September 17, 2024 • 42 mins
To open, Laura and Sarah talk about previous visions for their own career. Then, in the interview portion Erika Ayers Badan shares some fascinating ideas around work and what it takes to build a career that is truly fun and fulfilling -- she and Sarah discuss failure, boss challenges, coming back from maternity leave, and much more.
In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking about career coaches. Are they useful, and if so, how do you find a good one?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This
episode is airing in mid September of twenty twenty four.
(00:47):
Sarah is going to be interviewing Erica Arisbaddan, who is
the former CEO of Barstool Sports, so she has a
lot to tell us about careers and business and life.
She is the author of a book called No One
Cares About Your Career, right, Sarah? Is that how? That's
the book?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And I love the title. I feel like it's so
descriptive and just very honest. It's a very honest book.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And the idea that like nobody cares about your career,
I guess it's more not that like nobody has any
interest in it whatsoever, but more that you are the
one who kind of has to take charge of it
because there's not some career fairy godmother out there looking
out for you or designing your career path or telling
(01:34):
you what is the best next step. You kind of
have to figure that out for yourself. But that is
part of taking your career seriously, which is something that
we definitely advocate here on this podcast. So, Sarah, did
you have a clear vision of what you wanted your
work life to look like before you started working?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
To some extent, yes, I feel like that vision has
shifted over time. And honestly, if I didn't have my
blog actually see in writing what I thought my vision
would be, I'm not sure I would remember this. But
I even noted back like fifteen years ago or more
that I wanted to do be a part time pediatric indocronologist.
So I must have had some other ideas in mine.
(02:13):
I might not have wanted to voice them because that
would have felt risky at the time, But I kind
of always knew I wanted to do a lot of
different things. I knew I wanted to do medicine, I
wanted to see patients, I wanted to do pediatric indochronology,
and I do feel like along the way, I have
then played with things. We've done career crafting episodes where
(02:33):
we talked about various things. But I do think the
true it's so true what Eric's title says, which is
that like, no one is going to hand you on
a silver platter, like this is what your day to
day life and career will look like. And here's a
step you could take, and here's a leadership position you
could take, and here's.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
A pathword upward for you.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Like there may be some mentorship that help you see
what possibilities there are, but the only one that's really
going to be invested in what that path looks like
and it's going to have to actually take those steps
to put themselves out there is you. So that's why
I was really attracted to the title of this book.
And yeah, I'm excited with this conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely when you build your own business,
this becomes apparent very quickly. Like you know, it's not
like school where tenth grade follows ninth grade and if
you do these requirements, you will move on to the
next level. I mean, it's unclear what the next level is,
and even if you have a picture of it, it
doesn't always mean that there's some straightforward thing that will
(03:32):
get you there. You can definitely take steps backward, try
things that don't work. You know, it's just all risk
taking and you hope some of it pays off eventually.
But that's why you got to keep thinking about it,
because again, nobody else cares about your career, but you
I think there's a lot of stuff in life that
(03:52):
nobody's going to care as much as you are, and
you just I think that goes both ways. I mean,
it's kind of like, oh, well, I better take it
seriously then, and it's also like, well it's kind of liberating.
I mean, I don't know why we have this. It's
kind of I don't know if it's an American cultural
thing where people always have to claim that there's a
lot of opposition to whatever, Like nobody told me I
could do this, or you know, I people said I
(04:13):
couldn't do X, Y or Z. I'm you know, for
most of it, probably nobody really cared.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Everyone's still busy paying attention to themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
So yeah, yeah, no one cares. So that'll be our
takeaway from this nobody cares about your career, so you should.
So let's hear what Erica has to say.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, I am so excited to welcome to best of
both worlds Erica Ayers Badon, who was former CEO of
Barstool Sports, a company many of you may have heard of,
and the author of Nobody Cares about your career, which
is really what we're going to talk about during this
interview today.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
So welcome Erica.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Thank you for having me so.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Excited to talk.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I was attracted, especially honestly to the title of your book,
and we'll get to that in a minute. But just
in case people don't know about you or don't know
about Barstool Sports, can you give us the like three
minute version of your career journey. I know that's asking
a lot because you've been you've done a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, no, it's good.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I think everybody should do a lot of things in
their career. So my career has predominantly been in the
intersection between technology, the internet, content, advertising, and commerce. Like
that's really where I've lived my professional life. I worked
at a lot of really big companies like Microsoft and
AOL and Yahoo. I have worked at a bunch of startups,
(05:38):
a lot of you know, which were disasters.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
One was part of an IPO and then was a disaster.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
And about a decade ago, ten years ago, I took
the CEO job at Barstool Sports, which was at the
time a very small, like fledgling, little renegade brand in Boston, Massachusetts,
which started as a newspaper became a very janky app
and a website and it was all about opinion and
(06:07):
perspective and personality, mostly about sports. And I joined that
company in twenty sixteen. It had twelve people, no p
and L, no business system, and we grew it and
sold it for five hundred and fifty million dollars in
twenty twenty three. So we had a huge, crazy, big run.
(06:29):
It was wild and exhilarating, very funny. We grew it
to be one of the ten largest brands in the
world on TikTok and an ultimate real powerhouse in American media.
So that's kind of the Barstool Sports of it all.
And now I'm the CEO of a company called Food
fifty two, which is a lifestyle home and food brand.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Amazing, what an incredible journey all that experimentation led you
to like an amazing success story, and yet you decide done,
let me keep going.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I know, maybe I'm an idiot. I might be
an idiot.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I'm always inspired by that into somebody who clearly like
might not have to continuing to be chugging along, and
yet they're impassioned, they're excited, and everything just ends up
like falling into place for them to continue pushing.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So super exciting.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
That's awesome. Yeah, I do like to work. So here
we are all right.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well, on the note of work, you had a lot
to say, like a lot to say your book. There's
just so much in there. I'm super excited to talk
about it. Just so much useful and interesting stuff and
so many stories. So let's start with the title. Where
did you come up with? Nobody cares about your career?
And I don't know, is that something you've always kind
(07:44):
of been passionate about the idea that you have to
take charge of it on your own or tell me
a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
The title?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, it was funny. So I you know, I wrote
the book.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I think the publisher expected like a fairly short book,
and it kept like getting longer and longer. And longer
and longer, and we edited quite a bit out of
it actually, So the book was pretty dense in a
good way, I would say, And I didn't know what
to call it. And nobody cares about your career wasn't
the intended title at all.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It was just one of the chapters.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
And it's something that I've said to myself really since
almost the beginning of my career, and it's just always
been a mantra I've had in my head, which is
that you are the one who can make a difference
in your life and in your job and in your career,
and that it is a complete and utter waste of
(08:36):
time to live a life or have a job, or
be in a career or be on a track that
feels good or looks good or says a certain thing
or is a certain way to somebody else. You really
need to do things that make you happy and create fulfillment.
And that you are ultimately responsible.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
For your career.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
You're responsible for the path you take and also what
happens on that path. So that's really where the title
came from. And you know, it's fun. I think it's
a good message for people. I think you kind of
see it, it seems negative. It's actually, in my opinion,
very positive because it's supposed to be very freeing. This
book is designed to be freeing and to empower people
(09:20):
to say, Hey, what makes me happy and energized? How
can I push myself? What iterations of myself can I
be and become? And hopefully this book is helpful along
that path.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yes, I think the word empowering is exactly what I
was thinking, like, Okay, no one else is going to
take charge of this, and therefore it's on me and
I must be empowered to move forward, empowered to make decisions,
and empowered to take responsibility for my actions, which is
a major theme in this book that we're going to
talk about. And in fact, you spend a lot of
(09:53):
time talking about failure and mistiqus. So before we even
get into how you recommend others with failure along the
course of their careers, can you tell us about what
kinds of failures you've had or have there been struggles
that kind of inspired this passion around failure.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Yeah, I like failure. I call it fail always mode.
Success I think can make me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable,
and I think the reason I think failure is really important,
and the book talks a lot about my failures and
just failure in general. Is that what failure really is.
(10:31):
It means two things, in my opinion. One is, or
in the best case, it means two things. One is,
you're putting yourself in an environment where you don't know
exactly what to do, so you are in a new environment.
You are learning things, You're pushing yourself. You're putting yourself
in a place where it's not all perfect and you're
not the expert and you have to figure some stuff out.
(10:54):
So it indicates that you are in an environment that
is not comfortable.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And then the second is it's indicating that.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
You're trying, you're experimenting, you're trying to figure things out,
and failure if you think about exercise, you think about sports,
you think about experiments. I read a social post the
other day that the inventor of the dice in vacuum
had like something like five thousand prototypes. He built five
(11:24):
thousand vacuums that didn't work until he built the five
thousand and.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Whatever one that became the dice in vacuum.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
That is also failure, right, It's knowing that you're trying
to do something, you're trying to become something, You're trying
to figure something out, and you don't know exactly how
to do it, but you do have the willingness to try.
And that's really you know, this book is about, in
a nutshell, you need to put away your insecurity, which
(11:56):
is I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, I'm
not ready. And you need to put away your ego,
which is I'm too good for this, I'm above this,
I'm better than this. You have to put both of
those things away and kind of show up with yourself
to tackle the problem that's in front of you, and
that can really great things can come of that.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
All right, we're going to take a quick break and
then we're gonna talk more a little bit on the
subject of failure.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
All right, we are back, and I want to get
a little bit into specifics. So, first of all, if
you can think of an example from your career where
there has been perhaps a fail and how you handled
it or maybe even learned from how you handled it.
Maybe you failed at handling your fail and then that
taught you something as well. And then like maybe a
scenario where someone works in a corporation and they realized
(12:56):
they messed up, Like, how do you handle it?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I mean I fail all the time, So how long
do you have I've had all sorts of different failures
in my career. I handled things the wrong way. I
managed people in a way that I had wished I
had managed them differently. I was confronted with situations where
I did one thing, but in hindsight I was like, Oh,
(13:23):
I knew in my gut I shouldn't have done that.
I should do it a different way. I've had really
every imaginable failure there is. You know, I had a
big part of my time spent at Barstool trying to
make a TV show that our board really felt like
we needed a TV show. And I spent a year
of my life forty percent of that year trying to
(13:46):
get Barstool Sports on ESPN. And it didn't feel good
the whole time. It was painful, it was cumbersome, it
was fraught with pitfalls. It kept going back to the
same place that was like, this doesn't seem like a
good fit, this doesn't seem like a good fit. And
still I kept pushing, pushing, pushing to make it happen
(14:07):
because it's what I thought I was supposed to do,
and it ended up being a total disaster. The show
ran for one night, it was canceled, it became this
whole big brew haha with ESPN and barstool. But it's
a good example of if you keep going on a
path that you're pretty sure you're not supposed to be on,
(14:29):
and you are not listening to the signs that are
like get off this highway.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Get off this highway, like take the exit. Take the exit.
It's going to end up probably bad.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
And you knew that it was not going to end
up well, So that would be one big example of
a failure. I tend to believe that people are optimists,
so that even and I'm an optimist, so that even
when you do fail, I'm kind of getting to your
second question, you'll probably rationalize that it was good that
that happened because something else good came of it. So
(15:01):
that's also a reason not to be afraid of failure,
is that you're going to say that this was for
the best anyway, so you might as well just do it.
I think when people in a corporate setting are at
work mess up on something and I write a lot
about this, like what happens.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
After you screw up? What do you do after you
screw up? Because everybody screws up? First of all.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
My perspective on that is that when you mess up,
the best thing you can do is to reassess. You
need to be able to step out of the situation
you're in, and you need to be able to say
what went wrong here critically thinking, really critically, being critical
about yourself of.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
What did I do wrong? What went wrong? What should
have been done? Differently?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I think a lot of times when things go wrong,
especially at work, people tend to blame everybody else, and
it's just about deflecting so you don't look bad. The
people who look great after a mistake, and I write
a lot of about this are the people who own it,
who say this didn't go great, and here's why this
didn't go great. This broke down, This broke down. Don't
(16:09):
be personal, don't lay blame other places, just address it
and then quickly get to what can you do to
fix it? This doesn't account like all the feelings, like
when stuff goes wrong at work, like the feelings kind
of last a little bit longer than maybe the solution
or the then the time you want to get to
(16:31):
the solution. So I also really I think it's important
to feel failure and be like ooh, like that was
a tough lesson that didn't feel good, but still to
get back up on the horse and get moving and
move forward.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I love that You've also had a great story in
your book. It was like a It just was just
perfect for me because I was like, yeah, that's you
had a party and there were talks being given at
the party.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Oh, my most epic failure, and I could just.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Picture it so easily.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
But then to like own it and be like, Okay,
I'm never ever doing it again. I take full responsibility
for it. Here's why we can't do this. And then
you never ever had that happened at any event you
ever were part of ever again, I'm assuming completely.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Yeah, I think failure happens all the time. I had
a business meeting this morning, I had a conference call
this morning, and we had a huge screw up on
the supply chain, and instead of addressing it and saying, hey,
there's something really broken. We screwed up on the supply chain,
(17:37):
the person in charge of it was just burying everyone
in data like, here's no, no, really, like at the
micro level, here's what happened. Here's all the widgets, all
the data points. And I'm like, how is this helping
anyone move forward? Like, let's step back, let's admit something.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Went really wrong. What went wrong?
Speaker 5 (17:58):
And what are the three things we're going to do
to solve it right now in the middle of the crisis,
And what are three things we're going to do to
make sure this never happens again. And I think it's
just really good to have that skill because the reality
is work is hard, and a lot of bad stuff
can happen at work, and things don't go the right way,
(18:19):
or products don't land the way they're supposed to, or
goals aren't met. And being able to be like, okay, wait,
I'm going to reframe this thing so we can do
something positive about it, I think is a really important skill.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, We're going to pivot a little bit and talk
about one of everybody's favorite topics when it comes to work,
which is bosses.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Ooh, I love bosses.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Okay, so difficult bosses or bosses maybe where your styles
are incredibly different or I think your words you're misaligned.
How do you advise handling it? And I guess when
would you at some point decide like time to move on?
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yes, okay, I have a lot of opinion on this.
I have a whole matrix of bosses, the friend boss,
the absent boss, the micromanaging boss. In general, I hate
having a boss, so I want to just disclose that, like,
I'm from the camp of people that never wanted a boss.
But I don't think that having a bad boss necessarily
(19:16):
has to be bad for you. I think a lot
of really good things in my career is a good
example of this. A lot of really good things can
come out of having a really bad boss. And the
reason I say that is a lot of times, to
the title of nobody cares about your career, people put
too much emphasis for their career in their boss's hands.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's almost like you give.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Your career to your boss to decide are you on
the path, are you off the path?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Are you doing a good job, are you not doing
a good job.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
And I don't really actually think that's your career has
nothing to do with your boss, like your career should
be for you. But I think it's important to understand
what type of boss you have so that you can
best navigate and be successful with that boss. So in
my mind, I had a lot of absent bosses, And
(20:11):
absent bosses are people they don't really care about what
you're doing on a day to day basis you're doing
a good enough job, They've got other fires to fight.
They're just going to like, let you be, leave you alone.
Sometimes people don't like that because they're like, I'm not
getting the attention I want or I'm not getting the
direction I need. My point of view on.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
That is screw it.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Like take the opportunity to take as much work as
you humanly can, as many projects as you can get
yourself involved in, and use the absentness of your boss
to create more opportunity for you. So that for me
is like one way you would handle an absent boss.
People have bosses who are idiots, and I've had a
(20:55):
bunch of bosses who are idiots. And the other piece
of having an idiot is you can spend all your
time either complaining about your idiot boss, which is kind
of dangerous because it eventually is going to get back
to them. And two that doesn't really help you or
that person or two. You can use their deficiencies as
ways that you can show strength. So you know, I
(21:17):
had a boss who I would describe as an idiot,
and I at first was annoyed and like kind of
bitter about it, and then I was like, you know what,
I'm going to get invited to every meeting this guy's
getting invited to because I know so much more, And
what an opportunity for me. I could have written this
off as a really bad thing, it actually was a
(21:39):
great thing. It put me in a position to do
a whole bunch of things and be seen by a
whole bunch of people who never would have otherwise cared
or known what I did.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I do think it gets to inside.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
This is super long winded, but I do think that
micromanaging bosses and toxic bosses you should not stay with.
And I think it's fine for your boss to be absent.
I think it's kind of dangerous when your boss is
your friend. I think it's okay even if your boss
is an idiot. But if your boss is really toxic,
(22:13):
which means to say they don't have good intentions, they're negative.
They're creating an environment where you cannot succeed or your
boss is just on you on every you can't move
because your boss is so suffocating. I think both of
those scenarios are scenarios that you should stay in long
enough to learn it and know it, but don't stay
(22:36):
so long as you become affected by it.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
That makes sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of
listeners who see themselves in most full of these scenarios, definitely,
no matter where they are in their career journey.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Early, middle, early, yep.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So now I want to talk a little bit about
a very best of both worlds centered topic, which is
that you talk about how there's some challenges that a little.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Bit unique to women in the workplace. Yes, so can
you share a little bit about that.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
I'm so glad you're talking about this. And everyone ignores
that chapter in the book. So I have a chapter
in the book that's called for the Girls, and really
what it is about, and it's not just for girls.
I think it's for anybody, and especially men should read this.
But what the chapter is really about is the things
(23:25):
that women in particular, and I'm a woman, so I
speak to that go through at work. And the first
thing is that I've been working now almost thirty years.
And you know, most every woman who's been working five years,
ten years, twenty years, thirty years, they've gone through some
similar things. One is a glass ceiling right where you're
(23:48):
in an environment where women are not particularly welcome, or
that seat at the table is not particularly appreciated or assured.
I think the second piece of that is just sexual harassment,
which at the beginning of my career, sexual harassment was blatant,
like for women who were in business ten years before me, it.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Was like promoted.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
Now it's more insidious, where you know, you can't be
as blatant as you know to hit on someone in
the office. But there are ways where you can be
put in an environment which I call the gray, which
is there's some opacity. There's double meaning for most everything
where you're in a situation where it may be a
(24:32):
work thing, but someone may have ulterior motives or different
intentions for you. And this is something that's very unique
to women at work, and that women have to understand
how they navigate. And then there's all sorts of other stuff,
being pregnant at work, what happens after you have a
baby at work, what happens if you're dating someone at
work in all those scenarios. So I have a lot
(24:54):
of opinion about it. I don't really think about my
gender a whole lot in my job, and I love that.
And I don't think your gender should help you or
hurt you at work. I do think understanding the things
that your gender brings you is really important for women.
It's very often a sense of empathy, it's a sense
(25:16):
of vulnerability, it's an ability to communicate, and I think
it's important to harness those skills to be most successful
as it relates to being a woman at work. There
are things that are disadvantages to women at work, which
is one is we tend to do all the work
at work and do all the work at home. And
how do you do the best of both worlds? Like
(25:37):
that's tough? How do you navigate your second shift versus
your first shift? But I do think it's important that
women recognize same as when you encounter our problem, like
where am I? What are the advantages to me in
this situation? What are the disadvantages? And where do I
want to get to and how can I navigate to
get there?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Definitely tricky territory, and I was very excited to say
that you included that chapter in your book. We're going
to take another quick break and I'll be right back
with one more sort of related question. All right, we
(26:20):
are back, and you mentioned it briefly, but obviously sometimes
men add to their family as well, but maternity leave
is still primarily taken more by women, although increasingly by
both genders. I also feel like a lot of people
find this podcast just as they're about to maybe enter
maternity le for the first time, and it just seems
so scary. Do you have tips for that very special
(26:43):
situation of someone who's left the workforce for maybe a
few months and is coming back, like how to steal
themselves out? Yeah, tell me about your thoughts there.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I talk a lot about this in the chapter.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And look, coming back to work after you've been on
maternity leave is a really apprehensive time. It's apprehensive for
who's going to take care of your baby. It's apprehensive
in terms of what's expected of you now at work.
You've just come off this time where you've you know,
I know when I had my kids.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
You're kind of.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Isolated in a little bubble and it's a really magical time,
and then you're kind of back out into the world
and you feel a little fragile. So it's also you know,
it's an apprehensive time for who you are as a
woman and how you're feeling, and you can often, I think,
feel really fragile and uncertain, and it's important to honor that,
(27:40):
but also it's important not to let that hold you back.
I get a lot of questions in my DMS about
re entering the workforce after taking a maternity leave or
taking a break, and the first thing is, hold your
head high and do what you have to do. So
if you need to go to the pumping room and
you're carrying around all the equipment and it's like the
(28:02):
most like embarrassing, like, eh, I've all this stuff, I
got to refrigerate it, like it's cumbersome, But hold yourself
high and hold your head high that the fact of
caring for a child and producing milk for a baby
does not make you any less viable in the office,
(28:23):
and you go into that next meeting as though nothing
had happened the fifteen minutes prior. So that would be
my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is,
I think a lot of times when women re enter
the workforce after having a kid or they come back
from eternity leave. You tend to want to overcompensate because
(28:43):
for some weird, screwed up reason, which is probably that
we're made to feel this way. You feel guilty that
you've been gone for three months, four months, whatever, and
then you start yourself on this track of you know,
you get up, you care for your baby, you care
for your fan, you commute, you get to work, or
you go on zoom and do work. Then you shut
(29:05):
it down, you shove food in your mouth, you say
hi to your partner, you care for your baby, and
then you get right back online again. I think that's
of the mistakes I've made in my life. I think
that's one of the greatest mistakes I made, which is
like my kids are in the tub, I'm on my phone.
Like answering work emails, like set boundaries early for yourself
(29:28):
and even and especially when it's scary for yourself, because
the reality work will take up every orifice of your
time if you let it. And this feeling that you're
accessible at night every night. Now, yes, some nights you
have to work late and you have a big project
and blah blah blah, but the fact that you're expected
to be available at night I have a huge issue with,
(29:52):
So my advice would be to set really clear boundaries
on that.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
And then the third is when you're at work, make
the most of work.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
So if you're there for six and a half hours,
crush the six and a half hours. If you're there
for nine hours, crush the nine hours. But at that
ninth hour or seventh hour, whatever hour, shut it down,
get out of there and go live your life. And
I think sometimes when you have kids, you feel depleted
(30:23):
because you're supposed to be everything to everyone at all times, always,
and it's a lie, like it's it's not going to
work and the only person and the person who is
going to suffer and give up the most because.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Of that is you.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
So just really making the boundary stick, not for anybody
else's reasons, but to preserve yourself, I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Oh my gosh, Erica, if I had we don't do
sound effects on this podcast, but like if we did,
I would have the standing ovation one be going a
hut right now because I can't tell you what you
just said in the last two minutes is probably going
to change some people's life, Like I mean, you giving
that kind of permission from someone who is where you
are right now in leadership and everything.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
It's just so incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
That was amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Oh that's so nice. I have a quick story on that.
I know we're probably out of time.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
But no, tell the quick story.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
I had a woman who worked for me. This was
actually really interesting. I had two women who worked for
me recently, and one was a available at all times,
all hours of the night, like I'm like, working, working, working, working, working,
and the other woman was a working mom with two
(31:38):
kids I think under four. And what was interesting to
me is I stepped back and looked at them and
I said to myself, Wow, credit to the mom where
she shut down every night at five o'clock. And she
conditioned because she's shut down at five o'clock, you knew
(32:00):
you weren't going to get an answered until the following morning.
And I think we're all successfully and secure in a
way where you're afraid to do the action of shutting
at five. But all it did was train everybody else
not to bug her until eight thirty the following morning.
Versus the woman who was always available, she was disappointing
(32:22):
people because they were like, you're always available, why aren't
you available to me now? And the reality is, when
I stepped back and looked at these women, the working mom,
I think worked probably forty fifty percent of the time
as the other woman, but got as much done and
did it with greater discipline. So I think there's this
(32:44):
fallacy like the more you work, the more you work.
Like I don't believe that at all. I think you
need to make the most of the time you have
and you have to be a maniac about that time.
But beyond that, you've got to go live your life,
and I think you can be fabulously successful with that.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Well, one last thing before we go, oh well, other
than you telling everybody, of course, all about where they
can find everything, we'll get to that. But we share
a love of the week every week on this podcast.
I hope your team share that with you, but if not, you.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Can They didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
They didn't, Okay, So it can be off the cuff,
and I will have to go first because I will
give you time to give yours and okay, I just
thought of mine.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
That didn't take too long. Okay, But it can be
a product.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It can be like a season, a beverage, a shoot,
like I don't care, a book whatever.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Okay, So mine is I had.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
I don't get a lot of patient gifts because I
don't know, like it's just not necessarily in the culture
what I do. Plus, I take care of patients for
so many years and it's not like they're aging out
for that long. But somebody was going to college and
the mom gave me a lu Lavo candle and it
was just I mean, obviously that's a lux gift and
I would not expect a patient to give me that,
but like, it was just so nice and I have
it on my desk and now every time I smell it,
(33:56):
I just feel this gratitude for like the privilege about
knowing I don't know, it was awesome.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So that is my love of the week.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Oh I love that. That's a great love of the week.
My love of the week. When is this coming out?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I think it's in like two in mid September.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Let's say mid September, okay, or end.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
Of September something like that. Sorry I should know that, but.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Okay, my love of the week.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Well you I'll tell you this one and then you
can tell me if it's too dated. Okay, So my
love of the week is I've been watching in.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
The US Open.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
I love to watch tennis. It is the most inspiring sport.
I think it's one of those sports where the female
athletes are even better than the men athletes.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Like it's so fun to watch.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
And there's this announcer, this Australian woman named I think
her name is Renee Stubbs, and I had never heard
of her before. I'd never seen her before, I didn't
know anything about her, but I loved her attitude. She
was on the broadcast and I think she's a former
tennis player herself and a former coach. And everyone was
talking like all nice and the platitudes about like oh,
(35:02):
Coco golf had lost to Emma Navarro and.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Everyone's like, Coco so great, Coco so great.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
And she was like, yeah, like, I don't think she
had the confidence and her swing wasn't high enough, and
and I loved that she had the balls, I guess
for a lack of a better word, to speak her
mind and with such clarity and specificity.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
So she's my love of the week.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
That's not going to be dated, that's everlasting. That's evergreen
right there.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So that's perfect.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Plus I just love the image of you like watching
sports and listening to the commentary and like with what
all you know and what you've built, like your analysis
of it.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Oh, it's so fun.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
So I DMed her and I was like, will you
come do I do these like daily work videos? And
I'm like, will you come do the daily work videos
with me? And she said yes.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So I was like, that's so fun. That is so amazing,
double love of the week.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Super super cool. Well, this has been so much fun.
I'm serious, I'm going to like play that part on
a loop. That ending part, it was just so perfect.
Good good, And tell our listeners where they can find
your book. Remind us all of the title one more time,
and just where they can find more about you.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Okay, great. The book is called Nobody Cares About your Career.
You can find it wherever books are sold. And I
did the audio book, so if you are a busy
woman and you don't have a time to read a book,
which I would totally understand, you can just listen to it.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So I think it's a good listen. I'm I'm biased, obviously.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
You can find me at Erica, which is Erka or
at Erica Underscore. I'm at Erica on Instagram and then
on TikTok at Erica Underscore.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Amazing, what amazing handles you have. That is great.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I worked hard for the handles.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
You deserve them. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Well we are back. Sarah did a great interview there
with Erica Arizbadan, who is the former CEO of Barstool Sports,
the author of the book Nobody Cares About Your Career.
Lots of great advice there. So this question is from
a listener who is considering hiring a career coach. She says,
have either of you ever used one? Do you have
thoughts on them? And what kind of role they could
(37:10):
play in career growth. The context is that she is
currently in a midpoint in her career. She's been in
law for about fifteen years out of the baby years,
her kids are in school, she is free of student loans,
and she is still under forty. Wow, she's accomplished a lot.
It's an exciting prospect to have things feel open, but
she's wondering what she should do if she needs to
find her passion or find ways to maximize her current role.
(37:33):
She seems to get a lot of ads for career
coaches through professional organizations and podcast feeds LinkedIn wherever she
is on social media. So she's curious if we have
any insights or experience with coaches, what they might be
able to offer in the quest for career happiness. Her
instinct is skepticism, but it's good to be curious. Sarah,
(37:55):
what do you think?
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Yeah? I have a mix as well.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I think part of it is, are you out of
place where you feel like really exploring what you want
with another person in scheduled sessions with specific exercise would
be helpful for you? And would you be unable to
do that work in a maybe less expensive context. If so,
this might be something to explore. I would be aware
of any coach who has any part of their platform
(38:20):
in teaching others to coach. I just that really scares
me because it gets very pyramidy. Or a coach who
wants to tell you how to kick butt in your
field but has left that field to coach specifically. Maybe
that's okay if they're clearly in a later phase of life,
like Listen, they put in thirty awesome years and they
(38:40):
accomplished great things and now they've moved on to coaching.
But if it's like, no, they did that for five
years and now they're coaching, I think there's some concern
sometimes to be found. Again, this is not universal. I
mean I can think of some specific people who do
things more in the coaching realm who maybe have specific
protocols or things they've developed to share that can be
(39:01):
super super valuable. But yeah, I just think you have
to be a little bit careful. Definitely talk to others
who have worked with said coaches if you can, Like
a great coach should be able to even offer not
just testimonials on their website, but maybe like, oh you
can chat with this other person in your field and
see if it was helpful for them, and then just
(39:21):
always reevaluate. Hopefully you don't have to pay a ton
of upfront costs, so if you invest and you go
to a couple sessions and it's not helpful, then you
can decide that maybe to go another avenue, either finding
another coach or doing something different.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, we get a lot of pitches from coaches, and
I think we are very very wary of most of them,
and there's a lot of like up selling and these
sort of things like you have to buy this package
and then you have to buy this other package, and
it's more about the coach as a guru as opposed
to what they are going to do to help you.
(39:55):
And if you are bothering to pay for this, it
really should be all about what they're going to do
to help you, so as opposed to I don't know,
you all stand around and worship this particular coach in
their guru status. So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical as well.
It can work, just you know, I would definitely only
go through like personal recommendations of someone who's seen really
(40:20):
good practical results, concrete results as a real result of
working with the person I do. I want to suggest
one other option though, for this person, which is that
I know somebody who was thinking, like do I need
a career coach whatever, And what she realized is that
she knew what she needed to do and like the
exercises she should think about, and like the what she
(40:42):
should investigate, and like different things she could do to
help in her career. She just needed someone to push
her to do it. But if that's the case, then
maybe what you need is an accountability partner or a
goal group or sort of mastermind group of folks. Maybe
you can find other people who are also ambitious, who
are in similar or stages of life with you, who
(41:02):
might meet up regularly to discuss your ideas and next steps.
And so you know, not only would that be like
lower cost, I mean just in the sense that you're
like getting together with people, it could also be a
lot of fun. Like it could actually build your professional
network in a very good way. Like these people would
be kind of your cheering squad and you're the cheering
(41:22):
squad for them. You'd be very close together. So I'd
throw that out there as an idea as well.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I love it, and hopefully something like that if it's
a collection of your peers, wouldn't be a crazy financial
investment either, so bonus, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
Sarah has been interviewing Erica Arizbadan, who's the former CEO
of Barstool Sports. We will be back next week with
more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you can.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has
been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us
next time for more on making work and life work
together
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This
episode is airing in mid September of twenty twenty four.
(00:47):
Sarah is going to be interviewing Erica Arisbaddan, who is
the former CEO of Barstool Sports, so she has a
lot to tell us about careers and business and life.
She is the author of a book called No One
Cares About Your Career, right, Sarah? Is that how? That's
the book?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And I love the title. I feel like it's so
descriptive and just very honest. It's a very honest book.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And the idea that like nobody cares about your career,
I guess it's more not that like nobody has any
interest in it whatsoever, but more that you are the
one who kind of has to take charge of it
because there's not some career fairy godmother out there looking
out for you or designing your career path or telling
(01:34):
you what is the best next step. You kind of
have to figure that out for yourself. But that is
part of taking your career seriously, which is something that
we definitely advocate here on this podcast. So, Sarah, did
you have a clear vision of what you wanted your
work life to look like before you started working?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
To some extent, yes, I feel like that vision has
shifted over time. And honestly, if I didn't have my
blog actually see in writing what I thought my vision
would be, I'm not sure I would remember this. But
I even noted back like fifteen years ago or more
that I wanted to do be a part time pediatric indocronologist.
So I must have had some other ideas in mine.
(02:13):
I might not have wanted to voice them because that
would have felt risky at the time, But I kind
of always knew I wanted to do a lot of
different things. I knew I wanted to do medicine, I
wanted to see patients, I wanted to do pediatric indochronology,
and I do feel like along the way, I have
then played with things. We've done career crafting episodes where
(02:33):
we talked about various things. But I do think the
true it's so true what Eric's title says, which is
that like, no one is going to hand you on
a silver platter, like this is what your day to
day life and career will look like. And here's a
step you could take, and here's a leadership position you
could take, and here's.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
A pathword upward for you.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Like there may be some mentorship that help you see
what possibilities there are, but the only one that's really
going to be invested in what that path looks like
and it's going to have to actually take those steps
to put themselves out there is you. So that's why
I was really attracted to the title of this book.
And yeah, I'm excited with this conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely when you build your own business,
this becomes apparent very quickly. Like you know, it's not
like school where tenth grade follows ninth grade and if
you do these requirements, you will move on to the
next level. I mean, it's unclear what the next level is,
and even if you have a picture of it, it
doesn't always mean that there's some straightforward thing that will
(03:32):
get you there. You can definitely take steps backward, try
things that don't work. You know, it's just all risk
taking and you hope some of it pays off eventually.
But that's why you got to keep thinking about it,
because again, nobody else cares about your career, but you
I think there's a lot of stuff in life that
(03:52):
nobody's going to care as much as you are, and
you just I think that goes both ways. I mean,
it's kind of like, oh, well, I better take it
seriously then, and it's also like, well it's kind of liberating.
I mean, I don't know why we have this. It's
kind of I don't know if it's an American cultural
thing where people always have to claim that there's a
lot of opposition to whatever, Like nobody told me I
could do this, or you know, I people said I
(04:13):
couldn't do X, Y or Z. I'm you know, for
most of it, probably nobody really cared.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Everyone's still busy paying attention to themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
So yeah, yeah, no one cares. So that'll be our
takeaway from this nobody cares about your career, so you should.
So let's hear what Erica has to say.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, I am so excited to welcome to best of
both worlds Erica Ayers Badon, who was former CEO of
Barstool Sports, a company many of you may have heard of,
and the author of Nobody Cares about your career, which
is really what we're going to talk about during this
interview today.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
So welcome Erica.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Thank you for having me so.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Excited to talk.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I was attracted, especially honestly to the title of your book,
and we'll get to that in a minute. But just
in case people don't know about you or don't know
about Barstool Sports, can you give us the like three
minute version of your career journey. I know that's asking
a lot because you've been you've done a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, no, it's good.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I think everybody should do a lot of things in
their career. So my career has predominantly been in the
intersection between technology, the internet, content, advertising, and commerce. Like
that's really where I've lived my professional life. I worked
at a lot of really big companies like Microsoft and
AOL and Yahoo. I have worked at a bunch of startups,
(05:38):
a lot of you know, which were disasters.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
One was part of an IPO and then was a disaster.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
And about a decade ago, ten years ago, I took
the CEO job at Barstool Sports, which was at the
time a very small, like fledgling, little renegade brand in Boston, Massachusetts,
which started as a newspaper became a very janky app
and a website and it was all about opinion and
(06:07):
perspective and personality, mostly about sports. And I joined that
company in twenty sixteen. It had twelve people, no p
and L, no business system, and we grew it and
sold it for five hundred and fifty million dollars in
twenty twenty three. So we had a huge, crazy, big run.
(06:29):
It was wild and exhilarating, very funny. We grew it
to be one of the ten largest brands in the
world on TikTok and an ultimate real powerhouse in American media.
So that's kind of the Barstool Sports of it all.
And now I'm the CEO of a company called Food
fifty two, which is a lifestyle home and food brand.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Amazing, what an incredible journey all that experimentation led you
to like an amazing success story, and yet you decide done,
let me keep going.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I know, maybe I'm an idiot. I might be
an idiot.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I'm always inspired by that into somebody who clearly like
might not have to continuing to be chugging along, and
yet they're impassioned, they're excited, and everything just ends up
like falling into place for them to continue pushing.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So super exciting.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
That's awesome. Yeah, I do like to work. So here
we are all right.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well, on the note of work, you had a lot
to say, like a lot to say your book. There's
just so much in there. I'm super excited to talk
about it. Just so much useful and interesting stuff and
so many stories. So let's start with the title. Where
did you come up with? Nobody cares about your career?
And I don't know, is that something you've always kind
(07:44):
of been passionate about the idea that you have to
take charge of it on your own or tell me
a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
The title?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, it was funny. So I you know, I wrote
the book.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
I think the publisher expected like a fairly short book,
and it kept like getting longer and longer. And longer
and longer, and we edited quite a bit out of
it actually, So the book was pretty dense in a
good way, I would say, And I didn't know what
to call it. And nobody cares about your career wasn't
the intended title at all.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It was just one of the chapters.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
And it's something that I've said to myself really since
almost the beginning of my career, and it's just always
been a mantra I've had in my head, which is
that you are the one who can make a difference
in your life and in your job and in your career,
and that it is a complete and utter waste of
(08:36):
time to live a life or have a job, or
be in a career or be on a track that
feels good or looks good or says a certain thing
or is a certain way to somebody else. You really
need to do things that make you happy and create fulfillment.
And that you are ultimately responsible.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
For your career.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
You're responsible for the path you take and also what
happens on that path. So that's really where the title
came from. And you know, it's fun. I think it's
a good message for people. I think you kind of
see it, it seems negative. It's actually, in my opinion,
very positive because it's supposed to be very freeing. This
book is designed to be freeing and to empower people
(09:20):
to say, Hey, what makes me happy and energized? How
can I push myself? What iterations of myself can I
be and become? And hopefully this book is helpful along
that path.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yes, I think the word empowering is exactly what I
was thinking, like, Okay, no one else is going to
take charge of this, and therefore it's on me and
I must be empowered to move forward, empowered to make decisions,
and empowered to take responsibility for my actions, which is
a major theme in this book that we're going to
talk about. And in fact, you spend a lot of
(09:53):
time talking about failure and mistiqus. So before we even
get into how you recommend others with failure along the
course of their careers, can you tell us about what
kinds of failures you've had or have there been struggles
that kind of inspired this passion around failure.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Yeah, I like failure. I call it fail always mode.
Success I think can make me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable,
and I think the reason I think failure is really important,
and the book talks a lot about my failures and
just failure in general. Is that what failure really is.
(10:31):
It means two things, in my opinion. One is, or
in the best case, it means two things. One is,
you're putting yourself in an environment where you don't know
exactly what to do, so you are in a new environment.
You are learning things, You're pushing yourself. You're putting yourself
in a place where it's not all perfect and you're
not the expert and you have to figure some stuff out.
(10:54):
So it indicates that you are in an environment that
is not comfortable.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And then the second is it's indicating that.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
You're trying, you're experimenting, you're trying to figure things out,
and failure if you think about exercise, you think about sports,
you think about experiments. I read a social post the
other day that the inventor of the dice in vacuum
had like something like five thousand prototypes. He built five
(11:24):
thousand vacuums that didn't work until he built the five
thousand and.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Whatever one that became the dice in vacuum.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
That is also failure, right, It's knowing that you're trying
to do something, you're trying to become something, You're trying
to figure something out, and you don't know exactly how
to do it, but you do have the willingness to try.
And that's really you know, this book is about, in
a nutshell, you need to put away your insecurity, which
(11:56):
is I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, I'm
not ready. And you need to put away your ego,
which is I'm too good for this, I'm above this,
I'm better than this. You have to put both of
those things away and kind of show up with yourself
to tackle the problem that's in front of you, and
that can really great things can come of that.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
All right, we're going to take a quick break and
then we're gonna talk more a little bit on the
subject of failure.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
All right, we are back, and I want to get
a little bit into specifics. So, first of all, if
you can think of an example from your career where
there has been perhaps a fail and how you handled
it or maybe even learned from how you handled it.
Maybe you failed at handling your fail and then that
taught you something as well. And then like maybe a
scenario where someone works in a corporation and they realized
(12:56):
they messed up, Like, how do you handle it?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I mean I fail all the time, So how long
do you have I've had all sorts of different failures
in my career. I handled things the wrong way. I
managed people in a way that I had wished I
had managed them differently. I was confronted with situations where
I did one thing, but in hindsight I was like, Oh,
(13:23):
I knew in my gut I shouldn't have done that.
I should do it a different way. I've had really
every imaginable failure there is. You know, I had a
big part of my time spent at Barstool trying to
make a TV show that our board really felt like
we needed a TV show. And I spent a year
of my life forty percent of that year trying to
(13:46):
get Barstool Sports on ESPN. And it didn't feel good
the whole time. It was painful, it was cumbersome, it
was fraught with pitfalls. It kept going back to the
same place that was like, this doesn't seem like a
good fit, this doesn't seem like a good fit. And
still I kept pushing, pushing, pushing to make it happen
(14:07):
because it's what I thought I was supposed to do,
and it ended up being a total disaster. The show
ran for one night, it was canceled, it became this
whole big brew haha with ESPN and barstool. But it's
a good example of if you keep going on a
path that you're pretty sure you're not supposed to be on,
(14:29):
and you are not listening to the signs that are
like get off this highway.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Get off this highway, like take the exit. Take the exit.
It's going to end up probably bad.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
And you knew that it was not going to end
up well, So that would be one big example of
a failure. I tend to believe that people are optimists,
so that even and I'm an optimist, so that even
when you do fail, I'm kind of getting to your
second question, you'll probably rationalize that it was good that
that happened because something else good came of it. So
(15:01):
that's also a reason not to be afraid of failure,
is that you're going to say that this was for
the best anyway, so you might as well just do it.
I think when people in a corporate setting are at
work mess up on something and I write a lot
about this, like what happens.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
After you screw up? What do you do after you
screw up? Because everybody screws up? First of all.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
My perspective on that is that when you mess up,
the best thing you can do is to reassess. You
need to be able to step out of the situation
you're in, and you need to be able to say
what went wrong here critically thinking, really critically, being critical
about yourself of.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
What did I do wrong? What went wrong? What should
have been done? Differently?
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I think a lot of times when things go wrong,
especially at work, people tend to blame everybody else, and
it's just about deflecting so you don't look bad. The
people who look great after a mistake, and I write
a lot of about this are the people who own it,
who say this didn't go great, and here's why this
didn't go great. This broke down, This broke down. Don't
(16:09):
be personal, don't lay blame other places, just address it
and then quickly get to what can you do to
fix it? This doesn't account like all the feelings, like
when stuff goes wrong at work, like the feelings kind
of last a little bit longer than maybe the solution
or the then the time you want to get to
(16:31):
the solution. So I also really I think it's important
to feel failure and be like ooh, like that was
a tough lesson that didn't feel good, but still to
get back up on the horse and get moving and
move forward.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I love that You've also had a great story in
your book. It was like a It just was just
perfect for me because I was like, yeah, that's you
had a party and there were talks being given at
the party.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Oh, my most epic failure, and I could just.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Picture it so easily.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
But then to like own it and be like, Okay,
I'm never ever doing it again. I take full responsibility
for it. Here's why we can't do this. And then
you never ever had that happened at any event you
ever were part of ever again, I'm assuming completely.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Yeah, I think failure happens all the time. I had
a business meeting this morning, I had a conference call
this morning, and we had a huge screw up on
the supply chain, and instead of addressing it and saying, hey,
there's something really broken. We screwed up on the supply chain,
(17:37):
the person in charge of it was just burying everyone
in data like, here's no, no, really, like at the
micro level, here's what happened. Here's all the widgets, all
the data points. And I'm like, how is this helping
anyone move forward? Like, let's step back, let's admit something.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Went really wrong. What went wrong?
Speaker 5 (17:58):
And what are the three things we're going to do
to solve it right now in the middle of the crisis,
And what are three things we're going to do to
make sure this never happens again. And I think it's
just really good to have that skill because the reality
is work is hard, and a lot of bad stuff
can happen at work, and things don't go the right way,
(18:19):
or products don't land the way they're supposed to, or
goals aren't met. And being able to be like, okay, wait,
I'm going to reframe this thing so we can do
something positive about it, I think is a really important skill.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, We're going to pivot a little bit and talk
about one of everybody's favorite topics when it comes to work,
which is bosses.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Ooh, I love bosses.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Okay, so difficult bosses or bosses maybe where your styles
are incredibly different or I think your words you're misaligned.
How do you advise handling it? And I guess when
would you at some point decide like time to move on?
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yes, okay, I have a lot of opinion on this.
I have a whole matrix of bosses, the friend boss,
the absent boss, the micromanaging boss. In general, I hate
having a boss, so I want to just disclose that, like,
I'm from the camp of people that never wanted a boss.
But I don't think that having a bad boss necessarily
(19:16):
has to be bad for you. I think a lot
of really good things in my career is a good
example of this. A lot of really good things can
come out of having a really bad boss. And the
reason I say that is a lot of times, to
the title of nobody cares about your career, people put
too much emphasis for their career in their boss's hands.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's almost like you give.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Your career to your boss to decide are you on
the path, are you off the path?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Are you doing a good job, are you not doing
a good job.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
And I don't really actually think that's your career has
nothing to do with your boss, like your career should
be for you. But I think it's important to understand
what type of boss you have so that you can
best navigate and be successful with that boss. So in
my mind, I had a lot of absent bosses, And
(20:11):
absent bosses are people they don't really care about what
you're doing on a day to day basis you're doing
a good enough job, They've got other fires to fight.
They're just going to like, let you be, leave you alone.
Sometimes people don't like that because they're like, I'm not
getting the attention I want or I'm not getting the
direction I need. My point of view on.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
That is screw it.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Like take the opportunity to take as much work as
you humanly can, as many projects as you can get
yourself involved in, and use the absentness of your boss
to create more opportunity for you. So that for me
is like one way you would handle an absent boss.
People have bosses who are idiots, and I've had a
(20:55):
bunch of bosses who are idiots. And the other piece
of having an idiot is you can spend all your
time either complaining about your idiot boss, which is kind
of dangerous because it eventually is going to get back
to them. And two that doesn't really help you or
that person or two. You can use their deficiencies as
ways that you can show strength. So you know, I
(21:17):
had a boss who I would describe as an idiot,
and I at first was annoyed and like kind of
bitter about it, and then I was like, you know what,
I'm going to get invited to every meeting this guy's
getting invited to because I know so much more, And
what an opportunity for me. I could have written this
off as a really bad thing, it actually was a
(21:39):
great thing. It put me in a position to do
a whole bunch of things and be seen by a
whole bunch of people who never would have otherwise cared
or known what I did.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I do think it gets to inside.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
This is super long winded, but I do think that
micromanaging bosses and toxic bosses you should not stay with.
And I think it's fine for your boss to be absent.
I think it's kind of dangerous when your boss is
your friend. I think it's okay even if your boss
is an idiot. But if your boss is really toxic,
(22:13):
which means to say they don't have good intentions, they're negative.
They're creating an environment where you cannot succeed or your
boss is just on you on every you can't move
because your boss is so suffocating. I think both of
those scenarios are scenarios that you should stay in long
enough to learn it and know it, but don't stay
(22:36):
so long as you become affected by it.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
That makes sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of
listeners who see themselves in most full of these scenarios, definitely,
no matter where they are in their career journey.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Early, middle, early, yep.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So now I want to talk a little bit about
a very best of both worlds centered topic, which is
that you talk about how there's some challenges that a little.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Bit unique to women in the workplace. Yes, so can
you share a little bit about that.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
I'm so glad you're talking about this. And everyone ignores
that chapter in the book. So I have a chapter
in the book that's called for the Girls, and really
what it is about, and it's not just for girls.
I think it's for anybody, and especially men should read this.
But what the chapter is really about is the things
(23:25):
that women in particular, and I'm a woman, so I
speak to that go through at work. And the first
thing is that I've been working now almost thirty years.
And you know, most every woman who's been working five years,
ten years, twenty years, thirty years, they've gone through some
similar things. One is a glass ceiling right where you're
(23:48):
in an environment where women are not particularly welcome, or
that seat at the table is not particularly appreciated or assured.
I think the second piece of that is just sexual harassment,
which at the beginning of my career, sexual harassment was blatant,
like for women who were in business ten years before me, it.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Was like promoted.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
Now it's more insidious, where you know, you can't be
as blatant as you know to hit on someone in
the office. But there are ways where you can be
put in an environment which I call the gray, which
is there's some opacity. There's double meaning for most everything
where you're in a situation where it may be a
(24:32):
work thing, but someone may have ulterior motives or different
intentions for you. And this is something that's very unique
to women at work, and that women have to understand
how they navigate. And then there's all sorts of other stuff,
being pregnant at work, what happens after you have a
baby at work, what happens if you're dating someone at
work in all those scenarios. So I have a lot
(24:54):
of opinion about it. I don't really think about my
gender a whole lot in my job, and I love that.
And I don't think your gender should help you or
hurt you at work. I do think understanding the things
that your gender brings you is really important for women.
It's very often a sense of empathy, it's a sense
(25:16):
of vulnerability, it's an ability to communicate, and I think
it's important to harness those skills to be most successful
as it relates to being a woman at work. There
are things that are disadvantages to women at work, which
is one is we tend to do all the work
at work and do all the work at home. And
how do you do the best of both worlds? Like
(25:37):
that's tough? How do you navigate your second shift versus
your first shift? But I do think it's important that
women recognize same as when you encounter our problem, like
where am I? What are the advantages to me in
this situation? What are the disadvantages? And where do I
want to get to and how can I navigate to
get there?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Definitely tricky territory, and I was very excited to say
that you included that chapter in your book. We're going
to take another quick break and I'll be right back
with one more sort of related question. All right, we
(26:20):
are back, and you mentioned it briefly, but obviously sometimes
men add to their family as well, but maternity leave
is still primarily taken more by women, although increasingly by
both genders. I also feel like a lot of people
find this podcast just as they're about to maybe enter
maternity le for the first time, and it just seems
so scary. Do you have tips for that very special
(26:43):
situation of someone who's left the workforce for maybe a
few months and is coming back, like how to steal
themselves out? Yeah, tell me about your thoughts there.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I talk a lot about this in the chapter.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And look, coming back to work after you've been on
maternity leave is a really apprehensive time. It's apprehensive for
who's going to take care of your baby. It's apprehensive
in terms of what's expected of you now at work.
You've just come off this time where you've you know,
I know when I had my kids.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
You're kind of.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Isolated in a little bubble and it's a really magical time,
and then you're kind of back out into the world
and you feel a little fragile. So it's also you know,
it's an apprehensive time for who you are as a
woman and how you're feeling, and you can often, I think,
feel really fragile and uncertain, and it's important to honor that,
(27:40):
but also it's important not to let that hold you back.
I get a lot of questions in my DMS about
re entering the workforce after taking a maternity leave or
taking a break, and the first thing is, hold your
head high and do what you have to do. So
if you need to go to the pumping room and
you're carrying around all the equipment and it's like the
(28:02):
most like embarrassing, like, eh, I've all this stuff, I
got to refrigerate it, like it's cumbersome, But hold yourself
high and hold your head high that the fact of
caring for a child and producing milk for a baby
does not make you any less viable in the office,
(28:23):
and you go into that next meeting as though nothing
had happened the fifteen minutes prior. So that would be
my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is,
I think a lot of times when women re enter
the workforce after having a kid or they come back
from eternity leave. You tend to want to overcompensate because
(28:43):
for some weird, screwed up reason, which is probably that
we're made to feel this way. You feel guilty that
you've been gone for three months, four months, whatever, and
then you start yourself on this track of you know,
you get up, you care for your baby, you care
for your fan, you commute, you get to work, or
you go on zoom and do work. Then you shut
(29:05):
it down, you shove food in your mouth, you say
hi to your partner, you care for your baby, and
then you get right back online again. I think that's
of the mistakes I've made in my life. I think
that's one of the greatest mistakes I made, which is
like my kids are in the tub, I'm on my phone.
Like answering work emails, like set boundaries early for yourself
(29:28):
and even and especially when it's scary for yourself, because
the reality work will take up every orifice of your
time if you let it. And this feeling that you're
accessible at night every night. Now, yes, some nights you
have to work late and you have a big project
and blah blah blah, but the fact that you're expected
to be available at night I have a huge issue with,
(29:52):
So my advice would be to set really clear boundaries
on that.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
And then the third is when you're at work, make
the most of work.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
So if you're there for six and a half hours,
crush the six and a half hours. If you're there
for nine hours, crush the nine hours. But at that
ninth hour or seventh hour, whatever hour, shut it down,
get out of there and go live your life. And
I think sometimes when you have kids, you feel depleted
(30:23):
because you're supposed to be everything to everyone at all times, always,
and it's a lie, like it's it's not going to
work and the only person and the person who is
going to suffer and give up the most because.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Of that is you.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
So just really making the boundary stick, not for anybody
else's reasons, but to preserve yourself, I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Oh my gosh, Erica, if I had we don't do
sound effects on this podcast, but like if we did,
I would have the standing ovation one be going a
hut right now because I can't tell you what you
just said in the last two minutes is probably going
to change some people's life, Like I mean, you giving
that kind of permission from someone who is where you
are right now in leadership and everything.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
It's just so incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
That was amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Oh that's so nice. I have a quick story on that.
I know we're probably out of time.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
But no, tell the quick story.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
I had a woman who worked for me. This was
actually really interesting. I had two women who worked for
me recently, and one was a available at all times,
all hours of the night, like I'm like, working, working, working, working, working,
and the other woman was a working mom with two
(31:38):
kids I think under four. And what was interesting to
me is I stepped back and looked at them and
I said to myself, Wow, credit to the mom where
she shut down every night at five o'clock. And she
conditioned because she's shut down at five o'clock, you knew
(32:00):
you weren't going to get an answered until the following morning.
And I think we're all successfully and secure in a
way where you're afraid to do the action of shutting
at five. But all it did was train everybody else
not to bug her until eight thirty the following morning.
Versus the woman who was always available, she was disappointing
(32:22):
people because they were like, you're always available, why aren't
you available to me now? And the reality is, when
I stepped back and looked at these women, the working mom,
I think worked probably forty fifty percent of the time
as the other woman, but got as much done and
did it with greater discipline. So I think there's this
(32:44):
fallacy like the more you work, the more you work.
Like I don't believe that at all. I think you
need to make the most of the time you have
and you have to be a maniac about that time.
But beyond that, you've got to go live your life,
and I think you can be fabulously successful with that.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Well, one last thing before we go, oh well, other
than you telling everybody, of course, all about where they
can find everything, we'll get to that. But we share
a love of the week every week on this podcast.
I hope your team share that with you, but if not, you.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Can They didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
They didn't, Okay, So it can be off the cuff,
and I will have to go first because I will
give you time to give yours and okay, I just
thought of mine.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
That didn't take too long. Okay, But it can be
a product.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It can be like a season, a beverage, a shoot,
like I don't care, a book whatever.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Okay, So mine is I had.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
I don't get a lot of patient gifts because I
don't know, like it's just not necessarily in the culture
what I do. Plus, I take care of patients for
so many years and it's not like they're aging out
for that long. But somebody was going to college and
the mom gave me a lu Lavo candle and it
was just I mean, obviously that's a lux gift and
I would not expect a patient to give me that,
but like, it was just so nice and I have
it on my desk and now every time I smell it,
(33:56):
I just feel this gratitude for like the privilege about
knowing I don't know, it was awesome.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So that is my love of the week.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Oh I love that. That's a great love of the week.
My love of the week. When is this coming out?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I think it's in like two in mid September.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Let's say mid September, okay, or end.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
Of September something like that. Sorry I should know that, but.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Okay, my love of the week.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Well you I'll tell you this one and then you
can tell me if it's too dated. Okay, So my
love of the week is I've been watching in.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
The US Open.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
I love to watch tennis. It is the most inspiring sport.
I think it's one of those sports where the female
athletes are even better than the men athletes.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Like it's so fun to watch.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
And there's this announcer, this Australian woman named I think
her name is Renee Stubbs, and I had never heard
of her before. I'd never seen her before, I didn't
know anything about her, but I loved her attitude. She
was on the broadcast and I think she's a former
tennis player herself and a former coach. And everyone was
talking like all nice and the platitudes about like oh,
(35:02):
Coco golf had lost to Emma Navarro and.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Everyone's like, Coco so great, Coco so great.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
And she was like, yeah, like, I don't think she
had the confidence and her swing wasn't high enough, and
and I loved that she had the balls, I guess
for a lack of a better word, to speak her
mind and with such clarity and specificity.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
So she's my love of the week.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
That's not going to be dated, that's everlasting. That's evergreen
right there.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So that's perfect.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Plus I just love the image of you like watching
sports and listening to the commentary and like with what
all you know and what you've built, like your analysis
of it.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Oh, it's so fun.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
So I DMed her and I was like, will you
come do I do these like daily work videos? And
I'm like, will you come do the daily work videos
with me? And she said yes.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
So I was like, that's so fun. That is so amazing,
double love of the week.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Super super cool. Well, this has been so much fun.
I'm serious, I'm going to like play that part on
a loop. That ending part, it was just so perfect.
Good good, And tell our listeners where they can find
your book. Remind us all of the title one more time,
and just where they can find more about you.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Okay, great. The book is called Nobody Cares About your Career.
You can find it wherever books are sold. And I
did the audio book, so if you are a busy
woman and you don't have a time to read a book,
which I would totally understand, you can just listen to it.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So I think it's a good listen. I'm I'm biased, obviously.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
You can find me at Erica, which is Erka or
at Erica Underscore. I'm at Erica on Instagram and then
on TikTok at Erica Underscore.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
You can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Amazing, what amazing handles you have. That is great.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I worked hard for the handles.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
You deserve them. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Well we are back. Sarah did a great interview there
with Erica Arizbadan, who is the former CEO of Barstool Sports,
the author of the book Nobody Cares About Your Career.
Lots of great advice there. So this question is from
a listener who is considering hiring a career coach. She says,
have either of you ever used one? Do you have
thoughts on them? And what kind of role they could
(37:10):
play in career growth. The context is that she is
currently in a midpoint in her career. She's been in
law for about fifteen years out of the baby years,
her kids are in school, she is free of student loans,
and she is still under forty. Wow, she's accomplished a lot.
It's an exciting prospect to have things feel open, but
she's wondering what she should do if she needs to
find her passion or find ways to maximize her current role.
(37:33):
She seems to get a lot of ads for career
coaches through professional organizations and podcast feeds LinkedIn wherever she
is on social media. So she's curious if we have
any insights or experience with coaches, what they might be
able to offer in the quest for career happiness. Her
instinct is skepticism, but it's good to be curious. Sarah,
(37:55):
what do you think?
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Yeah? I have a mix as well.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I think part of it is, are you out of
place where you feel like really exploring what you want
with another person in scheduled sessions with specific exercise would
be helpful for you? And would you be unable to
do that work in a maybe less expensive context. If so,
this might be something to explore. I would be aware
of any coach who has any part of their platform
(38:20):
in teaching others to coach. I just that really scares
me because it gets very pyramidy. Or a coach who
wants to tell you how to kick butt in your
field but has left that field to coach specifically. Maybe
that's okay if they're clearly in a later phase of life,
like Listen, they put in thirty awesome years and they
(38:40):
accomplished great things and now they've moved on to coaching.
But if it's like, no, they did that for five
years and now they're coaching, I think there's some concern
sometimes to be found. Again, this is not universal. I
mean I can think of some specific people who do
things more in the coaching realm who maybe have specific
protocols or things they've developed to share that can be
(39:01):
super super valuable. But yeah, I just think you have
to be a little bit careful. Definitely talk to others
who have worked with said coaches if you can, Like
a great coach should be able to even offer not
just testimonials on their website, but maybe like, oh you
can chat with this other person in your field and
see if it was helpful for them, and then just
(39:21):
always reevaluate. Hopefully you don't have to pay a ton
of upfront costs, so if you invest and you go
to a couple sessions and it's not helpful, then you
can decide that maybe to go another avenue, either finding
another coach or doing something different.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, we get a lot of pitches from coaches, and
I think we are very very wary of most of them,
and there's a lot of like up selling and these
sort of things like you have to buy this package
and then you have to buy this other package, and
it's more about the coach as a guru as opposed
to what they are going to do to help you.
(39:55):
And if you are bothering to pay for this, it
really should be all about what they're going to do
to help you, so as opposed to I don't know,
you all stand around and worship this particular coach in
their guru status. So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical as well.
It can work, just you know, I would definitely only
go through like personal recommendations of someone who's seen really
(40:20):
good practical results, concrete results as a real result of
working with the person I do. I want to suggest
one other option though, for this person, which is that
I know somebody who was thinking, like do I need
a career coach whatever, And what she realized is that
she knew what she needed to do and like the
exercises she should think about, and like the what she
(40:42):
should investigate, and like different things she could do to
help in her career. She just needed someone to push
her to do it. But if that's the case, then
maybe what you need is an accountability partner or a
goal group or sort of mastermind group of folks. Maybe
you can find other people who are also ambitious, who
are in similar or stages of life with you, who
(41:02):
might meet up regularly to discuss your ideas and next steps.
And so you know, not only would that be like
lower cost, I mean just in the sense that you're
like getting together with people, it could also be a
lot of fun. Like it could actually build your professional
network in a very good way. Like these people would
be kind of your cheering squad and you're the cheering
(41:22):
squad for them. You'd be very close together. So I'd
throw that out there as an idea as well.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I love it, and hopefully something like that if it's
a collection of your peers, wouldn't be a crazy financial
investment either, so bonus, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
Sarah has been interviewing Erica Arizbadan, who's the former CEO
of Barstool Sports. We will be back next week with
more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com
or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram and you can.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has
been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us
next time for more on making work and life work
together
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com