15.  5 Secrets to Guide How You Build You Career or Business, so it aligns with who you are

Jette Stubbs: [00:00:00] So last week I told you that we were going to talk about the best books that I've found so far for selling yourself. And as I was getting ready to tell you ,  I realized that I had to really question who I wanted to be recommending that you speak to why you should be speaking to them and listening to them, and some of the values that I want to put forward.

[00:00:22] So in the corporate space, in the career space, in the business space, there are a lot of people who focus on selling and making money, but they don't necessarily do that in an ethical way. They don't always do it in the best way. So when you're choosing who you learn from. You don't want to come across as pushy, annoying or salesy.

[00:00:44] Yes. That's one piece of it. But the other piece of it is you actually don't want to build a business or build a career doing work that is going to hurt the world that is going to hurt other people where you feel like you were taking advantage of other people. And that's one of the fears that a lot of people have when they're going out to build something that is their own.

[00:01:08] That is new. That is a un- followed career path. That is a new unwritten path. How do you go and create something that aligns with who you are, makes a positive impact in the world, but also makes money. Can you be rich and be ethical? Can you be good and be wealthy? These are big questions that are are at.

[00:01:38] The heart of some of the obstacles that we face as we're building out our careers, whether that is a job, freelance service or a business

[00:01:48]So today what I want to do is I want to walk you through the 10 values that I want to use to guide this podcast. And you're like, okay, why should I listen to these values? It's not just about the values I want to use to guide this podcast. These are values that you should be considering as you start to develop your career.

[00:02:11] As you start to choose the impact that you're making, and you start to craft and design a career to fund and support your life and your lifestyle. If you have questions about how do you overcome fear and anxiety and stress? Questions of who am I to do this?  These values are going to be relevant.

[00:02:37] Are you going to create a way to break through that? That involves you creating positive working relationships with other people, empowering other people to build a successful business, or are you going to build a career that involves you taking your fears and your self-doubts and using that to push other people down so that you can get to where you want to go?

[00:02:58]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:03:01] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:03:02] 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. 

[00:03:13]One of the things I try and emphasize throughout all of my podcasts episodes and throughout my practice is  to show you. How everything that we're doing is connected. All the relationships that we're building. They're all connected. The person that we choose to be is the same person.

[00:03:34] When we show up in our family dynamics. As when we show up in our professional dynamics, we are one whole human being and we take that one whole person with us, wherever we go, we may show different sides of us. We may display different behaviors depending on who we're interacting with in and our environments, but we are one whole person the entire time.

[00:03:59] So we need to figure out what type of values are core to who we want that person to be. When we are interacting with the people that we love and want to develop loving relationships with whether that's friends or family. We need to figure out who that person is when you're showing up for people who are paying, whether that's a client or an employer, because you want to build healthy relationships with them either way.

[00:04:23]  How do you do that? And which values are most important. That's why these values matter. These are the guiding principles for happy career formula, but that sounds branded. It's really the guiding principles, but behind how to build a life that aligns with who you are, how to build a career that aligns with who you are.

[00:04:45] And there are 10 of them. So I'm going to walk you through the 10. This isn't going to be perfectly scripted. It isn't me reading from a book. I actually really thought about this as I was getting ready to put out my favorite books on selling yourself. Because while I love some of those books, I don't necessarily believe in the practices of all of the authors.

[00:05:11] And I also had to take a step back and realize that most of the books I was recommending were written by white men or written by men. Even if they weren't white.  I want to encourage representation like that is one of the reasons that I'm doing this podcast. I was one of the reasons that I, one of the missions behind my business, I also  working on mosaic untold lives, storytelling event for women of color.

[00:05:39] And our next event is June 11th. We have an event every other month. And if I want to be encouraging representation and diversity and representation, why aren't the books that I'm recommending diverse? And why am I flinching? When I think about not all, some of those authors, I follow them. I'm part of their communities, their online communities, but why am I flinching when I'm thinking about some of them, and I don't want to recommend that you follow them.

[00:06:08]That takes us back to the 10 principles. So whether you want to call them principles or values, really, I should be choosing which one it is, but these are  the guiding vision, the guiding values for what I'm going to be doing and sharing with you. And I want you to think about how these values align with the type of person you want to be when you show up.

[00:06:32]Don (Voice Over): [00:06:32] 1. Solve a problem or help someone achieve a goal, and ask for what you want in return

[00:06:37]Jette Stubbs: [00:06:37] So number one, to solve a problem, or to help somebody else achieve a goal. I can't remember who said this quote, there are different variations of the quote that basically say the same thing, but you get further in life and can achieve almost anything you want to. If you make it your mission to help other people get to where they want to go.

[00:06:59]So life is based on value exchange. And we don't like to think about at that sometimes. Especially when you think about love relationships, you don't want to say, oh,  this is, if this is just about love, it's not about value, but that's not really true. And I'm not saying this to sound crass or to sound like I'm a capitalist, like hardcore capitalist.

[00:07:21] It's all about free markets. It's not nothing about that. I'm saying when you are building healthy relationships, there is a positive exchange of value. So if you have a best friend that you've had since you were in kindergarten, the reason that you were friends is because you add value to each other's lives.

[00:07:40] You say positive things to each other.  Each other's stories. You keep each other's secrets, you provide emotional support to each other. That is a value. And if that person then tried to harm you on a consistent basis for over a year, you may love that person. But that relationship. Would, and probably should end because that person was taking away from your life.

[00:08:05]I believe there is no neutral when it comes to the people that you have in your close and immediate circle. You either have people that are adding value or taking away people on the outside, who you're not spending your time and energy  on a regular basis. Those people can be neutral. But if somebody is taking up your time, if you're spending energy on them, that means that they are either adding value to your life or they're taking away.

[00:08:35] There is no neutral. Neutral doesn't exist in this scenario.  If you're saying they're neutral,  what that really means is you're saying they're keeping me stagnant. They aren't encouraging a growth mindset. They are keeping me where I want to go at a neutral level. So they're not encouraging my personal professional, emotional growth.

[00:08:57] It's just neutral. You realize, as you see other people going, growing around you as your needs, wants and desires change, you're not going to want to be kept in neutral. You're going to want to grow. So you are going to grow best and quickest by fostering relationships with other people who are trying to create similar growth in their lives.

[00:09:25] And when you meet and speak with those people, you'll be working on creating a value exchange with them. So you'll be working on saying, okay, I want to join you. I want to be friends with you. I want to foster a community with you. I want to develop a relationship with you, and I want to offer value to you so that we can create this growth together.

[00:09:46] We can grow our business together. We can learn about how to have healthier relationships together, or if you're talking romantic relationships, you can build a family together.  At its root this value of number one, solving a problem or helping somebody achieve a goal. So it's focusing on giving and asking what you want in return.

[00:10:08] So a very intentional approach to how you're building out your life. And hit apply phase two career in business. So I talked about it in your family and your relationships with your loved ones, but the same thing applies in career in business. When you're going into an organization and trying to sell yourself to an employer, you're going to talk about how you can add value to help the organization go to where it wants to go.

[00:10:32] And I've talked about the star framework that you can use, where you can talk about this is the situation that your organization is in right now. This is the unique task that... my unique role that I can play to helping you get to where you want to go. This is the action that I will take the skills, qualifications, and experience that I can bring to the table. And then this is the result. 

[00:10:52] Right now, you may be struggling in a place where you're trying to develop your career. You don't know how to build something that aligns with who you are You may be telling yourself  this isn't the career of the century, but this is what everybody does.

[00:11:05] This is just life, right?  This is it. It doesn't get better.   Who am I to want more? Who am I to ask for more? And that fear and that self doubt and that inner critic can creep in. It can stop you from allowing yourself to dream that something is possible because you're not realizing that the way you create new possibilities for yourself is by going out there and offering to help people so that they're willing to give you more.

[00:11:35] So when somebody becomes a successful professional. Or they become that billionaire that we all talk about and you'll see all the newspapers out. There'll be in the New York times and  Huffington post covered everywhere. Why don't we talk about billionaires? You can look up like a Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg

[00:11:55] again, you'll find them all over the place.   What they've really done is they found a way to add value to people's lives when they're not there. So more and more people can pay them, even though they're not spending extra hours. they're spending less time working and helping those individual people.

[00:12:13]So number one was solving a problem. It applies to building out your personal relationships, family dynamics. It also applies to your professional relationships and understanding and grasping this concept is that the core of creating like a transformational, like game-changing difference in how much money you can potentially make over your lifetime.

[00:12:42] Because if you are stuck in a mindset where you're saying, tell me what to do, give me a job and then pay me for the hours that I worked doing that job. You are going to be stuck. Waiting to make $20 for each hour that you work. And the moment you get sick, if you don't have insurance, or if you don't have benefits,  money will stop coming in to pay your bills.

[00:13:06] And you'll be in a panic mode because you haven't built out a way to make money that is outside of you, whether that's rental income, whether that's putting up the upfront work to go and start a business. So you have some passive income. There are many different ways that you can set that up, but you need to be aware of it.

[00:13:30] You need to be aware of the decisions that you're making, and you need to believe that you are not just limited to your current situations, that you can expand your options, by understanding how to solve problems for other people and developing your skillset to help people get to where they want to go.

[00:13:48] So every relationship in your life, right? One of the useful things that you can do is ask people, what type of life do you want to live? Where do you want to go? And then start thinking about little ways that you can help them get there meaningful ways that you can help them get there.  If you go and you get married, ask your partner, what type of life do you want to build?

[00:14:12] Does that align with the type of life that you as an individual want to build? Are you two aligned and then build out a plan where you're both supporting each other and communicating openly with each other about your needs and your wants and how you're feeling so that you can get to where you want to go.

[00:14:32]That connection is what we yearn for. That connection is the root of it.   It's so valuable. When you hear people say, oh, every relationship is based on value like that used to make me cringe. No, it's not. That's not true. Love is powerful. And it is powerful. Love is super powerful, but people that you love, you really do want them to add value to your life.

[00:15:01] The people that you love,  tend to be the people who have added the most value to your life. In many ways, the people who brought you into this world, your parents, either people who you've grown up with your siblings. And not all of these relationships are perfect, but it's the amount of time that you've spent together.

[00:15:19] All the interactions that you had, that then can create ongoing feelings of love.

[00:15:26]Okay.  The gist of that is you need to be intentional about solving problems and helping other people achieve goals, but also asking for what you want to receive in return. 

[00:15:37]Henry (Voice Over): [00:15:37] 2. You have options. There are two parts to this one. You have option in your personal and professional life. You can expand your network. You can design your career to support your life, whether that's a job, freeleance service or business.

[00:15:50]Jette Stubbs: [00:15:50] So value number two, principle, number two

[00:15:54]  You can design your career to be a job, freelance service or a business. A lot of people get intimidated by the idea of taking on a six-figure job. They get intimidated by doing their dream job. They get intimidated by the idea of starting a business by marketing yourself and putting yourself out there.

[00:16:14] When I say a lot of people, I want you to know that I fall into that category too. When I first started to put my story out there and talking about  all of the different, really difficult, like life experiences that I've had from  graduating and having 90 days to find a job or leave the country. Then dealing with my mom getting stabbed in that robbery and living. And there is a bunch of backstory that I actually don't share about that scenario that made it even more complicated.  Then I went on to have  a racist supervisor and the person who was living with me at the time was going through some severe mental health issues.

[00:16:57] But that wasn't the main issue. The main issue was that I didn't have a safe space because then there was aggressive behavior at home.  There was discriminatory behavior at work. And then if I had to call home and talk to family there, basically the family was in crisis mode and I was unaware of like food allergies.

[00:17:19] And so my body started to deteriorate. I've talked about this in my previous podcast episodes, particularly episode one, And I need to create more flexibility for myself. I wanted to go out and say, okay, I can do a different job. I can negotiate and add value. I wanted to sell myself, but my confidence was so shot.

[00:17:41]When I hit that 90 days to find a job or leave the country, I was so committed.   So committed to it. I mastered interviewing  I nailed it like I did really well, my interview. So  18 months later, 18 months can make a huge difference in your life if you have enough for life events going on.

[00:17:58] So all of that stuff happened in 18 months and I was physically sick  stressed out, no safe space to talk, not going to therapy. Not talking to friends really about it because when I went home, I didn't want to talk about what was going on with the person I was living with in front of him.  I'd have to  go out for walks and leave my apartment to go and talk with my friends.

[00:18:23] And I just didn't have the energy. Sometimes. I was exhausted.  When I tried to interview, after all of this, I bombed  ah, my hands were shaking. I was so nervous. And so this idea of talking about myself and selling myself with confidence to create something different, to take that next career step, to move into a job, freelance service or business that was aligned with who I was.

[00:18:54] I think one time I may even cried after an interview. I was just  so overwhelmed with insecurities about my own life and what was what's going on. What I want you to realize, Is that even through those moments, there is still a path forward. So if your life is difficult right now, you could think you're in tunnel vision and you don't have options.

[00:19:17] You could just see this narrow tunnel. You think there may be light at the end of the road, or you may just see darkness

[00:19:23] it can get to this place where you don't know how you're going to get out. You don't know. How to sell yourself or create more flexibility. You think you have to work for five or 10 years in a job and then go start freelancing and then start a business. And your path doesn't have to be so linear. So if you go and listen to episode number four with Brittany  we talk about how Brittany quit her job.

[00:19:53] And within 60 days we had built out multiple options.  Instead of talking about 60 days, which I don't like as a realistic timeframe, that's a real crunch, pressured timeframe. Let's say  three to six months, three to six months. If you're not trying to stress yourself out, you can create a lot of transformation within your career and your business.

[00:20:13]So three to six months within that timeframe, Brittany had. Secured a part-time contract that paid, I think about two and a half times more per hour than anything she had ever made. She had secured like consulting training contracts that were like thousands of dollars for a few days of training. She had started her own coaching practice where she's an amazing book coach and she helps people craft their stories and she helps diverse authors put their stories forward and she focuses on non-fiction primarily.

[00:20:59] So from a place of feeling stuck in career, she shifted to having more than one option. So she was starting a business working part-time and freelancing. And doing contracts. All I'm seeing this say is you have multiple options. There's not just one path. It's not just, I have to go get a job for job security.

[00:21:26] You can go and get that job and start freelancing or start a business on the side. The difference between freelancing and a business, when you're freelancing, it's more like you're exchanging your time for money. You're one person it's like a solo preneur kind of thing. With a business you're building out systems to help you insert in serving people effectively.

[00:21:46] So you're building out systems teams of people to work with you. You're setting up that vision so you can work with people long-term. You have options. So that's principle number two, you have options, job, freelance service or business. So number one was solve a problem or help somebody achieve their goal and ask for what you want and return and apply that to your personal relationships and your professional relationships.

[00:22:10]So I don't know how many millions  people are on Facebook, but mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to spend his time speaking with each one of those people individually, he's serving a group and he's built out business systems to support him in serving both the people who are going to be. On Facebook or Instagram and the people who will be selling on Facebook and Instagram.

[00:22:33] So he doesn't have to go and speak to those people. Individually. One by one have millions of conversations. He's built out systems that can help now support many people, many millions of people, even though he's not having those one-on-one relationships.  When you are working as an employee, you're working to build out somebody else's dream, somebody else's system to help them serve more and more people you're.

[00:23:00] You could be working at Facebook and helping Zuckerberg serve more and more people and create more and more social media platforms.  And it's important to recognize.  That's going to be one of the later values. I'll talk to you about, are you building your own dream or are you building somebody else's dream?

[00:23:17] Both of those are okay. Choices, but which one are you doing? Okay. And what problems are you going to be solving? Can you shift that so that instead of just building out somebody else's dream, you can also work on building out your own dreams, too. What do you want your life to look like? This is a value exchange.

[00:23:33] Number two was you have options. So you don't just have to work with one person. You can do a job, a freelance service or a business. The same thing applies for your personal relationships. You're not just stuck with dating the person that you're dating right now. You have options, but I'm not saying this to be like the breakup queen.

[00:23:49] Like I'm not trying to do that. I am saying this to say that you don't need to settle in life. You don't need to be treated poorly. You don't need to feel stuck. You can have healthier communication with your partner. You can open up more and rebuild your dynamic to have a healthier relationship. You have options.

[00:24:10]You are not stuck where you are at right now, you can build out tools so that you can live a more fulfilling and empowered life. And I don't mean that in some sort of mindset, toxic, positivity   believe, and then it will manifest itself into reality. I think the power of belief is to give you the confidence to take action so that you can build out a strategy, knowledge, and tools to make your belief a reality.

[00:24:44] It doesn't just come from just believing. You can't  pray your way to a different situation. You need to be taking the steps to getting you closer to where you want to go. You need to break a cycle where you're not repeating a wheel  over and over again. You're not going through a habit or a routine of just going from work home.

[00:25:07] Watching TV go to sleep. Cause if you're doing that over and over again, what is going to change in your life? What activities are you doing differently to create memories with people that you love each week? What activities are you doing to grow yourself professionally each week instead of watching a Netflix show?

[00:25:27]Not saying that all Netflix shows are about, they have documentaries. I talk about Netflix too much on the show sometimes, but anyways   watch a documentary, watch a Ted talk, watch something educational. I love watching Benjamin Hardy's videos. He's got a lot of good YouTube videos on how to grow your mindset.

[00:25:46] Think about your personal growth, think about your professional growth. Think about your relationship growth. What do you want that to look like and recognize that you have options and you're not just stuck with the people that you have around you. You can totally rebuild those dynamics. So I think in a previous podcast, I think it may have come out already.

[00:26:05] I talked about how, when I was building out my relationships, my network in Canada.  I have a solid group of friends, but when I wanted to go out into activities, I like to explore. I'm like I'm in a new country. I'm not just here  to settle to live day by day, go and work home TV, go to sleep.

[00:26:27] No, that's not my life. So what I wanted to do was to go out and explore different activities. I said, okay, I'm going to go skydiving for my 20 something is ish birthday. And I'm going to go horseback riding archery. My friend just sent me like a picture. Cause it showed up in her memories of  when I took her to archery seven years ago.

[00:26:48] And just did all these different activities. But sometimes my friends weren't into going. I was like, oh, you know what? We all have savings. Like we're a group of  young women of color and we all have these savings. Why don't we pull together, buy our first house, pay for it quickly, like pay for the mortgage quickly.

[00:27:04] And then we can use that equity in that house to buy a second house and a third house. And so that by the time we're like 30, 35. We can have  three houses that are basically fully paid off. We each are making good money more than most people. Our age let's build out a plan.

[00:27:23] The long-term wealth, nobody was on my run. Nobody like nobody. Everybody's    no, you don't get eventually get a condo and I'm going to save up and I'm going to go live with my parents. And I really want to live on my own now, finally, and just, I'm going to pay them $1,700 a month in rent. That's what everybody did.

[00:27:42] That's what they did. And that's okay for all of you who love me enough to listen to this. I still love you. There's no hard feelings about that, but the truth was I wanted to live life differently and my friends weren't on my run. So I basically told them. I love you, but I'm going to be expanding my options with my friends.

[00:28:03] That means I'm going to end up spending a bit less time with you. Yes, but it doesn't mean that I am no longer valuing our relationship. I just have different goals in life. And I'm trying to meet people who are aligning with those goals that goes back to value. 

[00:28:18] Number one, right? So number one, solve a problem and help people achieve their goals and ask for what you want in return.

[00:28:27] Don't forget that piece. Ask for what you want in return. You don't always have to want or need something to help somebody, but you should be putting out there the type of life that you would want to live, make people aware of it so that they can choose to give back to you. 

[00:28:43]Two, you have options. So you can choose the people that you have around you. You're not stuck in that toxic work environment. You're not stuck in a bad relationship. You can choose the type of relationships that you have and the type of people you want to attract in your life. And I actually just write down a list and call out trying to attract those people. And you can still do it virtually during the pandemic.

[00:29:08] I have been networking during the pandemic and made some really awesome friends. I think one of my biggest issues is keeping up in touch with all of the people who I have now touched base. 

[00:29:18]Henry (Voice Over): [00:29:18] 3. Are you building your dream or someone else's dream? 

[00:29:21]Jette Stubbs: [00:29:21] Number three is going back to what I said before, about your idea versus someone else's idea. So are you working to build out your dream or somebody else's dream?

[00:29:32] Both options are okay. I think so often in the business space or in the business coaching space, entrepreneurship space, they make it sound like having a job is a bad thing, or  oh, you're just going to be stuck in that nine to five. And sometimes nine to fives can totally feel like a rut. But if you love what you do, if you're working with amazing people and you have a great working environment, nine to five, isn't bad, and honestly, a nine to five, doesn't have to be nine to five.

[00:30:00] It could be work from home with the flexibility to get your work done. When you get it done and have predominantly remote relationships, right? Remote working relationships, you can have that same flexibility with a company who's more remote, maybe startup base, maybe internationally based. So you have that flexibility to work, how you want to.

[00:30:21]You don't have to go out  and start a business to have that flexibility. I want you to be aware of how you are choosing to build out your life. Is it by supporting somebody else's dream by getting a job so you can help build up the systems and teams that they need for their organization to help them achieve their vision of helping their clients.

[00:30:46]  They created a corporation. So this individual or group of individuals created a corporation that acts as its own identity. That's supposed to act as a person like Amazon should act as a person, essentially serving you. Amazon as a corporate entity, who is a person serving you to help you get your supplies or your food within 24 hours or whatever prime delivery is nowadays.

[00:31:12]Versus you going out and starting your own business. And you're saying, okay, I'm going to help people. I'm going to freelance and sell my hour for money. If you are freelancing, this is a big mistake that people make. They think that the money that they make is their money to keep the same way it is with a job.

[00:31:28] So that's not true when you get your job, they take out taxes and then the rest of the money is yours to use as you see fit.  It's not an extreme, it's the ideal. Ideally you want 30% of your money to be going towards long-term savings and 30% or less to be going towards covering your monthly, okay.

[00:31:45] Expenses, 30% long-term savings, 30% short term savings slash like emergency fund and 30% like monthly expenses like fixed monthly expenses, rent. I don't know all of your subscriptions, car insurance transit. When I tell people this they're like, what are you talking about? How am I supposed to get my expenses that low?

[00:32:18] That's the wrong way to think about it? It's how do you get your income that high to cover your expenses and what expenses can you lower? So it's a two way conversation that increasing your income is a big piece of that.   And you do have, and more flexibility in your income goals when you start to serve and work with more people, because more people can pay you, which is why having a business can seem so attractive.

[00:32:42] You have all of these people who are going to be paying you and working with you. And that sounds like a super attractive thing to create that flexibility for yourself.

[00:32:51]But when people are trying to start these businesses, one of the areas where they get stuck is they don't know what business they should start. They get stuck on their idea, which is why I created the find what you love to do online course, and I have coaching to support it. But the problem with being stuck on finding an idea is often people will go and do what's called multilevel marketing.

[00:33:21] And if you Google multi-level marketing and look on Wikipedia, it's basically 

[00:33:26]you 

[00:33:28] are selling something like selling somebody else's product or service, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. This can is you're selling somebody else's product or service. You could be doing  affiliate marketing is  let's say.

[00:33:41] You take my course, you really liked my course. You say, Hey, Jack, I want to refer like five of my friends. Take your course. If I refer each one of these people, can you  give me a hundred dollars per person? I say, yeah, sure, no problem. I'll give you a hundred dollars per sale. And each time you sell, let's say you get five people to buy.

[00:34:02] My course per month, you get $500 a month. That's affiliate marketing, that's referral marketing. You're getting a referral fee. You're  I'm paying a referral fee. You're getting a referral commission. That's affiliate marketing. That is a good thing. That is an okay way for you to make money. Multi-level marketing on the other hand, focuses on, okay, you get other people to sell this thing too. So instead of focusing on selling the actual product, you're told to focus more on recruiting other people to sell. That is the focus of multi-level marketing. And basically it's like you go to the grocery store or you're trying to work at the grocery store. And instead of being told, you're selling groceries, you're being told you're supposed to recruit other people to sell groceries.

[00:34:56] And then those people are supposed to recruit other people to sell groceries. And then your big question is, so who's actually selling these groceries or these products just can sit here and rot, but the trick with multi-level marketing is they usually set it up so that if you want to be a seller of this item, you have to subscribe.

[00:35:16] So you're basically selling to people who you're telling can then sell it. I don't know if this is making sense, cause I'm using the word sell a lot. So you're basically selling it to people and then telling those people to sell it again. So you're not saying, Hey, you're in point a of a bad situation and I'm going to give you this apple, that's going to fill up your stomach and help you feel better.

[00:35:37] You're saying, Hey, there's this apple here. It's a really cool product or service. You can sell this apple too. And then, you know what you can do. You can get other people to sell this apple and then other people to sell this apple. And when you get all those people to sell this apple, they all have to buy the apple to sell the apple.

[00:35:56] And the apple actually never gets eaten or used. It's just passed around. And it's just told  Hey, you can sell this to, you can sell this to, you can sell this to, but nobody was actually ever given a transformation where they're saying, okay, my life was difficult. My life was improved. They're all just sold this dream of, if you get enough people to sell, want to sell this apple too, eventually we can all be rich and you can make money and you can live this high lifestyle.

[00:36:25] Lamborghinis. If you hit 500,000, we'll give you a car. This is multi-level marketing. It's different from affiliate marketing. So affiliate marketing is a product or service.  You use, you refer it to your friends or you refer it to people who listen to you or follow you. And they say, yeah, that's great.

[00:36:48] I'm going to give you a con, I'm going to buy this thing. And then the person, like I gave you the course example, like I could give you like a hundred dollars. Do you help me sell my course? That's an example. Another example of  that sort of referral process is you may have heard or seen companies when they're recruiting for people because recruiting is a very expensive and time-consuming process.

[00:37:08] They'll ask for people to. Come in and, or they'll ask for referrals for potential candidates and they say, Hey, if you give us a good referral, we'll give you $500 because $500 is really a drop in the bucket for how much that money they would spend on a solid recruiting process to get the word out there that there.

[00:37:27]So this is all things I want you to think about when it comes to 

[00:37:33]the 

[00:37:34]building, your own dream concept versus building somebody else's dream, both are okay, except for multi-level marketing. Stay away from that at all costs, please. I've seen  so people who are super smart, who are amazing applied mathematicians with  PhDs.

[00:37:52] And then they get caught up in this multi-level marketing scheme and I'm like, no, please stop it. Don't do it. Don't do it. And I've had to sit them down and just literally direct them to Wikipedia page. This is multi-level marketing. Stay away from it.

[00:38:07]Yeah. If people are selling you lifestyle and instead of selling you a solution or an improved situation, if they're just selling you dreams and they're saying you don't have to do much work other than sell to other people   it's not good. It's not a good sign, especially if you're supposed to be recruiting other people to sell instead of selling the product.

[00:38:25] That's the main difference. Are you recruiting other people to sell it to, or are you actually selling the product or service selling the product or service is fine. Okay. 

[00:38:37] So number one was solve a problem or help somebody achieve a goal and then ask for it. What you want in return. And the asking is super important.

[00:38:45] Number two is you have options. You have options in your personal life and your professional life, and you can scale from a job, a freelance service and a business. And it doesn't even really have to be the scaling thing, this linear one  than the other. You can do them all at once. 

[00:38:59]Number three is about your idea versus someone else's idea. So are you working to build out your dream or somebody else's dream?

[00:39:08]Henry (Voice Over): [00:39:08] Number 4. As you'll hear Mike Lander say in our upcoming episode on price and salary negotiation, people will pay for three things: Activities, Outputs, and Results. 

[00:39:19] Jette Stubbs: [00:39:19] Number four is I want you to think about three different things, the three different things that people pay for.

[00:39:28]  And this you'll hear this one coming up soon. This is Mike Lander, who is going to be talking about salary negotiations in an upcoming episode and how he is a negotiation expert. Really. He helps with  negotiating for businesses.  And he talks about how negotiation processes apply for salary negotiation and setting your price and negotiations at price.

[00:39:52] I'm really excited when that episode comes out. I really enjoyed speaking with Mike.  He talks about three. Things that people pay for activities, output and results.

[00:40:03]So activities, outputs, and results

[00:40:08]think of an activity.  So I had this friend in university, one of my university roommates. She was horrible at cooking. When I met her, she just didn't know how to cook. So we used to cook as a group, like  as a sort of uni adopted family for each other. We used to cook as a group of three of us and she could carry her weight.

[00:40:34] So she couldn't cook and she's  but I want to, so can you teach me? So me and my other friend took it upon ourselves, teach her how to cook.  I ended up doing a lot of the teaching, I think just because I was home more  when she was supposed to be cooking.  Sometimes dishes just didn't turn out.

[00:40:53] I remember one time she like made this  super spicy shrimp and then she's  oh, this isn't good. So she tried to  rinse off all the sauce and start again. But of course  seasoning, penetrates through the meat  it was still spicy, but it was differently flavored. It was like you had the outside and it was one flavor.

[00:41:12] And then you bit into when it was like, Ooh, this is a different kick of flavor on the inside. And I don't remember if we ate that. 

[00:41:19] I  It was everybody is college. So it was hard times. I would imagine we probably did, but you can have the activity of cooking a meal, but not having anything editable at the end of it, which is your output.

[00:41:35]You can do the work. You can get work, done, accomplished something, or you can deliver the result that people want. So the result in this case would be a delicious meal for three people. So are you when you're doing your work and when you're selling yourself to employers or you're selling yourself to a client, are you selling activities where you just could be running on a treadmill, but never really growing anywhere. You're doing work.

[00:42:09] People will pay you as Mike Lander will say, either for activities, outputs or results. And are you asking somebody to pay you to run on a treadmill and never go anywhere and never lose any weight and never get to any sort of result that you want to? Or are you asking people to pay you because, you'll put meals out there.

[00:42:33] You'll make those meals. You'll cook that food. You will lose some weight or you'll get stronger. Whatever your role is on that treadmill, people will pay for outputs and results. People will excitedly pay for results. They'll somewhat excitedly pay for an outfit. So the difference between an output and a result is  yeah, she creates the meal or that she creates this delicious meal that  fills everybody because she can create some food, but maybe it doesn't feel three people.

[00:43:04] Maybe it's not the desired result. You can get something done, but it not meet people's needs. If you ever start to learn about project management. You'll start to see or learn about how some things can get done that don't actually meet people's needs. You can spend all of this time building an app, or you can spend all of this time building out    a tool.

[00:43:29] Let's go with an app. You can spend all the time building out an app, but the app never achieves its goal. So let's say I wanted you to build an app to help people meal plan for the week. That was the app. That's the goal. But you design an app because you get so excited building it out that you forget to list the days of the week.

[00:43:54] You've still built an app. There's an output, but did it achieve its desired result? No.  So when you're thinking about the work that you're doing, when you're asking for a promotion, when you're trying to make more money, are you being aware of the. Activities outputs and the results. Are you just doing work?

[00:44:14] Are you getting work done or are you listening to the needs of the clients and companies that you're working with and helping them to meet those needs? That is a result. That is what people are most excited to pay for it. You helping to meet their needs, help them to achieve their goals. That's what people are most excited to pay for.

[00:44:34] The lower your income level is the more you're probably focusing on activities or outputs.. And you're not thinking about how it connects to the organization.

[00:44:43]Recap again, one solve a problem or help somebody achieve a goal and ask for what you wanted or to return 

[00:44:49] Two. You have options. You have options in your personal life. You have options in your  professional life, and you can scale from a job freelance service to a business, and you can build out all three or two at once.

[00:45:02]Three, you can either work on building out your dream or someone else's dream. Both options are okay. Just stay away from multi-level marketing.

[00:45:13] Four. You have options. You can either deliver activities, I'll put or results. You can either help somebody  by just doing stuff, you can help get stuff done, or you can help meet their needs and help them achieve their goals.

[00:45:32] People always want to pay for helping you, you helping them to meet their needs and achieve their goals. 

[00:45:38]Henry (Voice Over): [00:45:38] Five. When investing in yourself, focus on people selling you knowledge, strategy and tools over "lifestyle" sales.

[00:45:46]Jette Stubbs: [00:45:46] Five. I want to empower you with knowledge and tools. So that you can build the life that you want. A lot of people sell lifestyle, so they just  sell the end goal without talking about how you'll get there.

[00:46:00]but the truth is you don't want lifestyle. You don't want lifestyle, you want results.  You don't want to just be hoping and praying to live the life that you want and thinking and daydreaming, and just having somebody take your money and to give you fluff advice, toxic positivity, like just believe, and it will manifest, and it will be true.

[00:46:22] I'm not saying that you shouldn't believe. You should believe, but you need to build out a plan and you need to have the knowledge and tools and the principles  and put the effort into enacting them to change your behavior. So you can make decisions aligned with the person that you want to become.

[00:46:39] The person who is living the life that you want to live is making different decisions from the decisions you were making today. So if you are going home, I say this all the time, but if you're going home watching TV, Going to work, going to sleep, eating unhealthy, waking back up the next day. If you feel like I'm calling you out right now, then you need to change your habits.

[00:47:05] You need to work on making little decisions that are going to make shifts in how you think if that means, if you're going into work right now.  Can you listen to an audio book on the way, right? Can you like, what can you do differently to start to shift some of your behaviors? Can you buy a treadmill and walk on that treadmill while you're watching a Ted talk instead of sitting on a couch and watching a romantic movie that may leave you feeling sad or than when you started.

[00:47:38] And I'm not saying these things to try and be harsh. I'm just saying. I want you to be empowered, to break cycles and to be aware of the cycles that you're creating in your life. Somebody that I'm really excited that I got to interview recently, Nicole Lewis-Keeber she put out a book recently called love your business, and in love your business, she talks about how we have one relationship that we just keep on repeating over and over.

[00:48:03] So we have a relationship with our business, our relationship with our  personal life. And we just repeat that relationship over and over based on her own trauma and our own insecurities, the problems that we have, everybody's got problems. Everybody's got their own bit of crazy that we're trying to work through.

[00:48:19] Everybody's got their own issues, right? So nobody is exempt from that. The question is how is that manifesting or playing itself out in our life, in our relationships, in our insecurities, in our self-doubts interferes in our inner critic, in how we aren't using toxic behaviors. To harm the people that we love, we all have some toxic behaviors that we need to work through.

[00:48:42] Nobody is exempt from that. Either everybody has room for improvement. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that there are things that you need to work on and you are not right all of the time. This is not meant to be a lecture. This is just saying what you need to change your life to make a better situation is 

[00:49:06] one: an awareness of what needs to be changed.

[00:49:09] Two: a willingness to put in the work 

[00:49:12] And three: knowledge tools and principles that work to improve your life situation. 

[00:49:18] So there are books like Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people. I love that book. Like that book was one of the books that really helped me  sharpen the saw, begin with the end in mind, think about where you want to go and then reverse engineer your ideas so that you were building out your life thinking about where you want to go. Then making sure that you're climbing the right wall.

[00:49:41] Is that actually where you want to go? Make sure you're going back and re-evaluating and thinking, is this where you want to go? Because you can spend your life trying to buy a big house and then realize you're up in this house by yourself. And you're struggling to cover the monthly expenses because yeah.

[00:49:57] Massive pieces of property are expensive to maintain. And people don't think about these things. They don't think about the fact that they're going to have to walk half a mile to see their loved one. Who's up on the other side of that house. And they feel super alone because they never speak to that person because they spent too much time focusing on building the wealth.

[00:50:14] And they don't think about the fact that it costs a lot of money to maintain that. So you constantly have to work or make sure that you have passive income covering to maintain that mansion that you think you want to live in. You probably don't need the mansion, but what you do need is to reevaluate what you want out of life and what actually matters to you.

[00:50:34] This is where knowledge, processes, and tools are super important to building out the life that you want when you're looking at buying or working with a coach. I'll be real with you. It took me a long time before I even chose to work with a coach. It wasn't until 2020.

[00:50:48] That I paid a coach, like a couple thousand dollars and I worked with her, but that's a couple thousand dollars for business coaching for a business that was already making money.    I would say career coaching is worth that too,  if you make an extra $20,000 a year and you paid somebody $2,000 to help you, let's say $2000, $3000, $4000 career coaches vary somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000 or $6,000 for a well-established career coach.

[00:51:16] If you paid somebody that much money, that's a lot of money, but if you make an extra $20,000 a year, like you've made more than what, four to 10 to 20 times your investment in one year    it's thinking about things differently. It's a mindset shift, and I'm not saying  you need to just constantly be paying money and investing in expensive stuff.

[00:51:45] You can get a library subscription and take two audio books. Like when I was in Toronto, I was using Libby. I'm not in Toronto right now. You may hear all these birds chirping around me. I've been trying to close the windows and get them to be quieter, but they keep on chirping and it's not something I should be complaining about.

[00:52:01] So I haven't complained. I'm just saying that they do chirp a lot.  So what was I saying?  Yeah. I want to empower you with  knowledge, processes, and tools to build the lifestyle that you want and to be aware of who you are, because what you want is different for what I want. What you want now is different from what you want five years from now.

[00:52:19]The sixth thing is this idea of, oh, wait, before we go onto number six,

[00:52:27]along with this idea of selling a lifestyle, you will see some coaches, some people in the coaching profession, try and tell you that if you have to go in significant debt to buy their $20,000 program, that it's worth it, they will help you go through your accounts and figure out how you can take out the money from that or from buying or from borrowing money to pay them money.

[00:52:56]And  I don't believe in that. I don't believe in that. I think that's wrong. I think  there are free tools and resources that are out there working with a coach, fast tracks, your process substantially, usually. So something that may take you like. Two to three years to figure out you could figure out and like a few coaching sessions potentially.

[00:53:18] Cause they're bringing all this knowledge and tools and experience with working with hundreds or thousands of people in your scenario and bringing that to a conversation with you where they can pinpoint your unique concerns.  That I think  is valuable, right? That's why  I think that is valuable.

[00:53:36] That is why I do it.  But I would never tell you to max out a credit card. The point is you need processes and tools to get to where you want to go. You don't want somebody selling you a lifestyle and you don't want somebody telling you, you need to get in debt to live that lifestyle.

[00:53:52] That is not good advice. You want somebody to help you build up processes and tools and knowledge and give you knowledge that you can make more money so that you can afford a lifestyle. So you can afford to access people who will have higher levels of knowledge, who charge more time, charge more for their time.

[00:54:09] That is what you want to do.

[00:54:10] And you need to know how to build up those processes and tools to help you get there. 

[00:54:13]I want you to think about these 10 values. I'm going to be using to guide this podcast and how they can affect how you guide your career. So with lots of love, I hope that this Wednesday is not going to be a hump day for you.

[00:54:27] I hope you got some useful advice and tools, and I hope you enjoyed the birds chirping as it started to go dark here. And the birds went away. I don't know. They went to sleep    I hope you enjoy your Wednesday. 

[00:54:41]You're listening to the happy career formula 

[00:54:44] with Jette Stubbs 

[00:54:45] 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. 

[00:54:57]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.

[00:55:08] 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. 

[00:55:19] Because I think that if you have your financial resources together and you have good people around you, you can live a happier life.

[00:55:28] Subscribe and leave a review if you are enjoying the podcast.

[00:55:32] if you know somebody who you think may find this useful, please feel free to share it,

[00:55:36]