March 11, 2025 • 39 mins
What if losing your job is the key to unlocking your next perfect role?
In this encouraging episode, Nicole Jansen sits down with Stephanie Brown, the dynamic founder of Creative Career Level Up. As a former senior marketing executive at Nike and Apple, Stephanie’s journey is a testament to resilience, transformation, and finding purpose. She provides invaluable insights on how getting fired became the catalyst for discovering her true calling and empowering others to secure their next perfect role with increased confidence, promotion, and salary.
Join us as Stephanie unfolds her personal story of going from a layoff to landing her ideal job, and how she transitioned to helping others in marketing, creative, and tech industries achieve the same success. We further explore the importance of self-awareness, aligning with changing seasons of one's career, and the practical strategies that can lead you from uncertainty to opportunity.
Learn how to harness your unique strengths, navigate career changes effectively, and rise above challenges to thrive in today’s competitive job market!
What We Discuss in this Episode
- Stephanie's career journey: How pivotal moments shaped her path.
- The shift from “dream job” to “next perfect role.”
- The importance of self-awareness in career transitions.
- Overcoming the challenges of losing a job.
- Effective strategies for finding your next perfect role.
- How changing life stages can influence career choices.
- Differentiating between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.
- The impact of building intentional relationships in professional networks.
- Utilizing LinkedIn and other platforms for job hunting.
- Importance of a strategic career plan and execution.
Podcast Highlights
0:00 - Overcoming a Layoff
3:27 - Finding the Right Job Fit
7:34 - Identifying Energizing Career Activities
12:10 - Starting a Business: Networking Essentials
13:59 - Finding Motivation
19:33 - Interview Readiness Through Self-Reflection
20:52 - Leaving Nike: A Shiny New Opportunity
28:20 – The Creative Career Level Up Program
31:12 - Recruitment Strategies Across Industries
35:31 - Risk, Referrals, and Feedback Dynamics
36:50 - Transformative Career Action Steps
Favorite Quotes
Self-Reflection: "You have to know when to keep moving forward because things might change in your life."
Intentional Networking: “Go into these conversations just thinking ‘I'm here to build a relationship with someone.’ Because people really do want to help others if they can.”
Episode Show Notes: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/business/530-how-to-land-your-next-perfect-job-with-stephanie-brown/
Check out our complete library of episodes and other leadership resources here: https://leadersof
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the leaders of transformation podcast. The number one
show for business leaders and entrepreneurs passionate about uplifting
others and making a greater impact in the world. Now here's
your host, transformational coach, speaker, and
business advisor, Nicole Jansen.
(00:21):
How do you overcome a layoff and land your dream job? Our guest
today is Stephanie Brown. She is originally from New Zealand, also in UK, and
she goes back and forth. She is the founder of Creative Career
Level Up, which is a program that helps those in
marketing, creative, and tech industries accelerate their careers
and secure their next perfect role along with a promotion and a
(00:44):
salary increase. And what makes her coaching stand out is she has a
proven system that she developed as a senior marketing executive at
Nike and then later at Apple. And today, we're gonna talk about her
journey, how she got fired, and then she got another job and
there was a whole lot better. And now she helps other people do that same
thing. And so we're also gonna talk about how she found her purpose and really
(01:05):
rebuild her confidence in that process. So Stephanie, welcome to Leaders
Transformation. We're glad you're here. Thank you, Nicole. It's great to be here. It is
a pleasure. We were talking like how many months ago? I don't
know. But we finally are here. Yay. And I wanna do also a
shout out to Oscar Hamilton. They're amazing. They send us amazing
guests like you, and we just wanna do a shout out to them. So thank
(01:28):
you for the introduction. Without you Absolutely. This podcast wouldn't be what it
is. All the amazing booking agents, it's just it's just awesome. So get
to meet the coolest people. We love that. Yeah. Yeah.
So tell us a little bit more about what you do and in particular,
in 2025, why it's so important right now, what
you're teaching. Yeah. So I've spent my whole career working in marketing in the creative
(01:50):
industry. And now I work with people in those industries and the tech
industries to help them find what we call your next perfect role. And we say
your next perfect role instead of dream job because I hate the word dream job,
although I do use it sometimes. But people get really I think dream job
carries a lot of heaviness. It's like, oh, but what if I don't know what
my passion is and what's the dream? It's just quite a weighty phrase. So we
(02:11):
say next perfect role because it's about helping people find what is right
for them next. And the point they are in their life, at the point they
are in their career, understanding that our lives are different at at
different points, and we're gonna need different things in our career at different points.
Even 6 months ago versus today can be quite different. And so it's helping
people understand where they're at right now and helping them find the thing that's right
(02:32):
for them. And it's gonna be different for everyone. That's why I don't talk about
dream jobs because people often will list out companies they wanna work from. They're
like, those are the companies without really understanding what are those companies right for
you. And I, know, you mentioned I used to work for Nike. I
loved working at Nike. I was there in my twenties. I loved it. I left
when I was in my early thirties. It was wonderful. It was best 8 years
(02:53):
of of my career. But I probably wouldn't enjoy it now in my forties. I
don't think I would enjoy it as much. I'm at a different stage of life.
I'm looking for different things. And I also don't think it's the right environment for
everybody. It's quite a competitive environment. I loved it. I loved sometimes being the
dumbest person in the room because my colleagues are so amazing. But some people
wouldn't enjoy that. Some people would find that really difficult. And so
(03:14):
the reason that I feel really passionate about helping people find that next perfect role
is because so many people are in jobs that they hate and they're not
necessarily toxic jobs. They're just not the right job for them right now at
this moment in their life in terms of what they need. They're not the right
environments for them. And the right environment for you might be a nightmare
for someone else. So it's not about this company's toxic or not toxic
(03:35):
or this role is great or not great. It's like, what's right for you? So
it starts with understanding yourself before you move forward. And I think so many people
are in jobs that they're not happy in and they aren't really
aware that it's about who they are and what they need, not about the company.
So you can leave or you could start that process to start finding the right
thing for you. And you could actually end up in a place where you wake
(03:56):
up every day and you think, well, this is awesome. I love what I do.
I'm that annoying friend at the pub on a Friday night telling everyone how great
my job is and how much I love it. Well, and I love that you
made that distinction because you're right. As you think about dream job, it's
almost like something it's the end game. It is a destination
you arrive at and then you're stuck there. So you better choose well. It's
(04:16):
kinda like when people talk about life purpose. Right? And they go like, what's my
life purpose? What's my life purpose? And I always say that your life purpose is
to love God and love one another as yourself. Okay. There you go. You don't
have to have to search for it anymore. Your assignment and how you love
others, how you create value in the world and do what you do best, that's
gonna change with seasons. And that's what you're talking about, that next perfect role and
(04:36):
that next perfect role and the next perfect role. And you're not actually stopping
anywhere and saying, this is it. This is what I'm gonna do the rest of
my life because then you stop growing. So it's a great, great point. Absolutely.
And it changes for people. You could be in a job today that you love.
And then in a year from now, it might be completely wrong for you and
you have to know when's the time to keep moving forward because things might change
(04:57):
in your life. I say that about Nike and probably not being I don't know.
I might might still be working there today and still really love it. I don't
know. But for me, I got to my early thirties and I thought, do you
know what? It's time to move into the next stage. And I still loved working
at Nike. There was nothing wrong. Nothing happened. But I just felt like my life
was changing in terms of what I needed probably more personally than
professionally. And it felt like the right time to move into the next thing. And
(05:18):
so even if something has been the dream job or the perfect role, at
one point, it doesn't mean that it'll stay there forever and you've just gotta be
really aware of yourself and in touch with yourself to be able to know when
to start making those moves. Okay. So I wanna talk about you
losing your job and then what happened there. But before we do that, we
can maybe this even ties in, I don't know. But talk about when you
(05:41):
said you need to be aware, you need to know yourself and all that. I
think there's a lot of people that don't know. You almost have gotten so
lulled into the habit, the day to day of what they
do is that it's hard to go, oh, yeah, that's what I
wanna do. Right? So I'm not doing the thing that I love and
I am super clear that this is what I wanna do instead. That's not
(06:03):
usually the case. And so when we talk about need to know yourself, self
awareness, all of that, that's a process. So where does somebody start in
that process to really even know what that is before they can even start
searching it out? Yeah. That's a great question, Nicole, because I think people get, like,
definitely get frustrated by this idea of, well, how do I become more self aware?
How do I find my purpose? Things like that. Yes. I'm aware that I'm frustrated
(06:24):
right now. That's what I'm aware of. Self aware that I'm annoyed. Yeah. The
honest truth is there's so many different ways to do it. There's no one way
that you get this self awareness. If we're talking about our careers,
specifically, there's some exercises that you could do. You could work
with a coach. I think coaches are great for helping you work through these processes
of understanding yourself. But as a really simple exercise you can do at
(06:45):
work is take a pen and paper or your phone or whatever
it is that you record things on and pay really good attention to when your
energy rises when you're working. So there will be you might not like your
job per se. There might be things that you do within your job that you
really enjoy. So maybe you, working as a marketing manager in
a company and you find that every time you go to a client meeting, your
(07:07):
energy rises. You love working with the clients. You love working out solutions for
them and you get a lot of energy from being in those meetings. But then
when you come back to the office, maybe the administrative part of
sharing the feedback from those meetings and briefing people on what we're gonna do
might be something where your your energy gets a bit flatter. Now that's not to
say that you can find a job where you're just gonna love every single part
(07:28):
of the job and always be enjoying it. Obviously, administrative
stuff is is in a lot of jobs and most people don't like that. But
paying attention to the things and where your energy rises shows that this
is a task or something that you enjoy doing. And from there, you can start
to get that self awareness that we just talked about. You suddenly look at a
week of your recordings and you think, okay, I went to 5 private client
(07:49):
meetings in every single one of my energy roles. That gives me some data to
understand that this is something that I enjoy. So a role where that
something like that or an aspect of that is included is probably gonna be something
that you really enjoy. And so you start to find those threads and that's really
important in your career is to understand what parts give you energy,
what parts give you joy, and what parts don't. It's a really simple exercise. It's
(08:10):
only the beginning of how you go through that process, but it's something that people
who are listening could do today, track it this week, and they could start to
really start to build that picture of what that looks like. Yeah. That's good. That
reminds me actually of a client who came to me and says, I hate what
I do. And I wanna go do something completely different. And she
was doing training and technical training for her
(08:30):
company. And when we did this exercise, who you're talking about and teasing
that out, what parts does she like? What part does she not like? She loves
doing workshops. She loves interacting with people. She just absolutely did not. She was
like, I don't wanna do this. It was like, well, is it that you don't
wanna train or is it that you don't wanna train on that
particular subject because you're not interested in it or you're over it
(08:51):
or whatever. And as soon as we changed what she was training
on, everything changed and she started to love it again. We see that a
lot actually. It's just changing one little thing. It all says like whether
it's the product or the service or whatever it is or who you work
with. It's like coaching. Right? Like, you work with people. I hate
this. And it's like, do you hate this? Or is it just you're not working
(09:12):
with the right people that you enjoy, that you're meant to work with?
I love that example you've just given because that is a classic example where people
just wanna throw the whole job out. I did the same thing myself. When I
left Nike, I went to a small company, and we can talk about it in
a moment, but it didn't work out. I didn't get laid off. I got fired.
I got let go of myself. The role still existed, but I got let go.
And when I did this reflection myself in this sort of period
(09:35):
after I'd been fired, I literally did this exercise. I wasn't in the job, but
I went back through jobs I've had. And I was like, when did I get
energy? What did I like? I realized that I got a lot of energy from
big team meetings at Nike. I liked being part of a big team. It didn't
bother me that I wasn't able to say I did that one thing on my
own. I loved coming out at Oxford Street in London and seeing campaigns we had
worked on and knowing I was part of a team that worked on that. And
(09:57):
when I went to the smaller company, it was it wasn't a big team anymore
and I actually really missed that. And I went through and I found these threads.
And what I'd done with the role I'd taken is I'd really thought with my
head instead of my heart. And when I went back to, okay, what did you
like? I had sort of formed this idea that big global companies were bad and
I shouldn't spend my whole career working in a big global company. And then I
looked at my career and I was like, I actually really like those environments. I
(10:18):
do well in those environments. I like people. I enjoy the social side of
things in terms of the work as well as, you know, personally. And I don't
know why I've suddenly vilified big global companies. Maybe I was just listening to
other people a bit too much. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna
go back into a big global corporation. I do well in American corporate environments.
That's what I grew up in. And so going to Apple was the perfect fit
for me. I interviewed with some of the other big tech companies as well, but
(10:40):
I ended up at Apple and it was the perfect fit for me. And when
I got there, honestly, the 1st week, I was like, this is the moment I
worked walked into that office. Even when in the interview process, I met so many
colleagues. I just knew and it just felt right. And it was because I knew
myself well enough to know it was the right place. I never doubted it any
day that I was there, but it's because I'd done the work before I got
there. If I hadn't done that work, I might have gone into those interviews with
(11:02):
Apple thinking, oh, maybe I shouldn't be working in a big group global corporate. You
know, maybe this isn't right for me. Because I've done the work to realize the
environments that I do well in, I was able to really pinpoint, hey, these are
the right types of companies of which Apple was one of the types of companies
that I thought I'd do well in. And it was right because I had that
self awareness before I started the job job hunt process. Well, there's a
lot of people that are promoting entrepreneurship. And I'm an entrepreneur,
(11:25):
been an entrepreneur my whole life. I love being an entrepreneur
and business owner. And at the same time, some people are
entrepreneurs and wanna go out and create their own thing. And some
people are intrepreneurs and love working within a
system. And I think, yeah, sometimes that has been vilified
often because it's like, oh, you don't wanna do that. You wanna go do
(11:47):
your own thing. And then you've got people that are like, I wanna start my
own business. And they don't wanna start their own business, but they think
they need to. Like, you know, they've so convinced themselves. And I've had
clients where it's like, yeah, I don't know that this is the right thing for
you. Because this takes risk. It takes a lot of energy. You gotta
put it out there. It's like that person I was talking about with the
(12:08):
training. So she was like, I'm gonna start my own business. And so she while
she was looking for a job, she starting her own business. And she said, you
know, I'm gonna talk to, like, 3 people this week. And I went, is that's
not gonna get you anywhere in the world of business. You gotta talk
to enough people to start building that momentum. But if, you know, if you're not
willing to do that and that stresses you out, like sales, so people I don't
(12:28):
want to sell, I don't want to market, I don't want to do any of
these things. You're the marketing person. Like, I don't want to do any of these
things. I just want to do the things like, well, then maybe it would be
better for you to work within a company or for someone else. Yeah. Some sort
of organization that you can contract to do that. But I love that you've
mentioned that, Nicole, because I this is something that comes up a lot with people.
And it's something I feel really passionate about because I think the default that people
(12:50):
default to when they hate their job is, oh, I should go and work for
myself. Because if I worked for myself, I wouldn't have a boss. I wouldn't have
this. And I wouldn't have these horrible colleagues and they You're gonna have a boss.
I'm just gonna be you. Exactly. And that people think there's so
many things I miss about my 9 to 5 job. I miss that I can
take holidays. I mean, in the UK, I used to have 6 weeks holiday. And
I could turn my phone off and not respond to emails and nobody, especially at
(13:12):
a company like Apple, they they were pretty good about saying, no, you're on holiday.
And, you know, I got the same salary every month. I didn't have to worry
about, is it gonna be up? Is it gonna be down? And we had a
decent level of flexibility. I was fairly senior. You know, I didn't feel I loved
my boss. He's a really good flexibility. I was feeling senior. You know, I didn't
feel I loved my boss. He's a really good dude. And I you know, there's
a lot of things I miss about my 9 to 5 job. When I go
on holiday now, I have to work. I can't turn my business off in 2
(13:32):
weeks or even a week. You have to work pretty much 247. And and people
don't realize that about businesses and sometimes things are good, you know. The economies of
the world are a bit tougher at the moment. So on businesses, it's a lot
tougher right now. Yeah. There'll be good times, but and I think when people are
running away from quote unquote toxic job to become an
entrepreneur, they're they're not being motivated by the right thing. And I've said
(13:54):
to a client before, she wanted to become a photographer and I encouraged her to
do it as a side hustle. And she was like, no. I just wanna quit
my job. And I said, look, if you are not motivated enough by being a
photographer to do it after working on weekends, then you're not motivated
enough. Because if you really, really, really wanted this photography
business, you would be pumped to come home at night and do photography or do
(14:14):
it on the weekends. It shouldn't be, oh, I'm only motivated if I do it
between 9 and 5. Because, eventually, you can do it between 9 and 5 and
not have to do the weekends and evenings. But the way you know if you're
being driven by the right things is if you wanna do it on the weekends
and if you wanna do it in the evenings. That's when you know that it's
something you're really motivated by and therefore could is the right reason for it to
therefore turn into a full time business. Yeah. The guest that I just talked
(14:37):
to, and it'll be coming out before yours. So interesting. We were just talking
about this very thing because she was a management consultant, Shopa
Alva, and she was a management consultant, very successful and wanted to
start this nonprofit on the side. And so she did both
and she said, don't do this at home. Right? Of course, she wasn't sleeping very
much. She was doing both for years because she had a global position traveling and
(14:59):
then she was doing this, but she was so motivated to do that.
And that's exactly what you're talking about. And then she eventually she does
it full time and she's got an organization that's in multiple countries and all the
things. But she was so motivated. We were talking about how important it is
to have that motivation to drive you because there are gonna be
days when you're not gonna wanna do it and all of that. But overall,
(15:22):
you gotta be motivated to do the thing that you wanna do so. Let's talk
about you losing your job. So you left Nike. You went to this smaller company.
It didn't work out. And then what does that do? Because I know there's
a lot of times when somebody loses their job, having worked with a lot of
executives and myself, even though I'm an entrepreneur business coach, I would get
a lot of people that were in transition and then wanting to figure out
(15:45):
what their purpose is and that's one of the things that is specialty. So I
noticed with a lot of them that when they lose that job, no matter how
successful they were before in that role, they lose their
confidence. They start to feel like maybe I'm washed up. Maybe
I don't have anything of value. How did you get yourself back in the
game and confident and really selling yourself in that
(16:07):
next role? So you're not going down from there, but you're actually
going back up. Yeah. It's really not easy is what I would say. And I
often say that losing your job is one of the best,
quote unquote, traumatic experiences. I say traumatic because, obviously, there's much
more traumatic and that's the comparison I wanna make. It's the best traumatic experience you
can have that really makes you dig deep, really makes you
(16:29):
see who you are and what you're made of and can be super challenging.
But it shouldn't leave any scars, like, not long term. It's not a divorce. It's
not someone dying. It's not getting sick with the disease. You know, it's not a
big life trauma like something like that. But it's a big enough one that
it really does affect people. And I think back to that time in my life
and it was really difficult. It was one of the toughest times I've been through.
(16:50):
It was 8 months. And I really feel for people that are in it right
now. I deeply, deeply understand what people are going through if they're long
term without a job at the moment. Even if they're picking up work here and
there, if you're someone that cares about your career and gets joy and fulfillment
from it, it is really difficult when you lose a role because
so much of our identity is tied to that. And it does make
(17:12):
it really hard to understand where you're at in life. It puts you into this
weird limbo of not being able to plan things. Sometimes we can't
plan holidays. You can't plan big life events. You can't plan anything that involves a
significant amount of money. And so you end up in this weird limbo stage. And
then when you couple that with the reality of I don't have a
job, someone let me go. Even I mean, in my situation, it was literally fine.
(17:34):
But a layoff as well, even though that's not you, that's the company
letting the job go. It's not you personally. A lot of people use that say,
oh, I was laid off. I always say, no, the role was made redundant, not
you. The role you were in was made redundant. So really important. It's not even
a reframe. It's the truth. If a role gets made redundant, that's not you personally
getting made redundant. And so I think it's really important to recognize that, but it
(17:55):
does affect your confidence. It really, really does. I've never found anyone who has
lost their job unless they wanted to lose the job. But if they didn't wanna
lose the job, I've never found anyone that hasn't had a confidence not from that.
Even though in the head, they rationally know it wasn't my fault. Even for
me getting fired, it wasn't my fault in the sense that I know it wasn't
the right place for me. It really wasn't. I wasn't happy there. It wasn't the
(18:16):
right place for me. And even though they let me go, I can understand that
it wasn't the right place. So even if you know that in your heart and
your head, it still affects your confidence because it makes you feel a certain type
of way about your career. And it does become, therefore, really hard to rebuild that
confidence to get yourself back to a place where you can go out and sell
yourself in interviews and really try and convince people that you're a great hire. And
(18:36):
my own journey with that, I lost my job. Actually, in 2 days time,
it'll be coming up on, I think, 12th anniversary. I lost my job on 13th
December. And it was a Friday, which is probably wasn't a good omen,
but it was Christmas the following. I was going away for Christmas following week. It
was probably 10 days away, but it was such a tough time to lose a
job. And and there's a lot of people losing their jobs. We're filming this on
(18:57):
the 11th December. There's a lot of people losing their jobs right now and it's
a shitty time to lose a job in December. It's so so hard, especially
if you have a family. And so I feel for anyone that's going through it
right now. And I know what that feels like because then you go into this
period where you actually can't actually take any action either because there's not really a
lot happening in the job market and then January is slow to get going. So
(19:17):
my job loss happened at end of December. Going into January, it's obviously in the
northern hemisphere. It's winter. It's not great. And I
know in hindsight, you know, I got the job at Apple in July of that
year and started in August. I I know that first half of the year, the
first three months. If I'd had the Apple interview then, if it had come
up then, I don't think I would have got the job because I wasn't mentally
(19:38):
and emotionally in a place to be able to go on and sell myself. By
the time I got to July, I bought myself back to life a little bit
and I was more confident than I was had that opportunity come up earlier in
the year. And some of the things that I did as practical tips for anyone
that's going through this, I think you would have to really sit with the experience
of what's just happened. I think you have to be really honest with yourself about
why it happened, what you could have changed, especially in my
(20:01):
situation. Maybe if you've been laid off, there's not a lot you could have changed.
But in my situation, I was let go myself. And so I really had to
be honest with myself about why I ended up in that situation, why it wasn't
the right place. Some of those things I talked about about being becoming more self
aware. And then I really had to reframe the situation for
myself, for no one else apart from myself. Honestly, I knew that mentally,
I had to get myself into a place where I was okay with what had
(20:24):
happened. I'd I'd let that go and I could move forward. That's not to say
that that happens overnight, but I had to start that process because I knew that
I wasn't gonna be great in interviews if I was in the state that I
was in January February of that year. And so one of the big things I
did was I literally reframed the situation. I wrote down, what had
happened and I wrote a story about why it happened in a positive
way. So I wrote a story about, you know, this it was the right thing
(20:47):
to do to leave Nike. It was time for you to leave Nike and this
is gonna be the opportunity that got you out of Nike. It felt like a
great opportunity at the time. It was a really big, beautiful, shiny,
exciting job and you needed a big, shiny, exciting job to get you to
leave Nike because you were in a wonderful comfort zone that you probably would never
have left if someone hadn't enticed you away with a beautiful, shiny job. And that
(21:07):
shiny job didn't turn out to be the right thing, but that doesn't mean it
wasn't the right thing to leave. And now we're out there and we've been given
this fantastic opportunity to see what else is out in the market. You've
got amazing skills and this was the story. I wrote all of this down on
a piece of paper and then I recorded it on my phone and I used
to listen to it in the morning. So it was literally my voice in my
head telling myself this story. And the first few times I listened to it, the
(21:29):
other voice in your head's like, this is all BS. This is just a story
you're telling yourself. But eventually, your brain starts to believe it and it
becomes second nature and you I still keep listening to it, but I would listen
to it. I'd be like, yes, this is us. We're up today. This is where
we're at. And it gave me a lot of energy after a while. It stopped
being something that I was fighting with and I started to really believe it. So
by the time I got to July, I was like, all of this is gonna
(21:51):
work out. It's gonna be okay. And I really, really believed that. And I also
really believed in myself again. But I did that was one of the big things
I did. And I did listen to that every single day. And I did notice
my thoughts changing quite quickly, actually. After like a week or 2 of
listening to it, I did notice my thoughts changing. But they were really solidified by
the time we got to July, which is what I needed when that opportunity came
(22:12):
up at Apple. Well, I love that because, yes, it's practical and
you can do it. But a lot of times, people don't think about those things.
Right? We think about what do I need to go do to find that next
job? But to your point about sitting in it is I think that
there's a grieving process. And if you don't go through the
grieving process, it actually gets longer if you drag
(22:34):
it out and then you hold on to it. So as I was thinking about
some of the people that I've worked with that have been in that position and
how their energy very low, and they kinda like solidify
that loss in their mind. And it almost like they anchor
themselves to it, and it slows them down. So, like, to your point, when
you go into the interview, even if that is your next perfect
(22:56):
role, you're not showing up as your best in that. And so
there's no resonance there. You talk about your subconscious mind. Subconscious mind
doesn't know the difference between what's real or imagined. So whatever you tell it, it's
going to believe. And so I always say, look. If you're gonna make up a
story and live by a story, then just make it a good one. Make it
one that's gonna really make a difference in your life. And so
(23:17):
that's what you're doing because when you said 8 months, I can almost hear people
saying 8 months is nothing compared to I've been like 2 years or whatever the
case is. But you compressed that time because
of your the process. You were very intentional
about the process of saying, okay, I'm gonna get through it. If I need to
get from here to there, I'm gonna get through it sooner than later. So I'm
(23:38):
not gonna drag this on. I'm not saying that people maybe it does take 2
years or whatever that they're dragging it on. But I think that they're just
noticing from your story is that you've just compressed that time.
So to the shortest amount of time that it could possibly be for you
in your situation until you're ready, and I think it's different
for everybody. It is different for everyone. I mean, the more senior you are, the
(24:00):
harder it is. I was quite senior at 32 having come off the leadership team
at Nike. So I was certainly not going for junior roles at all. And as
my boss at Nike explained to me at the time, she was like, Steph, there's
a pyramid in in companies and you're job hunting here now. And when you were
last job hunting, you were job hunting down here and there were tons of roles.
So the market is a lot slower in senior hire roles. That's just how it
is. So if you talk about people that have not worked for sort of 1
(24:22):
or 2 years, a lot of the time, they are seeing new people who are
going for those more senior level roles, and that makes complete sense. I was still
at a senior level when that things did move slower, but there was definitely a
sort of that early senior level. One thing I like what you said there is
this intentionality about what you did. I was so intentional in
those 8 months. I came back from Christmas. I'd been in Poland with a
friend for Christmas. We'd had this, you know, really great Christmas together. And I came
(24:44):
back on the 2nd January and I was like, wow, I don't have a job.
Everybody else is going back to work. And I remember London, the days
are quite short in London in the winter. And I remember because we've been in
Poland, I wanted to watch the movie Schindler's List. If you know that movie,
it's a very long movie. It's at least 3 hours long. I've never seen it
before and we'd been to Oskar Schindler's factory in Krakow, and I was like, oh,
(25:04):
I'm gonna watch that movie. And I had said to myself, one thing I'm gonna
do every day, unless it's raining, I'm gonna go for a walk just because I
know that getting out of the house and going walking is gonna be good for
my mental health and it's gonna be really good. And so there was a walk
in London that I used to do and I was like, I'm gonna do that
every day. But when I came back from Krakow, I I decided to watch Schindler's
List. And I started watching it sort of early afternoon, forgetting how long it was
(25:26):
and not realizing how long it was and all of a sudden the sun was
going down. It was 4 o'clock and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't
go for my walk today. And I was so angry at myself because I was
like, how did you let this happen? Like you said to yourself, you're gonna go
for a walk every day, you put this movie on and now it's dark and
you know, I can still go for a walk in the dark but I don't
want to because it's dark. So I had this conversation with myself at that point.
I was like, okay, we need to schedule the day. We need to schedule it
(25:48):
the same way we would at work. It's fine to watch a 3 hour movie.
There's no I've got time. Like, there's no guilt in that. I'm gonna schedule it
in so that I don't feel like I've lost control of my day. So what
I decided then was I'm gonna get up and go to the gym at the
same time I used to when I was working. So I would get up at
6:30 or 6. I'd be, you know, Barry's boot camp. Love Barry's. I used to
go to Barry's at 7, and then it would finish at 8. And usually, I
(26:09):
go to work at that point. But because I had the time, I would walk
home along the canal back to my flat in London, get a coffee. And that
was my walk. It was my workout. And then I would schedule in a time
to to job hunt. And I was really intentional. I'm like, it's gonna be 2
hours. It's gonna be 3 hours. Because again, especially with LinkedIn, love LinkedIn, don't
have many bad things to say, but it's still a social network. So if if
you jump on LinkedIn and you think that's job hunting by scrolling on LinkedIn, you
(26:31):
can easily lose 8 hours of your day doing that. So I was very intentional.
Okay. It's been 3 hours of job hunting and then maybe in the afternoon, I'll
go into Central London, meet friends, whatever. But I scheduled everything in the same way
I did when I was working. And the reason for that was because you've already
lost so much control of your life by losing your job. But you can still
control your days and you can still schedule in 6 hours of Netflix
(26:52):
and chill if you want. But scheduling it in will make you feel less guilty
about doing it. And so that was another tactic that I use. I was so
intentional about how I planned my days and that really helped me
mentally keep control of my life and not feel like I was just a, excuse
my language, like a sack of shit just sitting around the house doing nothing. And
I felt like I had a lot to do. And I was had meetings with
people and I was catching up. And even if it was socially catching up with
(27:14):
people, I just kept everything scheduled. And that really, really helped me keep my head
above water. Mhmm. I love that. Well and that's the discipline.
Right? In treating it almost like a job of getting a
job if that's what it is. So I love that. So you've got
your book. So first of all, I'll do a little plug for your book called
Fired, Why Losing Your Job is the Best Thing That Can Happen TO You. The
(27:35):
reframe on that, you know, you've got your website creativecareerlab.com.
So if somebody's coming and they're saying, okay, Stephanie. So I've lost my
job. I wanna get that next perfect role for me. How do you
work with them? Is it coaching? Is it a program that they walk through to
job search? Unpack that a little bit for us. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely read the
book if you're not working right now. It's a very low barrier to entry of
(27:58):
getting into my head of what I went through then. And I'll be honest, I
wrote it more for cathartic reasons, but it's very practical. And some of the things
I've talked about on this podcast in terms of scheduling your day and things like
that are all included in there. So it's exactly what I did to help me
get through that time period. And if you're going through something similar, honestly, it's everything
that I went through that I've shared genuinely to help other people because I found
it such a tough time myself. So if it helps someone, I love to hear
(28:20):
that. And if you do buy it and it does help me, please let me
know. I'm on LinkedIn and please drop me a note because I I love hearing
that. In terms of the program that I run, so I have a program called
the Creative Career Level Up as part of my business Creative Career Lab. And I
wanted to design a program not just for people that have lost their job, but
for people either in jobs thinking about the next step or not happy in their
job and thinking, you know, I need to get out of here. Or people that
(28:40):
aren't working at the moment of which right now there is a lot of people
in my program who are not working. But it's not just for people who have
lost their job. It is for people also in jobs. But the underlying point of
the program is to be quite intentional about the next move that you make. So
there's a 3 step process that we take people through. The first part is a
deep introspective look at who you are, what you are looking for in
this next stage of your career, what motivates you, what drives you, what your personality
(29:02):
is. So really understanding you and doing that self awareness piece and taking people on
through that process. And then the second piece of that is we
then overlay the introspective work with our understanding of
the creative industry or the tech industry, depending on which one you're in. And we
put together an actionable plan that you can actually start going
out and taking action on. Because most people, when they job hunt, they sit on
(29:24):
LinkedIn. As I said, it's a social network. It can suck you into the vortex
of the same as any other social network. Most people just sit on LinkedIn, firing
stuff off. Easy applying here and there. They've got no thinking, no strategy behind
what they're doing. And as marketeers, no one would launch a marketing
campaign without a plan up for upfront, and everybody launches their job hunt without
a plan. And so the introspective work we do in that second phase, putting the
(29:46):
plan together, gives you something that you can work from and it allows you
to just be a lot more strategic, considered intentional with that next move.
And then the third part of what we do is we help people actually secure
the role. So the practical side of things, resumes, getting in front of the hiring
manager, pitching yourself, really knowing how to pitch and sell yourself to get the
job. And it starts with having this plan and everybody's plan looks different because some
(30:08):
people, as I say, are not working in their their plan will be different. We
usually have a bit of a 2 track for people who are not working because
there's an urgency on getting a role. But as I know from being let go
myself, it also creates a situation where you're like, do you know what? I really
wanna shoot my shot and go for something great. I, you know, I've had this
horrible experience and want my next role to be amazing. So therefore, we look
at it as a 2 track. We look at it. Okay. Is there something immediately
(30:30):
we can get you into? But can we also help you plan a little bit
more for the future? And if you're in a job, it's the same process. It's
just your plan will look a a lot different because you're in a different situation
to someone that's lost their job, but it works for both. But that foundational piece
at the beginning, the understanding yourself, the self awareness, and then putting a plan
together, which is really important to have the plan so that you're not
(30:50):
scrolling on LinkedIn all day and then helping you to action that plan and secure
the role is is the sort of 3 steps that we take you on with
the creative career level. Awesome. And you mentioned LinkedIn a number of times. Do you
find that that is the best place to find your next perfect role?
Or, you know, like, what about some of these other platforms or recruiters?
What do you recommend? Or does that kind of depend on the person in the
(31:11):
industry? Yeah. It really depends on the industry, the person. Even in the creative industry,
you know, the agency side of things that they use a lot more recruiters. On
the client side, it's a lot more internal recruiters and a lot less external
recruiters. Depends on your industry. Everybody's industry is different. There's
definitely a lot more going direct to companies these days
because of LinkedIn. So companies I know at companies I've
(31:32):
worked at before, often as a hiring manager, we'll just send a profile
like, this is the type of person we're looking for, and they'll go through LinkedIn
and look for the type of background that we've seen we're looking for. Even if
we do advertise the role, they might still do that and the HR teams will
still go through LinkedIn and maybe send some messages to people who might be interested
in interviewing. So there's lots of different ways that jobs come about these days and
(31:52):
LinkedIn has created that more direct connection. But there's definitely
other places and, you know, there's a lot of jobs that are not it's
not that they're not necessarily advertising. A lot of jobs are advertised, but they may
already have a short list of people for that job already. And so things like
networking, talking to the hiring managers directly, all those kind of things help
to make sure that you're aware of things that are going on in your industry
(32:13):
before it gets put on LinkedIn or Indeed or one of those those platforms.
Yeah. What percentage do you think of jobs are actually secured?
I've heard some statistics, but I'm not in the industry, so I don't know if
those are accurate or not. But I've heard some statistics about the percentage
that come through networking. Right? Somebody knows somebody that somebody who
works at that company and they put a good word in for you versus just
(32:35):
cold. Do you happen to know that? I don't. And I've seen statistics as well.
I think there's a statistic that Forbes put out years ago that people quote a
lot, myself included, that 80% of jobs are not advertised. I've thought
about that stat because I could never find what they quantified that with. And I
don't think that means necessarily the job didn't
get advertised and it went to someone in someone's network. Although, I think that's part
(32:57):
of the 80%. I actually think a lot of it is internal jobs being
moved internally as well. I know, for example, in London, the brand director roles at
Nike never get advertised because there's always a brand manager underneath that wants to
take that role, so it just never gets advertised. So I think it includes numbers
like that. But in terms of networking and knowing people at companies, you should be
networking for sure. There's no better way to not just get yourself a job, and
(33:18):
I think that's where people network probably in the wrong way. They network with the
wrong intention. They network with the intention of, I really want Nicole to
help me get a job at this company. Whereas if you network with the intention
of building a relationship with someone and making it a mutually beneficial
relationship, you come from a much more genuine place. And they may
actually share with you something that's so much more important than finding you a job.
(33:40):
They may share with you some information that you didn't know. They might share with
you an industry or a type of role that you haven't thought about before. You
know, I have people share with me, actually, it's called a fractional CMO these
days. A fractional roles where you sort of work a few days. Someone
suggested that to me back in 2013 when I lost my job. They said,
why don't you try that? And no one even knew what that was back then.
(34:00):
It's so funny hearing about it now because I'm like, oh, that's what Matt suggested
to me, you know, 10 years ago. I explored it and it wasn't right for
me. But it was like, that was such an interesting I'd never heard of that.
I'd never thought about that. I didn't know what equity was. I didn't know what
startups did. And it was so helpful for me that he shared that piece of
information. And so whilst that didn't lead me to become a fractional
CMO, it was a great piece of information he gave me and I got that
(34:23):
from having a coffee with him. So he didn't necessarily get me a job, but
he gave me this really interesting insight of something I hadn't considered. So if you
go into these conversations just thinking I'm here here to build a relationship with someone.
I'm not here to hassle them to get me a job. In fact, I'm not
even gonna mention jobs because if they know you're not working or if you say,
look, I am actually job hunting at the moment. You don't need to ask them.
(34:43):
If they wanna help you, they'll offer. They will offer. And if they don't offer,
then it means they don't want to help you and therefore, you haven't asked and
it hasn't become awkward. But if you go in with that mutual intention of
mutually helping each other, it's just a much better place to start. And then
further down the line, even a week or or 2 later, you can go back
more candidly and say, hey. Actually, I saw a role come up at your company.
Would you be able to give me some advice on this? Is there anything that
(35:05):
you can share with me? And again, you're not asking them to put you forward
for the role, but if they want to, they will offer. So in these things,
you don't have to be as candid as people think. People are very helpful,
particularly if you're not working. People genuinely care about other people is is my point
of view about the world and people really do wanna help each other if they
can. And if they don't, just assume it's for a reason that is not
nefarious, is not related to you, and don't hold it against them either because it
(35:27):
is a big ask sometimes when people put people forward at their own companies too.
Yeah. It's a risk. And with that, it's interesting because I
know certain people have come to me and asked me and said, hey, can you
put a good word in here? Could it wouldn't? And sometimes I love referring
people to, you know, others and stuff like that. So I'll do that. But sometimes
I don't. And the reason why is because
(35:48):
there's some stuff going on that they don't see. They got some blind spots.
You know what I mean? And so it's actually, I think, on the
flip side of that being open to asking for feedback
and being willing to create that safe space for somebody to
be honest and saying because I think most people are afraid of and go, I
know that I wanna tell this person, like, what's really like, if you've lost a
(36:11):
job and you've had multiple, it's like, you know, there might be something to
work on in terms of how you're showing up. Not necessarily you don't have the
skills, but it could be that there's a way. And a lot of times it's
the soft skills. It's the relational skills that sometimes can create
a challenge there. So yeah, asking for feedback
from people that you trust, I think is helpful to you.
(36:32):
Yeah. So well, Stephanie, this has been so good. And
I'm glad that I'm glad we did this. And I know it's gonna come out
at the right time for people that are like right now, there's a lot of
people looking and a lot of changes happening in different
industries, especially like the ones that you're in. So hopefully, this will
help. If you're looking out there, I always say leaders of transformation take action.
(36:54):
So if you're out there and you're looking for a job, whether it's because
you're out of a job and you look for a new one or just not
happy in the role that you have and you're looking for that next one, I
encourage you to take action. Go get her book. I'm gonna say that even if
you have a job because you're probably gonna learn some stuff in there about
her thought process that might help you even if you do have a job and
(37:16):
what you can learn because we can always learn from each other's experiences. And then
the website creativecareerlab.com. Go check out the
work that Stephanie does and set yourself up. So even if you
are in a role right now like that networking and connecting with
people, do it now. Don't wait until you absolutely need
it to go out there and go, Oh my gosh, I need a job help
(37:37):
me. You need to go and create the relationships,
nurture the relationships, help somebody else, help somebody else.
And years ago in Toronto, somebody asked me, it's like, how do you get all
these referrals? And it's like, I think the best way to get referrals is to
give them not that I gave them for that reason. But I noticed something
that happened. I was giving all these referrals out because I could, and I took
(37:58):
an interest in helping people out. And then people
started to naturally want to send me referrals without me even
asking for them. And I think there's a law of reciprocity that tends to kick
in, even though I didn't have that as the goal. So I
encourage everyone to do that. Again, Stephanie, thank you for being here,
and we'll make sure all the links are, of course, in your LinkedIn is in
(38:20):
the show notes as well so everybody can connect with you Yeah. There. Yeah. Please
come connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn and and on TikTok
as well. I record my side of my coaching calls. So you never hear my
clients talking, but you can see my answers to questions they give. So if you're
job hunting right now and you can't maybe you don't have the financial investment for
a coach, come and follow my TikTok channel because I do you get to see
me coaching, and you get to see a lot of good knowledge on there as
(38:41):
well. So yeah, please do come and connect. I love that. Awesome. Alright. Well,
we'll have all this information in the show notes. And, again, leaders of
transformation take actions. So take action on something that you learned here today,
and we'd love to hear how this has impacted you. So go on leaders of
transformation.com. Follow us on social. We're all over social as well.
We'd love to hear your stories, and join us next week for another episode of
(39:03):
the Leaders of Transformation. Thanks for being here. Thank you for
listening to the Leaders of Transformation podcast with Nicole Jansen.
If you're enjoying the show, please click the follow or subscribe button,
and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And remember to join us on social and get connected. Together,
we can make this world a better place for everyone. We'll
(39:26):
see you next time.
Welcome to the leaders of transformation podcast. The number one
show for business leaders and entrepreneurs passionate about uplifting
others and making a greater impact in the world. Now here's
your host, transformational coach, speaker, and
business advisor, Nicole Jansen.
(00:21):
How do you overcome a layoff and land your dream job? Our guest
today is Stephanie Brown. She is originally from New Zealand, also in UK, and
she goes back and forth. She is the founder of Creative Career
Level Up, which is a program that helps those in
marketing, creative, and tech industries accelerate their careers
and secure their next perfect role along with a promotion and a
(00:44):
salary increase. And what makes her coaching stand out is she has a
proven system that she developed as a senior marketing executive at
Nike and then later at Apple. And today, we're gonna talk about her
journey, how she got fired, and then she got another job and
there was a whole lot better. And now she helps other people do that same
thing. And so we're also gonna talk about how she found her purpose and really
(01:05):
rebuild her confidence in that process. So Stephanie, welcome to Leaders
Transformation. We're glad you're here. Thank you, Nicole. It's great to be here. It is
a pleasure. We were talking like how many months ago? I don't
know. But we finally are here. Yay. And I wanna do also a
shout out to Oscar Hamilton. They're amazing. They send us amazing
guests like you, and we just wanna do a shout out to them. So thank
(01:28):
you for the introduction. Without you Absolutely. This podcast wouldn't be what it
is. All the amazing booking agents, it's just it's just awesome. So get
to meet the coolest people. We love that. Yeah. Yeah.
So tell us a little bit more about what you do and in particular,
in 2025, why it's so important right now, what
you're teaching. Yeah. So I've spent my whole career working in marketing in the creative
(01:50):
industry. And now I work with people in those industries and the tech
industries to help them find what we call your next perfect role. And we say
your next perfect role instead of dream job because I hate the word dream job,
although I do use it sometimes. But people get really I think dream job
carries a lot of heaviness. It's like, oh, but what if I don't know what
my passion is and what's the dream? It's just quite a weighty phrase. So we
(02:11):
say next perfect role because it's about helping people find what is right
for them next. And the point they are in their life, at the point they
are in their career, understanding that our lives are different at at
different points, and we're gonna need different things in our career at different points.
Even 6 months ago versus today can be quite different. And so it's helping
people understand where they're at right now and helping them find the thing that's right
(02:32):
for them. And it's gonna be different for everyone. That's why I don't talk about
dream jobs because people often will list out companies they wanna work from. They're
like, those are the companies without really understanding what are those companies right for
you. And I, know, you mentioned I used to work for Nike. I
loved working at Nike. I was there in my twenties. I loved it. I left
when I was in my early thirties. It was wonderful. It was best 8 years
(02:53):
of of my career. But I probably wouldn't enjoy it now in my forties. I
don't think I would enjoy it as much. I'm at a different stage of life.
I'm looking for different things. And I also don't think it's the right environment for
everybody. It's quite a competitive environment. I loved it. I loved sometimes being the
dumbest person in the room because my colleagues are so amazing. But some people
wouldn't enjoy that. Some people would find that really difficult. And so
(03:14):
the reason that I feel really passionate about helping people find that next perfect role
is because so many people are in jobs that they hate and they're not
necessarily toxic jobs. They're just not the right job for them right now at
this moment in their life in terms of what they need. They're not the right
environments for them. And the right environment for you might be a nightmare
for someone else. So it's not about this company's toxic or not toxic
(03:35):
or this role is great or not great. It's like, what's right for you? So
it starts with understanding yourself before you move forward. And I think so many people
are in jobs that they're not happy in and they aren't really
aware that it's about who they are and what they need, not about the company.
So you can leave or you could start that process to start finding the right
thing for you. And you could actually end up in a place where you wake
(03:56):
up every day and you think, well, this is awesome. I love what I do.
I'm that annoying friend at the pub on a Friday night telling everyone how great
my job is and how much I love it. Well, and I love that you
made that distinction because you're right. As you think about dream job, it's
almost like something it's the end game. It is a destination
you arrive at and then you're stuck there. So you better choose well. It's
(04:16):
kinda like when people talk about life purpose. Right? And they go like, what's my
life purpose? What's my life purpose? And I always say that your life purpose is
to love God and love one another as yourself. Okay. There you go. You don't
have to have to search for it anymore. Your assignment and how you love
others, how you create value in the world and do what you do best, that's
gonna change with seasons. And that's what you're talking about, that next perfect role and
(04:36):
that next perfect role and the next perfect role. And you're not actually stopping
anywhere and saying, this is it. This is what I'm gonna do the rest of
my life because then you stop growing. So it's a great, great point. Absolutely.
And it changes for people. You could be in a job today that you love.
And then in a year from now, it might be completely wrong for you and
you have to know when's the time to keep moving forward because things might change
(04:57):
in your life. I say that about Nike and probably not being I don't know.
I might might still be working there today and still really love it. I don't
know. But for me, I got to my early thirties and I thought, do you
know what? It's time to move into the next stage. And I still loved working
at Nike. There was nothing wrong. Nothing happened. But I just felt like my life
was changing in terms of what I needed probably more personally than
professionally. And it felt like the right time to move into the next thing. And
(05:18):
so even if something has been the dream job or the perfect role, at
one point, it doesn't mean that it'll stay there forever and you've just gotta be
really aware of yourself and in touch with yourself to be able to know when
to start making those moves. Okay. So I wanna talk about you
losing your job and then what happened there. But before we do that, we
can maybe this even ties in, I don't know. But talk about when you
(05:41):
said you need to be aware, you need to know yourself and all that. I
think there's a lot of people that don't know. You almost have gotten so
lulled into the habit, the day to day of what they
do is that it's hard to go, oh, yeah, that's what I
wanna do. Right? So I'm not doing the thing that I love and
I am super clear that this is what I wanna do instead. That's not
(06:03):
usually the case. And so when we talk about need to know yourself, self
awareness, all of that, that's a process. So where does somebody start in
that process to really even know what that is before they can even start
searching it out? Yeah. That's a great question, Nicole, because I think people get, like,
definitely get frustrated by this idea of, well, how do I become more self aware?
How do I find my purpose? Things like that. Yes. I'm aware that I'm frustrated
(06:24):
right now. That's what I'm aware of. Self aware that I'm annoyed. Yeah. The
honest truth is there's so many different ways to do it. There's no one way
that you get this self awareness. If we're talking about our careers,
specifically, there's some exercises that you could do. You could work
with a coach. I think coaches are great for helping you work through these processes
of understanding yourself. But as a really simple exercise you can do at
(06:45):
work is take a pen and paper or your phone or whatever
it is that you record things on and pay really good attention to when your
energy rises when you're working. So there will be you might not like your
job per se. There might be things that you do within your job that you
really enjoy. So maybe you, working as a marketing manager in
a company and you find that every time you go to a client meeting, your
(07:07):
energy rises. You love working with the clients. You love working out solutions for
them and you get a lot of energy from being in those meetings. But then
when you come back to the office, maybe the administrative part of
sharing the feedback from those meetings and briefing people on what we're gonna do
might be something where your your energy gets a bit flatter. Now that's not to
say that you can find a job where you're just gonna love every single part
(07:28):
of the job and always be enjoying it. Obviously, administrative
stuff is is in a lot of jobs and most people don't like that. But
paying attention to the things and where your energy rises shows that this
is a task or something that you enjoy doing. And from there, you can start
to get that self awareness that we just talked about. You suddenly look at a
week of your recordings and you think, okay, I went to 5 private client
(07:49):
meetings in every single one of my energy roles. That gives me some data to
understand that this is something that I enjoy. So a role where that
something like that or an aspect of that is included is probably gonna be something
that you really enjoy. And so you start to find those threads and that's really
important in your career is to understand what parts give you energy,
what parts give you joy, and what parts don't. It's a really simple exercise. It's
(08:10):
only the beginning of how you go through that process, but it's something that people
who are listening could do today, track it this week, and they could start to
really start to build that picture of what that looks like. Yeah. That's good. That
reminds me actually of a client who came to me and says, I hate what
I do. And I wanna go do something completely different. And she
was doing training and technical training for her
(08:30):
company. And when we did this exercise, who you're talking about and teasing
that out, what parts does she like? What part does she not like? She loves
doing workshops. She loves interacting with people. She just absolutely did not. She was
like, I don't wanna do this. It was like, well, is it that you don't
wanna train or is it that you don't wanna train on that
particular subject because you're not interested in it or you're over it
(08:51):
or whatever. And as soon as we changed what she was training
on, everything changed and she started to love it again. We see that a
lot actually. It's just changing one little thing. It all says like whether
it's the product or the service or whatever it is or who you work
with. It's like coaching. Right? Like, you work with people. I hate
this. And it's like, do you hate this? Or is it just you're not working
(09:12):
with the right people that you enjoy, that you're meant to work with?
I love that example you've just given because that is a classic example where people
just wanna throw the whole job out. I did the same thing myself. When I
left Nike, I went to a small company, and we can talk about it in
a moment, but it didn't work out. I didn't get laid off. I got fired.
I got let go of myself. The role still existed, but I got let go.
And when I did this reflection myself in this sort of period
(09:35):
after I'd been fired, I literally did this exercise. I wasn't in the job, but
I went back through jobs I've had. And I was like, when did I get
energy? What did I like? I realized that I got a lot of energy from
big team meetings at Nike. I liked being part of a big team. It didn't
bother me that I wasn't able to say I did that one thing on my
own. I loved coming out at Oxford Street in London and seeing campaigns we had
worked on and knowing I was part of a team that worked on that. And
(09:57):
when I went to the smaller company, it was it wasn't a big team anymore
and I actually really missed that. And I went through and I found these threads.
And what I'd done with the role I'd taken is I'd really thought with my
head instead of my heart. And when I went back to, okay, what did you
like? I had sort of formed this idea that big global companies were bad and
I shouldn't spend my whole career working in a big global company. And then I
looked at my career and I was like, I actually really like those environments. I
(10:18):
do well in those environments. I like people. I enjoy the social side of
things in terms of the work as well as, you know, personally. And I don't
know why I've suddenly vilified big global companies. Maybe I was just listening to
other people a bit too much. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna
go back into a big global corporation. I do well in American corporate environments.
That's what I grew up in. And so going to Apple was the perfect fit
for me. I interviewed with some of the other big tech companies as well, but
(10:40):
I ended up at Apple and it was the perfect fit for me. And when
I got there, honestly, the 1st week, I was like, this is the moment I
worked walked into that office. Even when in the interview process, I met so many
colleagues. I just knew and it just felt right. And it was because I knew
myself well enough to know it was the right place. I never doubted it any
day that I was there, but it's because I'd done the work before I got
there. If I hadn't done that work, I might have gone into those interviews with
(11:02):
Apple thinking, oh, maybe I shouldn't be working in a big group global corporate. You
know, maybe this isn't right for me. Because I've done the work to realize the
environments that I do well in, I was able to really pinpoint, hey, these are
the right types of companies of which Apple was one of the types of companies
that I thought I'd do well in. And it was right because I had that
self awareness before I started the job job hunt process. Well, there's a
lot of people that are promoting entrepreneurship. And I'm an entrepreneur,
(11:25):
been an entrepreneur my whole life. I love being an entrepreneur
and business owner. And at the same time, some people are
entrepreneurs and wanna go out and create their own thing. And some
people are intrepreneurs and love working within a
system. And I think, yeah, sometimes that has been vilified
often because it's like, oh, you don't wanna do that. You wanna go do
(11:47):
your own thing. And then you've got people that are like, I wanna start my
own business. And they don't wanna start their own business, but they think
they need to. Like, you know, they've so convinced themselves. And I've had
clients where it's like, yeah, I don't know that this is the right thing for
you. Because this takes risk. It takes a lot of energy. You gotta
put it out there. It's like that person I was talking about with the
(12:08):
training. So she was like, I'm gonna start my own business. And so she while
she was looking for a job, she starting her own business. And she said, you
know, I'm gonna talk to, like, 3 people this week. And I went, is that's
not gonna get you anywhere in the world of business. You gotta talk
to enough people to start building that momentum. But if, you know, if you're not
willing to do that and that stresses you out, like sales, so people I don't
(12:28):
want to sell, I don't want to market, I don't want to do any of
these things. You're the marketing person. Like, I don't want to do any of these
things. I just want to do the things like, well, then maybe it would be
better for you to work within a company or for someone else. Yeah. Some sort
of organization that you can contract to do that. But I love that you've
mentioned that, Nicole, because I this is something that comes up a lot with people.
And it's something I feel really passionate about because I think the default that people
(12:50):
default to when they hate their job is, oh, I should go and work for
myself. Because if I worked for myself, I wouldn't have a boss. I wouldn't have
this. And I wouldn't have these horrible colleagues and they You're gonna have a boss.
I'm just gonna be you. Exactly. And that people think there's so
many things I miss about my 9 to 5 job. I miss that I can
take holidays. I mean, in the UK, I used to have 6 weeks holiday. And
I could turn my phone off and not respond to emails and nobody, especially at
(13:12):
a company like Apple, they they were pretty good about saying, no, you're on holiday.
And, you know, I got the same salary every month. I didn't have to worry
about, is it gonna be up? Is it gonna be down? And we had a
decent level of flexibility. I was fairly senior. You know, I didn't feel I loved
my boss. He's a really good flexibility. I was feeling senior. You know, I didn't
feel I loved my boss. He's a really good dude. And I you know, there's
a lot of things I miss about my 9 to 5 job. When I go
on holiday now, I have to work. I can't turn my business off in 2
(13:32):
weeks or even a week. You have to work pretty much 247. And and people
don't realize that about businesses and sometimes things are good, you know. The economies of
the world are a bit tougher at the moment. So on businesses, it's a lot
tougher right now. Yeah. There'll be good times, but and I think when people are
running away from quote unquote toxic job to become an
entrepreneur, they're they're not being motivated by the right thing. And I've said
(13:54):
to a client before, she wanted to become a photographer and I encouraged her to
do it as a side hustle. And she was like, no. I just wanna quit
my job. And I said, look, if you are not motivated enough by being a
photographer to do it after working on weekends, then you're not motivated
enough. Because if you really, really, really wanted this photography
business, you would be pumped to come home at night and do photography or do
(14:14):
it on the weekends. It shouldn't be, oh, I'm only motivated if I do it
between 9 and 5. Because, eventually, you can do it between 9 and 5 and
not have to do the weekends and evenings. But the way you know if you're
being driven by the right things is if you wanna do it on the weekends
and if you wanna do it in the evenings. That's when you know that it's
something you're really motivated by and therefore could is the right reason for it to
therefore turn into a full time business. Yeah. The guest that I just talked
(14:37):
to, and it'll be coming out before yours. So interesting. We were just talking
about this very thing because she was a management consultant, Shopa
Alva, and she was a management consultant, very successful and wanted to
start this nonprofit on the side. And so she did both
and she said, don't do this at home. Right? Of course, she wasn't sleeping very
much. She was doing both for years because she had a global position traveling and
(14:59):
then she was doing this, but she was so motivated to do that.
And that's exactly what you're talking about. And then she eventually she does
it full time and she's got an organization that's in multiple countries and all the
things. But she was so motivated. We were talking about how important it is
to have that motivation to drive you because there are gonna be
days when you're not gonna wanna do it and all of that. But overall,
(15:22):
you gotta be motivated to do the thing that you wanna do so. Let's talk
about you losing your job. So you left Nike. You went to this smaller company.
It didn't work out. And then what does that do? Because I know there's
a lot of times when somebody loses their job, having worked with a lot of
executives and myself, even though I'm an entrepreneur business coach, I would get
a lot of people that were in transition and then wanting to figure out
(15:45):
what their purpose is and that's one of the things that is specialty. So I
noticed with a lot of them that when they lose that job, no matter how
successful they were before in that role, they lose their
confidence. They start to feel like maybe I'm washed up. Maybe
I don't have anything of value. How did you get yourself back in the
game and confident and really selling yourself in that
(16:07):
next role? So you're not going down from there, but you're actually
going back up. Yeah. It's really not easy is what I would say. And I
often say that losing your job is one of the best,
quote unquote, traumatic experiences. I say traumatic because, obviously, there's much
more traumatic and that's the comparison I wanna make. It's the best traumatic experience you
can have that really makes you dig deep, really makes you
(16:29):
see who you are and what you're made of and can be super challenging.
But it shouldn't leave any scars, like, not long term. It's not a divorce. It's
not someone dying. It's not getting sick with the disease. You know, it's not a
big life trauma like something like that. But it's a big enough one that
it really does affect people. And I think back to that time in my life
and it was really difficult. It was one of the toughest times I've been through.
(16:50):
It was 8 months. And I really feel for people that are in it right
now. I deeply, deeply understand what people are going through if they're long
term without a job at the moment. Even if they're picking up work here and
there, if you're someone that cares about your career and gets joy and fulfillment
from it, it is really difficult when you lose a role because
so much of our identity is tied to that. And it does make
(17:12):
it really hard to understand where you're at in life. It puts you into this
weird limbo of not being able to plan things. Sometimes we can't
plan holidays. You can't plan big life events. You can't plan anything that involves a
significant amount of money. And so you end up in this weird limbo stage. And
then when you couple that with the reality of I don't have a
job, someone let me go. Even I mean, in my situation, it was literally fine.
(17:34):
But a layoff as well, even though that's not you, that's the company
letting the job go. It's not you personally. A lot of people use that say,
oh, I was laid off. I always say, no, the role was made redundant, not
you. The role you were in was made redundant. So really important. It's not even
a reframe. It's the truth. If a role gets made redundant, that's not you personally
getting made redundant. And so I think it's really important to recognize that, but it
(17:55):
does affect your confidence. It really, really does. I've never found anyone who has
lost their job unless they wanted to lose the job. But if they didn't wanna
lose the job, I've never found anyone that hasn't had a confidence not from that.
Even though in the head, they rationally know it wasn't my fault. Even for
me getting fired, it wasn't my fault in the sense that I know it wasn't
the right place for me. It really wasn't. I wasn't happy there. It wasn't the
(18:16):
right place for me. And even though they let me go, I can understand that
it wasn't the right place. So even if you know that in your heart and
your head, it still affects your confidence because it makes you feel a certain type
of way about your career. And it does become, therefore, really hard to rebuild that
confidence to get yourself back to a place where you can go out and sell
yourself in interviews and really try and convince people that you're a great hire. And
(18:36):
my own journey with that, I lost my job. Actually, in 2 days time,
it'll be coming up on, I think, 12th anniversary. I lost my job on 13th
December. And it was a Friday, which is probably wasn't a good omen,
but it was Christmas the following. I was going away for Christmas following week. It
was probably 10 days away, but it was such a tough time to lose a
job. And and there's a lot of people losing their jobs. We're filming this on
(18:57):
the 11th December. There's a lot of people losing their jobs right now and it's
a shitty time to lose a job in December. It's so so hard, especially
if you have a family. And so I feel for anyone that's going through it
right now. And I know what that feels like because then you go into this
period where you actually can't actually take any action either because there's not really a
lot happening in the job market and then January is slow to get going. So
(19:17):
my job loss happened at end of December. Going into January, it's obviously in the
northern hemisphere. It's winter. It's not great. And I
know in hindsight, you know, I got the job at Apple in July of that
year and started in August. I I know that first half of the year, the
first three months. If I'd had the Apple interview then, if it had come
up then, I don't think I would have got the job because I wasn't mentally
(19:38):
and emotionally in a place to be able to go on and sell myself. By
the time I got to July, I bought myself back to life a little bit
and I was more confident than I was had that opportunity come up earlier in
the year. And some of the things that I did as practical tips for anyone
that's going through this, I think you would have to really sit with the experience
of what's just happened. I think you have to be really honest with yourself about
why it happened, what you could have changed, especially in my
(20:01):
situation. Maybe if you've been laid off, there's not a lot you could have changed.
But in my situation, I was let go myself. And so I really had to
be honest with myself about why I ended up in that situation, why it wasn't
the right place. Some of those things I talked about about being becoming more self
aware. And then I really had to reframe the situation for
myself, for no one else apart from myself. Honestly, I knew that mentally,
I had to get myself into a place where I was okay with what had
(20:24):
happened. I'd I'd let that go and I could move forward. That's not to say
that that happens overnight, but I had to start that process because I knew that
I wasn't gonna be great in interviews if I was in the state that I
was in January February of that year. And so one of the big things I
did was I literally reframed the situation. I wrote down, what had
happened and I wrote a story about why it happened in a positive
way. So I wrote a story about, you know, this it was the right thing
(20:47):
to do to leave Nike. It was time for you to leave Nike and this
is gonna be the opportunity that got you out of Nike. It felt like a
great opportunity at the time. It was a really big, beautiful, shiny,
exciting job and you needed a big, shiny, exciting job to get you to
leave Nike because you were in a wonderful comfort zone that you probably would never
have left if someone hadn't enticed you away with a beautiful, shiny job. And that
(21:07):
shiny job didn't turn out to be the right thing, but that doesn't mean it
wasn't the right thing to leave. And now we're out there and we've been given
this fantastic opportunity to see what else is out in the market. You've
got amazing skills and this was the story. I wrote all of this down on
a piece of paper and then I recorded it on my phone and I used
to listen to it in the morning. So it was literally my voice in my
head telling myself this story. And the first few times I listened to it, the
(21:29):
other voice in your head's like, this is all BS. This is just a story
you're telling yourself. But eventually, your brain starts to believe it and it
becomes second nature and you I still keep listening to it, but I would listen
to it. I'd be like, yes, this is us. We're up today. This is where
we're at. And it gave me a lot of energy after a while. It stopped
being something that I was fighting with and I started to really believe it. So
by the time I got to July, I was like, all of this is gonna
(21:51):
work out. It's gonna be okay. And I really, really believed that. And I also
really believed in myself again. But I did that was one of the big things
I did. And I did listen to that every single day. And I did notice
my thoughts changing quite quickly, actually. After like a week or 2 of
listening to it, I did notice my thoughts changing. But they were really solidified by
the time we got to July, which is what I needed when that opportunity came
(22:12):
up at Apple. Well, I love that because, yes, it's practical and
you can do it. But a lot of times, people don't think about those things.
Right? We think about what do I need to go do to find that next
job? But to your point about sitting in it is I think that
there's a grieving process. And if you don't go through the
grieving process, it actually gets longer if you drag
(22:34):
it out and then you hold on to it. So as I was thinking about
some of the people that I've worked with that have been in that position and
how their energy very low, and they kinda like solidify
that loss in their mind. And it almost like they anchor
themselves to it, and it slows them down. So, like, to your point, when
you go into the interview, even if that is your next perfect
(22:56):
role, you're not showing up as your best in that. And so
there's no resonance there. You talk about your subconscious mind. Subconscious mind
doesn't know the difference between what's real or imagined. So whatever you tell it, it's
going to believe. And so I always say, look. If you're gonna make up a
story and live by a story, then just make it a good one. Make it
one that's gonna really make a difference in your life. And so
(23:17):
that's what you're doing because when you said 8 months, I can almost hear people
saying 8 months is nothing compared to I've been like 2 years or whatever the
case is. But you compressed that time because
of your the process. You were very intentional
about the process of saying, okay, I'm gonna get through it. If I need to
get from here to there, I'm gonna get through it sooner than later. So I'm
(23:38):
not gonna drag this on. I'm not saying that people maybe it does take 2
years or whatever that they're dragging it on. But I think that they're just
noticing from your story is that you've just compressed that time.
So to the shortest amount of time that it could possibly be for you
in your situation until you're ready, and I think it's different
for everybody. It is different for everyone. I mean, the more senior you are, the
(24:00):
harder it is. I was quite senior at 32 having come off the leadership team
at Nike. So I was certainly not going for junior roles at all. And as
my boss at Nike explained to me at the time, she was like, Steph, there's
a pyramid in in companies and you're job hunting here now. And when you were
last job hunting, you were job hunting down here and there were tons of roles.
So the market is a lot slower in senior hire roles. That's just how it
is. So if you talk about people that have not worked for sort of 1
(24:22):
or 2 years, a lot of the time, they are seeing new people who are
going for those more senior level roles, and that makes complete sense. I was still
at a senior level when that things did move slower, but there was definitely a
sort of that early senior level. One thing I like what you said there is
this intentionality about what you did. I was so intentional in
those 8 months. I came back from Christmas. I'd been in Poland with a
friend for Christmas. We'd had this, you know, really great Christmas together. And I came
(24:44):
back on the 2nd January and I was like, wow, I don't have a job.
Everybody else is going back to work. And I remember London, the days
are quite short in London in the winter. And I remember because we've been in
Poland, I wanted to watch the movie Schindler's List. If you know that movie,
it's a very long movie. It's at least 3 hours long. I've never seen it
before and we'd been to Oskar Schindler's factory in Krakow, and I was like, oh,
(25:04):
I'm gonna watch that movie. And I had said to myself, one thing I'm gonna
do every day, unless it's raining, I'm gonna go for a walk just because I
know that getting out of the house and going walking is gonna be good for
my mental health and it's gonna be really good. And so there was a walk
in London that I used to do and I was like, I'm gonna do that
every day. But when I came back from Krakow, I I decided to watch Schindler's
List. And I started watching it sort of early afternoon, forgetting how long it was
(25:26):
and not realizing how long it was and all of a sudden the sun was
going down. It was 4 o'clock and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't
go for my walk today. And I was so angry at myself because I was
like, how did you let this happen? Like you said to yourself, you're gonna go
for a walk every day, you put this movie on and now it's dark and
you know, I can still go for a walk in the dark but I don't
want to because it's dark. So I had this conversation with myself at that point.
I was like, okay, we need to schedule the day. We need to schedule it
(25:48):
the same way we would at work. It's fine to watch a 3 hour movie.
There's no I've got time. Like, there's no guilt in that. I'm gonna schedule it
in so that I don't feel like I've lost control of my day. So what
I decided then was I'm gonna get up and go to the gym at the
same time I used to when I was working. So I would get up at
6:30 or 6. I'd be, you know, Barry's boot camp. Love Barry's. I used to
go to Barry's at 7, and then it would finish at 8. And usually, I
(26:09):
go to work at that point. But because I had the time, I would walk
home along the canal back to my flat in London, get a coffee. And that
was my walk. It was my workout. And then I would schedule in a time
to to job hunt. And I was really intentional. I'm like, it's gonna be 2
hours. It's gonna be 3 hours. Because again, especially with LinkedIn, love LinkedIn, don't
have many bad things to say, but it's still a social network. So if if
you jump on LinkedIn and you think that's job hunting by scrolling on LinkedIn, you
(26:31):
can easily lose 8 hours of your day doing that. So I was very intentional.
Okay. It's been 3 hours of job hunting and then maybe in the afternoon, I'll
go into Central London, meet friends, whatever. But I scheduled everything in the same way
I did when I was working. And the reason for that was because you've already
lost so much control of your life by losing your job. But you can still
control your days and you can still schedule in 6 hours of Netflix
(26:52):
and chill if you want. But scheduling it in will make you feel less guilty
about doing it. And so that was another tactic that I use. I was so
intentional about how I planned my days and that really helped me
mentally keep control of my life and not feel like I was just a, excuse
my language, like a sack of shit just sitting around the house doing nothing. And
I felt like I had a lot to do. And I was had meetings with
people and I was catching up. And even if it was socially catching up with
(27:14):
people, I just kept everything scheduled. And that really, really helped me keep my head
above water. Mhmm. I love that. Well and that's the discipline.
Right? In treating it almost like a job of getting a
job if that's what it is. So I love that. So you've got
your book. So first of all, I'll do a little plug for your book called
Fired, Why Losing Your Job is the Best Thing That Can Happen TO You. The
(27:35):
reframe on that, you know, you've got your website creativecareerlab.com.
So if somebody's coming and they're saying, okay, Stephanie. So I've lost my
job. I wanna get that next perfect role for me. How do you
work with them? Is it coaching? Is it a program that they walk through to
job search? Unpack that a little bit for us. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely read the
book if you're not working right now. It's a very low barrier to entry of
(27:58):
getting into my head of what I went through then. And I'll be honest, I
wrote it more for cathartic reasons, but it's very practical. And some of the things
I've talked about on this podcast in terms of scheduling your day and things like
that are all included in there. So it's exactly what I did to help me
get through that time period. And if you're going through something similar, honestly, it's everything
that I went through that I've shared genuinely to help other people because I found
it such a tough time myself. So if it helps someone, I love to hear
(28:20):
that. And if you do buy it and it does help me, please let me
know. I'm on LinkedIn and please drop me a note because I I love hearing
that. In terms of the program that I run, so I have a program called
the Creative Career Level Up as part of my business Creative Career Lab. And I
wanted to design a program not just for people that have lost their job, but
for people either in jobs thinking about the next step or not happy in their
job and thinking, you know, I need to get out of here. Or people that
(28:40):
aren't working at the moment of which right now there is a lot of people
in my program who are not working. But it's not just for people who have
lost their job. It is for people also in jobs. But the underlying point of
the program is to be quite intentional about the next move that you make. So
there's a 3 step process that we take people through. The first part is a
deep introspective look at who you are, what you are looking for in
this next stage of your career, what motivates you, what drives you, what your personality
(29:02):
is. So really understanding you and doing that self awareness piece and taking people on
through that process. And then the second piece of that is we
then overlay the introspective work with our understanding of
the creative industry or the tech industry, depending on which one you're in. And we
put together an actionable plan that you can actually start going
out and taking action on. Because most people, when they job hunt, they sit on
(29:24):
LinkedIn. As I said, it's a social network. It can suck you into the vortex
of the same as any other social network. Most people just sit on LinkedIn, firing
stuff off. Easy applying here and there. They've got no thinking, no strategy behind
what they're doing. And as marketeers, no one would launch a marketing
campaign without a plan up for upfront, and everybody launches their job hunt without
a plan. And so the introspective work we do in that second phase, putting the
(29:46):
plan together, gives you something that you can work from and it allows you
to just be a lot more strategic, considered intentional with that next move.
And then the third part of what we do is we help people actually secure
the role. So the practical side of things, resumes, getting in front of the hiring
manager, pitching yourself, really knowing how to pitch and sell yourself to get the
job. And it starts with having this plan and everybody's plan looks different because some
(30:08):
people, as I say, are not working in their their plan will be different. We
usually have a bit of a 2 track for people who are not working because
there's an urgency on getting a role. But as I know from being let go
myself, it also creates a situation where you're like, do you know what? I really
wanna shoot my shot and go for something great. I, you know, I've had this
horrible experience and want my next role to be amazing. So therefore, we look
at it as a 2 track. We look at it. Okay. Is there something immediately
(30:30):
we can get you into? But can we also help you plan a little bit
more for the future? And if you're in a job, it's the same process. It's
just your plan will look a a lot different because you're in a different situation
to someone that's lost their job, but it works for both. But that foundational piece
at the beginning, the understanding yourself, the self awareness, and then putting a plan
together, which is really important to have the plan so that you're not
(30:50):
scrolling on LinkedIn all day and then helping you to action that plan and secure
the role is is the sort of 3 steps that we take you on with
the creative career level. Awesome. And you mentioned LinkedIn a number of times. Do you
find that that is the best place to find your next perfect role?
Or, you know, like, what about some of these other platforms or recruiters?
What do you recommend? Or does that kind of depend on the person in the
(31:11):
industry? Yeah. It really depends on the industry, the person. Even in the creative industry,
you know, the agency side of things that they use a lot more recruiters. On
the client side, it's a lot more internal recruiters and a lot less external
recruiters. Depends on your industry. Everybody's industry is different. There's
definitely a lot more going direct to companies these days
because of LinkedIn. So companies I know at companies I've
(31:32):
worked at before, often as a hiring manager, we'll just send a profile
like, this is the type of person we're looking for, and they'll go through LinkedIn
and look for the type of background that we've seen we're looking for. Even if
we do advertise the role, they might still do that and the HR teams will
still go through LinkedIn and maybe send some messages to people who might be interested
in interviewing. So there's lots of different ways that jobs come about these days and
(31:52):
LinkedIn has created that more direct connection. But there's definitely
other places and, you know, there's a lot of jobs that are not it's
not that they're not necessarily advertising. A lot of jobs are advertised, but they may
already have a short list of people for that job already. And so things like
networking, talking to the hiring managers directly, all those kind of things help
to make sure that you're aware of things that are going on in your industry
(32:13):
before it gets put on LinkedIn or Indeed or one of those those platforms.
Yeah. What percentage do you think of jobs are actually secured?
I've heard some statistics, but I'm not in the industry, so I don't know if
those are accurate or not. But I've heard some statistics about the percentage
that come through networking. Right? Somebody knows somebody that somebody who
works at that company and they put a good word in for you versus just
(32:35):
cold. Do you happen to know that? I don't. And I've seen statistics as well.
I think there's a statistic that Forbes put out years ago that people quote a
lot, myself included, that 80% of jobs are not advertised. I've thought
about that stat because I could never find what they quantified that with. And I
don't think that means necessarily the job didn't
get advertised and it went to someone in someone's network. Although, I think that's part
(32:57):
of the 80%. I actually think a lot of it is internal jobs being
moved internally as well. I know, for example, in London, the brand director roles at
Nike never get advertised because there's always a brand manager underneath that wants to
take that role, so it just never gets advertised. So I think it includes numbers
like that. But in terms of networking and knowing people at companies, you should be
networking for sure. There's no better way to not just get yourself a job, and
(33:18):
I think that's where people network probably in the wrong way. They network with the
wrong intention. They network with the intention of, I really want Nicole to
help me get a job at this company. Whereas if you network with the intention
of building a relationship with someone and making it a mutually beneficial
relationship, you come from a much more genuine place. And they may
actually share with you something that's so much more important than finding you a job.
(33:40):
They may share with you some information that you didn't know. They might share with
you an industry or a type of role that you haven't thought about before. You
know, I have people share with me, actually, it's called a fractional CMO these
days. A fractional roles where you sort of work a few days. Someone
suggested that to me back in 2013 when I lost my job. They said,
why don't you try that? And no one even knew what that was back then.
(34:00):
It's so funny hearing about it now because I'm like, oh, that's what Matt suggested
to me, you know, 10 years ago. I explored it and it wasn't right for
me. But it was like, that was such an interesting I'd never heard of that.
I'd never thought about that. I didn't know what equity was. I didn't know what
startups did. And it was so helpful for me that he shared that piece of
information. And so whilst that didn't lead me to become a fractional
CMO, it was a great piece of information he gave me and I got that
(34:23):
from having a coffee with him. So he didn't necessarily get me a job, but
he gave me this really interesting insight of something I hadn't considered. So if you
go into these conversations just thinking I'm here here to build a relationship with someone.
I'm not here to hassle them to get me a job. In fact, I'm not
even gonna mention jobs because if they know you're not working or if you say,
look, I am actually job hunting at the moment. You don't need to ask them.
(34:43):
If they wanna help you, they'll offer. They will offer. And if they don't offer,
then it means they don't want to help you and therefore, you haven't asked and
it hasn't become awkward. But if you go in with that mutual intention of
mutually helping each other, it's just a much better place to start. And then
further down the line, even a week or or 2 later, you can go back
more candidly and say, hey. Actually, I saw a role come up at your company.
Would you be able to give me some advice on this? Is there anything that
(35:05):
you can share with me? And again, you're not asking them to put you forward
for the role, but if they want to, they will offer. So in these things,
you don't have to be as candid as people think. People are very helpful,
particularly if you're not working. People genuinely care about other people is is my point
of view about the world and people really do wanna help each other if they
can. And if they don't, just assume it's for a reason that is not
nefarious, is not related to you, and don't hold it against them either because it
(35:27):
is a big ask sometimes when people put people forward at their own companies too.
Yeah. It's a risk. And with that, it's interesting because I
know certain people have come to me and asked me and said, hey, can you
put a good word in here? Could it wouldn't? And sometimes I love referring
people to, you know, others and stuff like that. So I'll do that. But sometimes
I don't. And the reason why is because
(35:48):
there's some stuff going on that they don't see. They got some blind spots.
You know what I mean? And so it's actually, I think, on the
flip side of that being open to asking for feedback
and being willing to create that safe space for somebody to
be honest and saying because I think most people are afraid of and go, I
know that I wanna tell this person, like, what's really like, if you've lost a
(36:11):
job and you've had multiple, it's like, you know, there might be something to
work on in terms of how you're showing up. Not necessarily you don't have the
skills, but it could be that there's a way. And a lot of times it's
the soft skills. It's the relational skills that sometimes can create
a challenge there. So yeah, asking for feedback
from people that you trust, I think is helpful to you.
(36:32):
Yeah. So well, Stephanie, this has been so good. And
I'm glad that I'm glad we did this. And I know it's gonna come out
at the right time for people that are like right now, there's a lot of
people looking and a lot of changes happening in different
industries, especially like the ones that you're in. So hopefully, this will
help. If you're looking out there, I always say leaders of transformation take action.
(36:54):
So if you're out there and you're looking for a job, whether it's because
you're out of a job and you look for a new one or just not
happy in the role that you have and you're looking for that next one, I
encourage you to take action. Go get her book. I'm gonna say that even if
you have a job because you're probably gonna learn some stuff in there about
her thought process that might help you even if you do have a job and
(37:16):
what you can learn because we can always learn from each other's experiences. And then
the website creativecareerlab.com. Go check out the
work that Stephanie does and set yourself up. So even if you
are in a role right now like that networking and connecting with
people, do it now. Don't wait until you absolutely need
it to go out there and go, Oh my gosh, I need a job help
(37:37):
me. You need to go and create the relationships,
nurture the relationships, help somebody else, help somebody else.
And years ago in Toronto, somebody asked me, it's like, how do you get all
these referrals? And it's like, I think the best way to get referrals is to
give them not that I gave them for that reason. But I noticed something
that happened. I was giving all these referrals out because I could, and I took
(37:58):
an interest in helping people out. And then people
started to naturally want to send me referrals without me even
asking for them. And I think there's a law of reciprocity that tends to kick
in, even though I didn't have that as the goal. So I
encourage everyone to do that. Again, Stephanie, thank you for being here,
and we'll make sure all the links are, of course, in your LinkedIn is in
(38:20):
the show notes as well so everybody can connect with you Yeah. There. Yeah. Please
come connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn and and on TikTok
as well. I record my side of my coaching calls. So you never hear my
clients talking, but you can see my answers to questions they give. So if you're
job hunting right now and you can't maybe you don't have the financial investment for
a coach, come and follow my TikTok channel because I do you get to see
me coaching, and you get to see a lot of good knowledge on there as
(38:41):
well. So yeah, please do come and connect. I love that. Awesome. Alright. Well,
we'll have all this information in the show notes. And, again, leaders of
transformation take actions. So take action on something that you learned here today,
and we'd love to hear how this has impacted you. So go on leaders of
transformation.com. Follow us on social. We're all over social as well.
We'd love to hear your stories, and join us next week for another episode of
(39:03):
the Leaders of Transformation. Thanks for being here. Thank you for
listening to the Leaders of Transformation podcast with Nicole Jansen.
If you're enjoying the show, please click the follow or subscribe button,
and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And remember to join us on social and get connected. Together,
we can make this world a better place for everyone. We'll
(39:26):
see you next time.
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