#12 Advice from Empowered Career Women (Transcript)

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT….PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo- Lisa

All their career paths have been very interesting, almost 99% of them. They started here and it was like a winding road. And so they didn’t know where they really wanted to be. And for many of them, like, especially in sales, marketing, they were in a completely different career. They weren’t very happy at sales and marketing in different areas, fell in their lap.

 

And they’re like, man, I wish I would’ve known about this whole lot longer ago, because if you’re going to spend a third of your, and most people spend way more than a third of their life working, you might as well do something that you are. You’re not unhappy doing when you’re unhappy in your career, that bleeds over into your personal life and stress.

 

My dad passed away because of stress. And so it’s close to home. Yeah.

 

Josh Morgan is in his final year of his 18 years as a teacher. Out of his search for what career is next for him grow a passion project that has led to one-on-one interviews with 57 successful women in business to date in our discussion, Josh shares how he hopes his project, empower students.

 

Particularly females and what consistent themes he found among those. He interviewed what he shares applies to both male and female students, and will inspire you in your student to take steps that will set your student up or a successful future career. I’m Lisa marker Robbins. And I want to welcome you to college and career.

 

A flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation.

 

Welcome back to college and career clarity. I am so excited to welcome my new friend, Josh Morgan. We’ve just actually. And I’m going to thank LinkedIn for it. All of my listeners know I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn as a resource for not only adults but also students. Thanks for LinkedIn for bringing us together.

 

Welcome to the show. Josh Morgan. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa, for having me. This is fantastic and I’ll be honest with you. This is one of the first times I’ve been on a podcast, so this is oh, this is that’s fantastic. Everybody’s going to learn in a second that you’re already a pro though at interviews, even though you’ve not been a podcast guest.

 

So you’re on the other side of the microphone. This time, a little backstory for our listeners. The way that we got connected was you posted on LinkedIn and we weren’t even connected that you were looking for specifically. Women professionals who you wanted to do a project around. And you were just asking people to tag women, professionals and leaders who you could connect with that came out of you being a teacher.

 

So I don’t want to spoil it because all ruin it. I got tagged in that post and I thought this guy, what he’s doing resonates with the work I do. And I think he’s got nuggets for my listeners. So. You are a classroom teacher in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma teaching secondary education. And tell everybody about your passion project and the why behind your project.

 

Yeah. I told my students and it’s something that we do every single year. I told my students that we were going to do a career research project. And normally this is more focused with high school students, but I had middle school. And so the, what I noticed for the boys tended to be more, they understood where they wanted to go.

 

They knew if they wanted to do like engineering. Maybe not what kind of engineering, but they knew that they want to do something in that science and math, they knew if they wanted to go into medicine. They, so they had an idea what they wanted to do. The girls on the other hand, Most of them had no clue or they were making remarks like, well, I’ll probably just go to nursing school.

 

Cause it’s the only thing I know that’s out there that makes decent money. And my wife is a nurse and it’s extremely hard work and God bless our nurses. But I realized when they were saying this, I was like, listen, like if nursing is one of those careers where if you just don’t love nursing, you’re going to burn out.

 

You’re going to quit and your patients are not going to get the care they deserve. So that say a terrible reason to go into nursing much like an inferior, honestly. So I had this an aha moment because in October I started looking at indeed and LinkedIn looking at possibilities. What else was out there?

 

And when I went to search for jobs, I had literally had no clue what to put in the search bar. Like I, it was, I was staring at it. It’s blinking at me. And I was like, well, I know that. Architects and engineers and there’s doctors and I’m not qualified nor do I want to do any of those. I don’t. So I started looking at what are like local jobs in my area, and it was stuff like receptionist front end of the office.

 

And one of the things I really wanted to do was increase my salary and the jobs that I was seeing were not gonna do what I needed to do, but I knew that there were jobs out there that made quite a bit of money. So I got. A little bit more prolific on LinkedIn and started noticing people had these job titles might be like recruiter, marketer, all these different types of marketing and sales and started just asking them, Hey, my name is Josh and I just have really no clear about what your career looks like.

 

Can I like ask you like a day to day? And so through these conversations, I started getting familiar with. All these new careers that were out there that I had never been exposed to. A lot of people never get exposed to and all this these salaries and these career paths and their work-life balance for the most part was really fantastic.

 

And so it was that aha moment to where I was like, wait, Here is information that I can bring to my students. What I really want it to be impactful because as a classroom teacher, we talk about making that impact on students and sure I can make them better writers, but how can I make an impact for outside of school, for the rest of their life, something very meaningful.

 

And I thought, you know what, let me see if there are women. That are in leadership positions and are successful because I feel like my girls will relate better with women than me standing up there or some other guy standing up there. And so I’d made that post. I said, Hey if you’re a woman in leadership or a business owner or somebody that is, and would be willing to.

 

Do an interview where you answer some questions for my students, I would love to hear from you. I made the post and I went on my day and I woke up the next morning to my inbox flooded 651 responses to it. It’s at this point has been seen by 157,000 people. My word I have in the past month, I just pulled my 57th interview.

 

So, oh my gosh. So these interviews really are, if we had. Flipped this time, which I’ve not been one of your interviews. You’ve done 57 interviews. I’ve just been watching from a distance impressed by what you’re doing and loving it because I love the center of what I do is helping resource teens and young adults on the same journey that you’ve been on in your forties, trying to help the same generation I’m trying to help.

 

And I’m watching, going like, this is cool. You’re still teaching full-time. We should add you’re a father of five. Now some of them are grown, but some are still at home. Right. You’re married, happily married. To a wonderful nurse. So you’re one busy guy. So you wake up the next morning flooded, which I can only imagine.

 

And somehow when did this start? It’s not that long ago. No, I would say three and a half weeks ago. Give or take a few days and interview. 57 women. And I’ve seen how long are these interviews? I’ve seen him. Some of them are like 20, 30 minutes long, right? The longest one is 37 minutes and some seconds. And then the shortest one is 23 and like 18 seconds.

 

Amazing. So as I started looking at this and then this is what made me reach out. And my timing was perfect. Cause you’re on spring break this week and we should tell everybody it is St. Patty’s day. So it’s not only your spring break at St. Patty’s day. So I got you on a week that you had a little more time.

 

Oh, well, happy birthday. And we’re having, this is the week that I may or may not be available for professional activities. So yes, absolutely. So as I started watching some of your videos and the conversations that you’re having, which they’re on YouTube. So we’ll be sure to give your YouTube link so everybody can check out these videos and it occurred to me.

 

I’m like, I think Josh probably has some amazing themes. Insights and nuggets that he’s going to be taking now back to his students. But golly, I want him to share them with my students, my, the parents that are listening, who are raising their own kids. And also I get that question all the time. As a parent, I am not.

 

And this is why people work with me and my launch career clarity course that they don’t feel that they’re equipped even know what’s out there. Right. So I’m just going to let you talk and give us insights of what you’re learning that can help our family. Sure. So I think two of the, honestly, the most important questions I asked is the conversation we have about mentorship that, like, how important do you feel mentors are and what is your definition of mentorship?

 

Because it changes from person to person, because I know for myself, I always thought of like a mentor, somebody that is, I hate to say like, like stuffy and professional, but the mentorship is just what I’ve come to find out. There’s different kinds of mentors or no, there are those that are further along in your career and they provide those actionable insights.

 

They will hold you accountable when you’re making bad decisions, but also like they will jump in the fire with you when they feel that you need. The other question I ask is knowing what you know now, and this is, I always say, Hey, this doesn’t have to be career. Doesn’t have to be education related.

 

But if you could give knowing what you know, now, if you could give one piece of advice to your middle school or high school self, what would it be? And that’s always a great question because. Sometimes it’s different, but the theme tends to be similar. And those are like, follow your instincts, follow your gut, which is, if you don’t feel something is right, don’t feel pressured to do it.

 

And that’s anything from like your social life up to taking a job that you may not be comfortable with taking an internship that you may not be comfortable with pursuing a certain major in college. Cause school’s expensive. And so that’s. Yeah, so that’s one main one because I know. I’m not so bad now, but there have been many times in my life where I might not have been comfortable with a certain decision or doing something, but I felt pressured by others to do that.

 

And inevitably it was never the best decision for me. Yeah, that reminds me. I was having a conversation with a mom yesterday and she was sharing all the things about her daughter and daughters at 17. Don’t always want to hear from their parents. You’ve raised some of those that stages in there.

 

And it sounds like she could be a great candidate for a gap year because she’s starting this work on the late side. And they’re staring down as you referenced. Fence of college, which I just, my episode this week was on how smart parents to help their smart kids find the right college. I said, gosh, what about a gap year?

 

And she said, oh no, that would be embarrassing to her. There is a lot of that societal pressure around these decisions on what comes after graduation. It’s tough. So yeah, so really part of that, knowing what, you know, now a major theme was really like follow your gut, but do what’s right for you, right?

 

Yeah. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, whatever decision that you make it falls on your shoulders. This is a little bit more serious than an example, but you know, if you take somebody up to the store and they robbed the store and then you pick them home, you’re still guilty, even though you didn’t have anything.

 

So those decisions that you make at the end of the day, they followed your feet no matter who pressured you into it, or who tried to make you do something that you didn’t want to do. Absolutely. What are some other ones? So I would guess that they all said. Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s not one that didn’t say, oh, mentorships, ah, you don’t need that.

 

There is the most successful ones. And I don’t mean the most successful ones, but those that tended to be, I would say business owners who have a lot of stress, such as making sure their employees get paid and keep a job. So, so that’s a whole nother level of stress besides just being as a VP or that C level.

 

When people’s lives are on your shoulder at those said that they would have so far as to even get professional mentors that they paid for. Actually, I do. I belong to a business coaching program, the business accelerator program with Michael Hyatt at full focus, like, yes. So I always say. I actually posted in my, I have a private Facebook community for parents and it’s called launch college and career clarity, just like the podcast.

 

And I posted in there last week, I was in Nashville for my quarterly coaching intensive. I’m like, by the way, your coach has a COVID. And the best athletes in the world have coaches. And so I, you know, everybody needs somebody. That’s a soundboard to get feedback from. And we tend to, when you’re making decisions for yourself, you tend to be subjective rather than objective.

 

And so when you get somebody that doesn’t have that emotional tie to the decisions you make, they tend to be more, they can look at the big picture better and do you think that this is actually going to lead to where you want to be? So I think that’s one benefits having a mentor that is, you know, they can look at the big picture without being emotionally tied to the big picture, for sure.

 

Were there any other big themes under that? Knowing now if you knew now what you didn’t know that. Yes. They almost all said, get on LinkedIn and network. So I am a student LinkedIn guide that actually takes kids through step-by-step building their LinkedIn profile. So I’ll post that in the show notes with this episode.

 

So they all, like they said, your students now. Yeah. And there have been several that even said, Hey, if you get your students to make like a LinkedIn group as a group, then we, as a group of women can actually come in and provide some mentorship directly to the students. And so that’s where I am with this.

 

This project of mine is I’ve had several schools reach out and they’re calling it a program. I call it a project and you’re like, Hey, can you bring your program up here? And I’m like, I will give you the access to the, like the series. So you can see the videos, but they want something a little bit more structured in place.

 

So at this point, I like, I don’t know what’s falling in my lap, but I’m open to what it, wherever it leads me. So who knows this may end up being like full fledged program right now. It’s a passion project where I just, you know, I just wanted to make sure my students had the knowledge that I have.

 

Look, I was ignorant not too long ago. And so all this, like how different would my life be if, while I was in school, I found out about Rick and that’s. The other thing that I’ve actually loved about this project is I have interviewed women and recruiting. I’ve one of my favorite ones that has been really impactful to the students.

 

Jamie, who is a recruiter from Microsoft, specifically in video game development. And now there are girls, like, I didn’t even know I could get into video games because. Boys. It did that and I can make a lot of money doing it. So you’re having this like inspiration that I’m getting inspired. My students are getting inspired, but we’ve talked to software developers, UX designers, sales women that are in different areas of marketing women that are business owners and women that are making money.

 

Like social media. So that’s an area that the kids love. So we’re getting access to this information that they wouldn’t have. Nobody’s gatekeeping it. And here’s the kind of weird thing about it is nobody’s gatekeeping. This information it’s just has not had a, like a funnel for it to get to the students.

 

And so career day, the colleges rollout and go, Hey, for $50,000, you can get an architecture. But nobody’s saying, you know what? You don’t necessarily have to go to college and you can make six figures doing textiles. Come on. Let’s go. So the networking is really because then you can actually understand, cause we all have a superficial understanding of like what careers look like.

 

Like if I think of recruiting, I think of somebody. Sits on their email and talks all day long to people and gets them jobs. But there’s so much more to it. Same thing with sales and marketing has all these different areas to it. So we all have a kind of a superficial understanding of what a role actually looks like until we get into it.

 

But with the networking, you can actually make connections with people and go, Hey, what does your day-to-day look like? What kind of person would really thrive in this kind of environment? So through the networking, you start to understand. What you might like to do, you start, you get people asking you questions, like, what do you want your data to look like?

 

What don’t you want to do? And so you start getting an idea of what you don’t want to do, what you want your day to day look like, and then you really get a picture on, I think this is the career path that I want to take. Yeah. So you’re really, I mean, you’ve done the work for us. You’re doing informational interviews with.

 

Is what we teach inside my course. And you’ve got a whole bunch of them. And I always say like, I love your point about they start having these conversations and building their network early on, LinkedIn as being advised by these successful women and business and other areas. And if you can even filter something out and go, no, that doesn’t fit, that’s still a win.

 

Right, right, right. It doesn’t have to be the yes. As for me. Right. Yeah, because that’s, what is speaking with a lot of these very successful women. They have all their career paths has been very interesting. Almost 99% of them have been a very untraditional. They started here and it was like a winding road.

 

And so they didn’t know where they really wanted to be. And then they finally, and for many of them, like, especially in sales, marketing, they were in a completely different career. They weren’t very happy. And this sales and marketing and different areas fell in their lap and they’re like, Man. I wish I would’ve known about this whole lot longer ago, because if you’re going to spend a third of your, and most people spend way more than a third of their life working, you might as well do something that you’re not, you know, that you’re not unhappy doing when you’re unhappy in your career, that bleeds over into your personal life and stress.

 

My dad passed away because of stress and so close to home that you bring up how long we’re going to work in our lives. A staggering statistic around that. Kindergarten through 12th grade students go to school 16,000 hours. And kids always go as soon as they hear that. Oh yeah, I’m failing every one of those 16,000 hours.

 

Right. But the average person works 90,000 hours in their career. So if we’re going to spend that much more time than we even spent in school, we, her better do something we love. Right. Right. I have a question about your videos. So when you have them catalog, do you have a by like the guest’s name or their job?

 

Like, yeah. So it says interview with, and it has the name and then it has their title and then it has the company that they work at. So for example, Yeah. Interview with Megan Kilian, VP of sales at she actually a CEO and founder plus the CXO because she owns her own holding company. So it’ll have their name, it’ll have the career, whatever their job title, whatever their role is.

 

Plus they work at yeah. As you, you didn’t intend for this to happen, but let’s give a plug for, what’s just starting. You are going to be a podcast or analysis, or you’re taking these awesome interviews that now are out there on YouTube that we’re going to give everybody the link to, but we’re also going to give them the link to your new and upcoming podcast.

 

And so the name of the podcast is Josh empowering her. Empowering her. So we will drop that in. So these interviews are now also going to be available as a podcast in I’m going to give them, you said you’re working on the back end tech cause you’re a one man show right now. Right? I am a one man show and I’ve had, it’s funny.

 

I’ve had a couple people and listen, like everybody has their own side hustle, but it reminds me of, I took my daughter to the cheesecake factory for her birthday. And at the end of the, at the end of the mill, they said, oh my God, it’s your birthday? Would you like a piece of cheesecake? We’re like, yeah, sure.

 

And so they brought the cheesecake and then they brought the bill and it was like, I don’t know, $9 for this piece of cheesecake. And I’ve been wanting to be like a cheapskate on their birthday. Of course I paid for it, but I was just like, why did you say like include, oh, it’s your birthday? Would you like a piece of cheesecake?

 

I was like, I thought it was. And again, I didn’t want to go, oh my God, I’m not paying for this cheesecake, but I have had a couple people reach out and go, Hey, do you need help with X, Y, and Z? And I’m like yeah. If you’re offering help. Oh, well, no, I’ll. I’ll like cheese on it. It’s not like, I’m like, uh, I’m going to give you a little inspiration because at times we have found student intern.

 

To do that. So at the high school level, often that’s like free. There are so many kids looking for connections like that. Like let’s post it inside my launch college and career clarity, Facebook group. And you might get a taker, a kid who just wants the experience. So it would still save you some time. So we’re going to put it out there.

 

When you get all that backside tech stuff going, you want to update your show notes, just let me know that we’ve got current links for you. And I literally could spend many episodes, probably talking to a Josh. So we’re going to have you back on later after you’re a prolific podcaster and I’m excited to see how this develops.

 

And I just thank you for taking time. I appreciate it. I’m glad to be here. Somebody told me they go, the more you start posting up your own interviews, you’re doing the more people that are going to start having. And I was like, no, I’m just, I just, and honestly, I didn’t really, I don’t feel like anybody owes me a thank you.

 

I don’t feel like anybody. I just, without getting, you know, too teary-eyed cause men don’t cry, but I just, with this being my last year, I just really wanted to be as impactful to my students as I could and give them. Something that I never had and wish I did have, well, I’m going to predict that you’re going to be impacting students and the younger generation for decades more and that 90,000 hours, we’re all going to work.

 

And just because you’re leaving the classroom, you’re not quite finished yet. I would think. Thank you. Thanks for being on. Thank you for having me.

 

I have no doubt that Josh is going to be extremely successful in his next career. And I cannot wait to see what develops from his passion project and podcast. My two favorite pieces of wisdom Josh shared in this episode or the importance of mentorship. And the advice for students to get on LinkedIn early.

 

I’ve been giving that same advice about LinkedIn for years. If you don’t already have a LinkedIn student guide of mine, you can download it in the show notes. If you are a regular listener, you know that every week I challenged my listeners to take action by the end of the very next weekend. But this week I have to suggest.

 

First grab the LinkedIn guide and get started on the student profile while many of my listeners and bore shore, every student in my course have already done that. I want to give them one more idea by the end of this weekend, have a discussion with your student around the idea of mentorship and what that can look like right now.

 

Brainstorm idea. Not just about how mentorship can look, but who can be an inspiring mentor for your student. Now, if today’s episode was helpful to you, please share it with a friend who needs us to sharing, following the podcast rating and reviewing helps us resource more students to launch in to a successful.

 

Thank you for listening to the college and career clarity podcast, where I help your family move from overwhelmed and confused to motivated, clear and confident about your teens future .