21:21] That's questionable, whether that's working effectively. Cause I think the standardization of education and the regurgitation of information for tests is a huge issue.

[00:21:30]in university, you learn general education on whichever topic you choose. So it does start to become more specific than in high school. So you are supposed to be exerting more control. But eventually you want to exert control over your education instead of letting a school decide what you learn. You want to narrow down the problems you were interested in.

[00:21:54] A part of yourself. Education is the techniques I'm recommending to you through. This podcast and through whatever you decide to learn from whenever interacting together. My goal is to be a part of your self-education part of the choice that you make to empower yourself with the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions on how you were growing your career.

[00:22:16] General education allows you to have more general knowledge that you can potentially use to solve problems. And I want to emphasize the word potentially there. So general education allows you to have more general knowledge that you could potentially use to solve problems. So you have more potential to help someone. General education is a tool for the exploration of careers to find problems you didn't know existed.

[00:22:43] The benefit of this is that it exposes you to different fields,  because you don't know what you don't know, general education can expose you to different career options and problems. You can solve things you may never have thought could be an option for yourself. 

[00:23:02] You want to do three things, 

[00:23:04] use general education to expand your options.

[00:23:08] Two choose what you'll learn, find problems and narrow them down based on problems you like solving.

[00:23:15] Three design, your education to support you in solving those problems. So you can be paid well to achieve your life goals. So the way he would do that, 

[00:23:26] For example. So let's get into an example. This is off script.

[00:23:29] Now this is not from the book. So the way you can do that is when you're thinking about general education, it's let's say you go to school and you study marketing. And then you, as you're learning about marketing, did you teachers who are experts in these fields expose you to all these different areas of marketing that you never even thought of before?

[00:23:49] And so now you find one of these fields. Interesting. You find something you learned in one of your subjects. Interesting. What you are supposed to do then is to take that general education and say, okay, Hey professors, do you offer any specific subjects on this topic. And not just do that? Cause then you're just getting the education, which you also want to do is not just learn the knowledge. You want to go out and Google are people hiring for this skill.

[00:24:13] So let's say you learn about. Social media marketing, right? It's something in demand. You want to say social media, marketing, job trends in Canada, Google that or social media job trends in New York city. And then see, what are the options or is it a growing field? Is it a new field? Is it a field that stabilizing?

[00:24:35] Is it a well-paying field? Does it pay the salary that you want? You want to look for jobs that are related to this field? And then look at the right qualifications or requirements that they're looking for that job. And then you want to go and try and build out those qualifications and requirements while you were in school. Ideally.

[00:24:53] So you want to build out that education and experience while you are in school. And that is when you are making the most of your education. So you self-education along with traditional education self-education and designing your education will be one of your most powerful tools.  Listening to this podcast is part of you taking control of the education you were given.

[00:25:15]So should I go back to school? That's always a big question. I get asked this question all a lot. Should I go back to school? Do I need to upgrade my skills? Should I get a certification? When I worked with students getting master's degrees and PhDs, I often heard them say, I didn't know what I wanted to do after my bachelor's degree or a master's.

[00:25:36] So I decided to continue school. It was like, it was a  fall back plan to just go back to school because you had trouble getting a job. Then they would come to me after they've finished their master's degree or they finished their next degree and say, I sent out a bunch of applications, but I can't find work.

[00:25:54] I thought if I got this additional degree, I'd be more employable .That you always use that word employable. It's basically the story of Sam over and over again, they thought education was the path and having a bunch of degrees behind your name would create the job. When they began looking for work, they learned that it was a myth.

[00:26:14] Education is not the path to success. Here's the simple answer to that question. Should I go back to school? 

[00:26:21] This is a very bad idea. If you're going to go back to school so that because you're staying in school, simply because you don't know what to do, you never work or volunteer, you don't try to do, to find or solve real-world problems while you're in school.

[00:26:36] You just study and hope to find a quote unquote, good job. After you graduate. That's not a good plan. So if that's what you're planning on doing, when you go to school, Just you're wasting your time. You're just if you just want to waste some money on education, go for it. If you're actually going to be exploring, that's fine.

[00:26:54] But if you're just using it as a fallback, it's more likely that you need to learn how to sell yourself effectively and understand like how to solve real-world problems, how job searching work, how business development works. You need to understand more of the principles that I'm teaching in this podcast.

[00:27:09] More than just going back to school, to study more of what you already know, or get some in-depth knowledge or some more generalized education. 

[00:27:17] So this is when it is a good idea. You use your time at school to explore your interests, find problems, gain, experience, solving problems, and testing out ideas.

[00:27:29] If you're going back to school, because you want a job, then you should be going back to school because the credentials that you are going to school for are frequently listed in the jobs that you want to apply for. And then you were also building out the experience and skills while you're in school.

[00:27:46]If you, again, if you're just going to go to school to get more education and you think you just need another degree to make you more employable so you can get the salary that you want. That's usually not, especially if you don't have any experience on your edge and your resume, like you need to build out that experience first.

[00:28:03] So here's what an education tells an employer or a potential client. It tells an employer or client you studied. So you have general knowledge about the problem. You've met a standard of learning that may be considered competitive. Depends on what school you go to. Depends on a bunch of other factors. It also depends on a lot of politics too, because if you go to schools in certain parts of the world, if you go from South America to Canada, we'll say your South American education, your education from like a South American or Caribbean country is not valid.

[00:28:35] A lot of the times the, so they'll say, Oh, you don't have an equivalent education. There's a lot of politics behind that stuff.  Here's, what an education tells an employer or a potential client you studied. So you have a general knowledge about the problem. You've met a standard of learning that may be considered competitive.

[00:28:51] And I remember there's politics around that. And if you've received good grades in that general education, you have the ability to follow instructions and repeat or maybe interpret information. 

[00:29:03] Here's what experience and a track record of solving problems tells a client or employer.

[00:29:09] You can enter a company or a person's life, listen to their problems and help to solve them. You have helped a company or client achieve or get closer to achieving their goals already before. So you have some kind of track record of success. You can provide references from people who have had similar problems that you've helped in the past.

[00:29:31] So the employer or client can say, okay, you've helped somebody who looks like me or who is like me, or who is in my similar situation. So you've done this before. I trust you. You have a proven track record of making a company or client's lives better. So experience or track record of solving problems tells a company or client all this information about you.

[00:29:55] So if you have a problem, would you want to work with 

[00:29:59] option a, someone who has a general knowledge of a subject? Your problem is in which is education. Or would you want to work with 

[00:30:07] option B, someone who has successfully helped someone like you with a similar problem,  which is also known as experience.

[00:30:17] My guess is you trust the person that's done it before. The one with experience, rather than someone just who has general knowledge on a topic. So what if your life is at risk? Would you trust the surgeon who was read a book or the one who was cut someone open and save their life? You'll probably say actually I'd prefer both education and experience in this scenario.

[00:30:41] Why are you making me choose? And that's a really good point, but if you had to choose, it would likely be experience bottom line. People want to work with someone who has done it before. But I want to also recognize that combination of education and experience that you probably would want from your surgeon is the same thing that people want from you.

[00:31:07] So you shouldn't just be building out your experience without your education or your education without your experience, because. If you just build out your experience, it means you're good at going in and solving problems. But having that generalized knowledge where you're learning consistently learning from a bunch of different experts is very helpful because it means you're staying current in the field, your different options or solutions to solve a problem.

[00:31:32] Like surgery has improved over the years. Would you want a doctor who's using a surgery surgical style from 50 years ago when there's a newer, more modern, less invasive style that doctor could have learned if they stayed up to date and were getting an education as well. Even though that doctor can help you through, help you through that surgery, if they don't need to put you under for two hours and they can just give you this five minute.

[00:31:58] Eat less invasive surgical option you'd want the more up-to-date option. And that is why people value a combination of education and experience. So companies like Apple, Google, Netflix, Starbucks, IBM, no longer require four year degrees. Research is showing that having a four-year degree does not improve your likelihood of success.

[00:32:19] In most jobs, universities are receiving complaints that students are graduating without being ready for the workforce. Universities are adding more co-ops internships and experiential education or learning by doing into their degree programs. Career education centers are expanding. Stop being intimidated by fancy degrees or schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or MBA programs.

[00:32:45] Organizations are realizing that where you went to school, doesn't matter. It matters whether you can solve problems. So what if you don't have experience solving the problem? Don't worry. Don't worry. We're not going to cover that in this podcast, but we will talk about that in future podcasts,  how to avoid that experience trap when you don't, when you don't have experience. So you can't get the job, but  if you don't get the job, you can't get experience. I know that trap. I know it's very common. Yeah. And I know if you don't start to build out your experience when you're in school, when people are willing to give you chances and opportunities, and you can do volunteering or internships, or you can take a, like a lower paid job.

[00:33:27] And for somebody sort of some people, the reality is you need a paid jobs. You can pay your way through education, but how do you do that in a way that helps you also build out your experience, which you can do, but you need to learn the skills to sell yourself into those opportunities. Do you need a degree?

[00:33:43] To do the things that I teach you to learn how to sell yourself? No heck no, seriously. You need to, you only need to be able to read or listen along to this podcast or in this case, I'm reading from what would be an audio book in the future. Then put in the work. Do what I say, I will say that part of that is an emotional growth to learn, to see yourself differently, to learn, to unlearn what is untrue.

[00:34:10] So unlearn some of these myths that you have that could lead to internalize beliefs about your own worth. Oh, I don't have a degree or, Oh, I'm not smart enough, or, Oh, I'm too old to start. You need to let go of some of those things so that you can put in the work to sell yourself effective. Actively, and I will give people the tools.

[00:34:27] I will often hand them the tools that they need to sell themselves. I would say, plug in your words, into this formula and go out and market yourself. It has worked time and time again, and then people will come to me with something totally different. That's exactly opposite of what I told them to do, because they're not ready to internalize how to sell themselves effectively.

[00:34:48] And that is one of the things that I want you to do to start to unlearn some of those things. And that's why I put this podcast content out so you can listen to it over and over again. If you need to start to internalize that you don't need to be the fears or the limits that you put on yourself, you don't have to internalize right.

[00:35:05] That you are not enough. You are enough and you can do this. You just need to understand how to sell yourself effectively. 

[00:35:10]Should I upgrade my skills. Let's get back on track here. I told you how awesome you are now. Let's get back on track here. Should I upgrade my skills? I get asked this question often and yes. If you haven't figured that out from what I've been telling you, yes, you should upgrade your skills. I think you should always be learning new things each year.

[00:35:31] Let's say you apply everything. I teach you. Find your passion that pays solve problems for your dream clients and start getting paid what you want. And you do amazingly well for five years. Then one day you wake up and the money stops coming in. It could be that your ads were disapproved by the advertising platform that you use.

[00:35:53] The market has changed. Your clients have different problems. Companies have now are now starting to face different problems. Your clients want you to solve their problems in a different way, because now there's new technology out there that you haven't stayed up to date with and you were fired from your job or the problem doesn't exist anymore.

[00:36:13] It all boils down to one major mistake, not listening to clients and companies needs. For example, the person who sold payphones and phone booths needed to start to change their business as cell phones were invented and became mainstream. Newspaper companies needed to print fewer paper copies and create more online platforms as the internet became mainstream.

[00:36:38] Also, if you stop listening to your clients, then technically you're definitely not doing everything I taught you. So I just want to say don't come and blame me if you aren't listening and you weren't staying up to date. With cell phones, internet, social media, online surveys, and search engines. It's so easy to listen to your clients' needs.

[00:36:58] Literally people are putting way too much information of them about themselves out there. And I'm included in that we put too much information about ourselves out online. And so between like real human conversations, whether that's on the phone, a video chat or in person, eventually you can have meaningful conversations and connections where you ask people, where are you now?

[00:37:21] What are some problems that you're facing? Where do you want to go? And then you can start to figure out the gaps that you can fill for them, for their company or for their personal lives to help them get to where they want to go. Why do you need to upgrade your skills? You need to listen to your client's needs or company's needs and upgrade your skills so you can continuously meet those needs effectively.

[00:37:41] You can self-educate take courses, use trial and error. The goal of books, online courses and education is to give you expert information so you can access learn quickly and ideally more accurately. So you spend less time on trial and error. You can reduce the amount of trial and error by learning from people who have done similar things before you, after you start to grow your career, you may need to pivot or change as the world changes.

[00:38:09] There'll be easy enough. If you're listening to your clients and companies, you need to continuously listen to clients and markets to find opportunities. You need to be learning about clients and companies needs how their needs are changing and how you can best meet their needs. And I'll talk to you about how to do this.

[00:38:27] If you get the audio book, once I put it out, that'll be an option. But let's move on to the next question that I always get the, I get asked often. Should I get a certification? Certification, which is a different, which is different from a certificate tends to be based on a professional body.

[00:38:43]It's about that professional body accepting you into their group. So you are being accepted into the clique. A professional body is a group of professionals who have a successful track record of delivering results for clients coming together to create a community.

[00:39:00] They're saying let's create a community to protect our reputation and prevent any, and everybody from saying they can do what we do. The professional body is also saying, if we accept you into our group, we believe you can deliver quality products or services to your clients. Because now you're representing our clique to typically work experience is a requirement to receive a certification or license to practice.

[00:39:29] If you harm your clients, you can be reported to the professional body and be punished or kicked out of the group and not allowed to practice. Certifications licenses to practice and professional designations are often listed on job descriptions or legally required to do certain types of work. Some examples include registered nurse RN, professional engineer, PEng project management, professional PMP, charted professional accountants, CPA chartered financial analyst, CFA.

[00:40:01] These professional bodies create certifications and licenses to practice that are usually designed to teach people to solve specific kinds of problems. The professional bodies stay in touch with the needs of clients they serve and update requirements to join the group based on client needs.

[00:40:21] Also professional bodies typically have a requirement  for continuing education after you joined the group. So you can stay up to date to best help clients. These certifications or licenses to practice tend to be in higher demand and earn more money because they're so closely tied to solving real world problems.

[00:40:42] They're typically designed to help you solve problems instead of just a general education. So it's designed to help you solve a real-world problem and make sure that you can do it up to a certain standard that this clique, this group says is okay. So have you ever heard the advice instead of going to college, you should study a trade.

[00:41:03] For example, you should be a certified electrician or plumber. The logic behind this advice is the same. If you were assuming education is your path to a job or success, then get an education that teaches you how to solve specific problems instead of a general education. But an issue arises when too many people follow this path.

[00:41:26] In Ontario, there were way too many lawyers and teachers graduating from school there's or there was a generation of people who were told this is a safe path to study. So you can find a job after you graduate. But when they graduated, there were not enough jobs available to hire all of the graduates.

[00:41:45] Lawyers were struggling to gain the experience required, which is called articling. To receive their licenses, to practice. Teachers were struggling to find safe, quote unquote, that job security, safe pension jobs at schools, there wasn't enough demand or need for lawyers or teachers. It's oversaturated.

[00:42:06] There are too few jobs and too many people graduating from it because they were told this, there are so many jobs available. You may be thinking Jette, how can I predict demand? How will I know if people need something now? And we'll still need it four years from now or 10 years. So I can continue to make money.

[00:42:28]That's right. There you go. And you do job trends. I teach a lot of this stuff in my course. So I talked to you about how do you go? And you analyze the labor market. I talked to you about how do you go and analyze client needs? How do you predict whether this will help you to make enough money so that you can live off of it?

[00:42:42] I teach you how to do these things, and this is why I said it's so important for you to learn how to narrow down what you love to do and sell yourself. And it is a separate skill from just going to school and studying.

[00:42:52]By the way, if you were currently in college or university stay. Nope.

[00:42:58]Okay. So I'm just going to stop it off here, but hopefully you'll see some of the benefits of why it's so helpful. For you to understand why, like, how to sell yourself and understand how if and when to think about education and education is not a path to success. That is a lie. We are going to talk about some of the other lies or myths that come through in the next episode.

[00:43:27] So next episode, we're talking about the myth that success comes from hard work, and we're going to break down why that's not true and where it really comes from.

[00:43:36]And we're going to talk about the myth that we should separate the personal, our personal and professional lives and what we should really be doing instead, because it's not so black and white, it's not so one or the other, there's not this hard binary of prefer personal and professional life. You are one whole person.

[00:43:53] So how do you combine that together? And that includes understanding that you are not your situation. You are a human being, navigating your situation. And we're going to talk about that all next week. 

[00:44:06]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:44:09] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:44:10] 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. 

[00:44:21]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.

[00:44:33] 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. 

[00:44:44] Because I think that if you have your financial resources together and you have good people around you, you can live a happier life.

[00:44:52] Subscribe and leave a review if you are enjoying the podcast.

[00:44:58] if you know somebody who you think may find this useful, please feel free to share it,

[00:45:02] with a friend.

[00:45:03]

[00:45:03]