Episode 11: Top five lessons from the first ten episodes of the Change Work Life podcast – with Jeremy Cline

Episode 11: Top five lessons from the first ten episodes of the Change Work Life podcast - with Jeremy Cline

Jeremy Cline
Just me this time as I give you my five top tips from the first 10 episodes. I'm Jeremy Cline, and is Change Work Life.

Hello, and welcome to the Change Work Life podcast where we're all about helping to beat those Sunday evening blues and looking forward to Mondays. This is Episode 11. And rather than the usual interview, I thought it was a good time to look back at the first 10 episodes and see what themes have come out. And really what were the top lessons that we've learned. So, here are my top five lessons from the first 10 episodes.

Lesson One, it's never too late. As I've been doing this podcast I've been researching some of the topics which come up quite regularly on some of the career based forums, and one of the things that does come up really quite often is the question of whether it's too late to change: 'I'm in my 30s, I'm in my 40s. Is it too late for me to start a new career, to pivot into something different?' Well, at least two of my guests have shown that that really is not the case. We had Annie Dehaney-Steven and Adrian Muxlow. They were both very upfront about the fact that they are both in their 50s, and yet both of them in the past year have started a new business. In Adrian's case, he started a completely different business to the job he had for 20 years. You may remember he was in IT, and now he's started a hypnotherapy practice. And he mentioned in the interview, how he really wished he'd done it sooner. But the point was that he did it anyway. He didn't fall into the trap of thinking that it was too late. He didn't think ah, I'm in my 50s, why bother - I may as well just mark time until retirement. No, he went ahead and made the change that he wanted to. So, whatever age you are, really, really, it's never too late.

The second lesson is all about getting to know yourself. Pretty much all of my guests had at least one moment of self-discovery in their career to date. Look at Sarah Sabin. She knew that what she wanted to do was be an entrepreneur, and that's defined how she's gone about things since she came to that realisation. Hannah Ciepiela - she realised for some time that sales weren't her thing. It took her a little while to get out of sales, but now she's doing something completely different. If you go back to Episode Three, and Tom Harris, he really went into detail on this. We spent a lot of time talking about how it's so beneficial for us to take time to understand ourselves, our values. And the phrase he used was, what do you want the job to do for you? And that's such an important question, what do you want the job to do for you? It's something that I think most of us don't think about. But it's so valuable and so powerful as well, that we should be thinking in terms of what it is the job is going to do for us. We tend to look at it the other way around - what is it that we should be doing in order to succeed in this job - rather than thinking well hang on a minute, the job is not the end. It's a means to an end. It's the means by which I support myself, support my family and that sort of thing. And I think what Tom was saying about answering that question, it's so key, so pivotal, it really is, it's incredibly powerful. There's lots of ways that you can go about answering that question, but my takeaway from what Tom was saying is that the key is, number one, spending the time - you know making time to do this - and the second aspect is being honest with yourself. You know, really, what is it that you actually want? It's not what you think you can get. It's not what you think you're qualified to do. What is it you actually want your life to look like? Getting detailed on that. And that was something that Ali Temple mentioned as well in Episode Five. He said that the number one reason that he saw for people, quotes "failing" close quotes, was the lack of clarity in their minds. His experience and his advice was that once everyone had got in their mind clearly what it was that they were aiming for, what it was they wanted, then, to be honest, that is at least half of the battle won. So that's Lesson Two - getting to know yourself.

Lesson Three follows on from that, and it's about not ruling anything out. Just because you might have been doing x y z for 10 years, for 15 years, for 20 years - it doesn't mean that you can't change to do something completely different. Even if it's completely unrelated to what it is you do now. Look back again at Adrian Muxlow. 20 years in IT, and now he's running his own hypnotherapy practice. You might go through the process of getting to know yourself and working out what it is that's best for you, what it is that you really want to do, and end up with something which is completely different to what you do now, completely not what you're currently qualified for. But that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to rule it out. And if you go back and listen to what Austin Belcak had to say about starting a job or getting into a career where you've got no qualifications, no experience. He had some really practical steps about how you can gain the qualifications, how you can gain the experience and get into something, even if it's completely unrelated to anything that you've ever done before.

The fourth takeaway I took from speaking to my guests was the fact that for pretty much all of them, their biggest opponent wasn't someone else. It wasn't a friend or a family member, who was saying that they couldn't do it. But it was themselves. It was imposter syndrome. That expression came up a few times. It was themselves thinking, What am I doing? I can't do this. No, this isn't right. This isn't me. What am I playing at? But they all got through this imposter syndrome. They all overcame it. And the lesson here is really getting out of your own way. Stop putting up your own mental barriers. I think it was Sarah Sabin, who mentioned the old quote from Henry Ford something like whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right, because it really does come down to our own self belief, our own thoughts, our own feelings. It's not someone else who's going to hold us back and stop us doing something. It's our self who's going to do that. It was really interesting in my conversation with Ali Temple when he made the distinction between legitimate reasons not to do something and excuses and how in his experience, most of the time, it's actually our own excuses. It's the stories that we tell ourselves that hold us back and get in our own way. So that's Lesson Four, that's getting out of your own way.

And then finally, Lesson Five, and this was one that really came across strongly with most of the people I've interviewed so far - the power of networking. Now this is a topic which gets a lot of people nervous, people say, 'Oh, I'm introverted, oh I can't network - networking is not for me, I need to find another way of doing things'. And this is something that I think I'm going to do a whole show about this at some point because it's such a big thing, but Collette Philip back in Episode Two or Collette Philip Kean as she now is - congratulations Collette on getting married - she gave a great description of what networking is and what it isn't, and I took from her interview two key things about networking. Firstly, networking isn't about selling. It's not about going up to people and going 'Hi, look at me. Are you interested in this product or this service or me coming to join you'. That's not what it's about. And that's that kind of networking is just going to put people off and will probably fall flat on its face. What networking is really about is talking to people who have similar interests to you who are in a similar area to you. It's about getting to know them, finding out what they're doing, letting them know what you're up to, because that way you find out what they need. They find out what you need, and suddenly you're aware of how you can help each other or who you know, who might be able to help them or who they may know who might be able to help you.

The second takeaway was how good things happen when you just put yourself about a bit, and that opportunities can come from really unexpected places. So look at Collette herself. She told us how she had been volunteering at a conference, she was chatting to one of the volunteers there and then someone had come up to her and say, 'you can help, you can help!' And it was because she'd been talking to someone and the fact that she was there at that conference that led to her landing one of the first two clients that she got in her new business. Had she not decided to volunteer at that conference, had she not been talking to people and telling them what she was up to, she wouldn't have got that introduction and wouldn't have landed that first client that has enabled her to start her own business. Michelle Smith gave another great story. She is another one who, she'd put herself about, she'd written articles in local magazines. And it was through that that she ended up working with an international footballer. That opportunity wouldn't have come up had she not been networking and getting herself known in publications and whatever. And she herself, Michelle, said that she thought it was a joke when the call first came through, but it just got goes to show that you never know where these opportunities are going to come from. They come from the most unexpected places. And the final thing I'll say about networking is that it doesn't have to be scary. Most people actually are really nice, and they want to help. And I can talk to this myself about my own personal experience. I've just started this podcast, I wanted to reach out and get some great guests. But I didn't have a mass of connections that I could draw on. I've really just been reaching out to some people I know, some people I don't know, some completely random people to ask if they would appear on the podcast. And even those who've said no have been really nice about it, but lots of people and actually quite a few who I was quite surprised said yes, have said yes. And that means that I've got plenty of interviews to come for the next 10 episodes and beyond. And, again, that's really just by contacting people telling them what you're doing, asking whether they're interested in being part of it. And that, for me is what networking has been about. So that's Lesson Five. And as I say, I think we will go into more on networking in later podcasts.

And that's it. That's the five top lessons that I've picked up from the first 10 episodes. So just to recap, Lesson One, it's never too late. Number Two, getting to know yourself. Number Three, never rule anything out. Number Four, get out of your own way. And number Five, the power of networking. You know, I probably could have come up with five completely different ones, but those are the ones I settled on and I hope that that's been a useful recap of the first 10 episodes.

But what I really want to do now is open the floor to you. What is it that you would like to hear about? What is it that you need in your career and your working life? What questions do you have about changing jobs or finding your path? What's the most difficult thing that you're facing at the moment? What's stopping you from making a change? I'd love to hear from you. I mean, this podcast is for you guys, you guys who have been listening in and you know, I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that you have found this interesting and useful. And I want to keep it that way. And I want to do that by hearing from you. What do you want to hear about, what are the problems, the difficulties, the challenges that you're facing? Please, please, please let me know. So I can I can focus on what's going to be most useful for you. You can do that in two ways. My email address is jeremy@changeworklife.com - changeworklife is all one word - so that's Jeremy, Jeremy@changeworklife.com. Or if you go to the website, that's changeworklife.com then you will find a contact page. There's a form on there, fill that in, it'll come through to me. And I promise you, I will read every comment, and I'm looking forward to getting some great ideas from you about what I can cover in future episodes. I'd also love to know whether there's any great guests, which you think would be just perfectly suited for the podcast? Do you know someone who has changed their career who's got a really interesting story about how they've done that? Who would like to talk to me about their experience? Do you know any career coaches, have you used a career coach? Is there someone who can talk through a particular topic, particular challenge, particular difficulty that I can interview on the show? Again, let me know. Send me an email or use the contact form on the website. You know, this is your show as much as mine. So, you know, let me know what you want to hear about and let me know who you want to hear from - just let me know.

Final thing to mention is that there is now a Facebook group. There's the Change Work Life Facebook group. And I've started that as somewhere where we can have a conversation about the sorts of topics that we've discussed so far and topics that we will discuss in the future on the podcast. So maybe you're facing a particular career dilemma or difficulty at the moment and you'd like a bit of advice, or maybe you have some experience of dealing with difficult issues and you can help people out - well, go on to the Facebook group. I'm going to be on there regularly. Let's start some conversations. Let's find out where where people's difficulties are. Let's see what we can do to help them work through a particular problem. I will link in the show notes page for this episode to the Facebook group where you can find it. So join the group and let's get some conversation started. The show notes for this episode will be at changeworklife.com/11. That's the number 11 - one one - changeworklife.com/11. And we'll be back to interviews next week with another cracker so make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss out. I've absolutely loved putting these shows together and we've got a lot more to come. So keep listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Cheers, bye.