Afford Anything - How to Transition to Your Dream Career, with Ashley Stahl

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

#321: Have you dreamed of making a career transition, only to realize you have no idea where to start, who to talk to, or how to convey your skills to interviewers? Career expert Ashley Stahl has the information you need to take control of your career and pivot into something new. Ashley struggled with this, too -- but in the process, she figured out a system for identifying someone’s core skills and core nature to find a career and company more aligned with both. She also chats about the 10 core skill sets you can use to propel your career forward; the five root causes of burnout and what to do about them; and four sabotaging job hunting myths that can hold you back. If you enjoyed our interview with Gorick Ng, you’ll like this one. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode321 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything. You just can't afford everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. Saying yes to something implicitly means turning away all other options. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most?

What do you prioritize? Second, how do you align your daily, weekly, monthly, annual decision-making? in a way that reflects that which matters most. Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Today, we are going to continue a long-running conversation that we've had,

a theme that we've had going on, around careers and making money. We're focusing on this for two reasons. First, your career is, of course, instrumental to your ability to earn, and your ability to earn is the biggest determinant of your ability to save and invest. Second, many people within the financial independence retire early movement are interested in making a mid-career change or a mid-career pivot. You don't necessarily want to be doing the same thing in your 50s or 60s that you were doing

in your 20s. Some people might, but many don't. And so today's guest went from working as an administrative assistant to securing a career in counterterrorism at the Pentagon. And she made that transition in just six weeks of job hunting. And then she left it all behind and pivoted yet again. Now, during that journey, her journey from working as an admin assistant to getting a counterterrorism job at the Pentagon, Ashley Stahl realized that she had a gift for job searching.

Her friends would come to her for job hunting advice. And so earlier this year, she wrote a book called U-turn, which is an 11-step framework to help others get out of a job rut and discuss. what their skills are, and how to effectively communicate those skills to employers. She's helped over 500,000 people get clarity on their careers, land a job, and make mid-career changes. Now, Ashley does not follow the cliche platitudes of follow your passion, do what you love. Instead, she advocates doing what you are, and we're going to talk about that further

in today's conversation. If you enjoyed our recent episode with Harvard Career Advisor Goric Ng, then you will also enjoy this one. Ashley breaks down 10 core skill sets, one of which you innately have. She also explains what core values and core nature are and how they're different. We cover the five root causes of burnout so that you can avoid them, and we also talk about how to have productive conversations while building a network. Finally, Ashley highlights five sabotaging job-hunting myths that almost everyone, falls for. Here is Ashley Stahl discussing how you can find a better job. Hi, Ashley. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Ashley,

your expertise is making a career shift, making that change that helps you point your life and the way in which you make money into something that is more meaningful. You started your career in counterterrorism, So where you yourself are right now is very different from where you started. Can you walk us through that journey and how did you establish this expertise in making that type of a midlife shift? Yeah, you know, I feel like a lot of people go to college or not. In my case, I went to career services and I remember thinking that your major had a lot to do with your career and your life.

You know, I remember the woman saying things like, follow your passion and do what you love. And I remember feeling more lost than when I walked in. And I was on this quest to do something I was interested in. I pursued government because I was impacted by 9-11. I had family on the East Coast. I'd always been good at learning languages. And so it was just natural for me to have an interest in national security. I did everything right for the career, whatever that means.

You know, I got the degrees. I did the internships. Along the way, there were these little moments. And I like to call them turn signals where it's like these little whispers that are showing you that you're off course. And I think the real art of personal development and self-awareness is walking that bridge between what you say you want and those little feelings inside of you that maybe don't align with it. And given that we know that the human gut is also called our second brain with 200 million, if not more neurons, like a cat or dog's brain, there's an intelligence

to when your stomach sinks or when you have butterflies. And my stomach would sink when I was in graduate school, I would look at everyone around me who was so excited about the topic. I would say to myself, I'm interested in this, but I'm not like so alive about it. And that's the thing about everyone. We all have a lot of interests. And I think where we get off course is not knowing which interest to turn into a career path. So I pursued counterterrorism just out of wanting to have a plan. And there was something inside of me that felt like, this might not be my forever. I'm interested in government. I want to make an impact. But I'm going to follow it anyway. There's something telling me I want to try it. And I do believe, and at the fundamental of my work, your career is an experiment because

you are a moving, growing organism at all times. We are not static creatures. And so I just thought, you know what? I'm going to try this on and see what I learn from it. And along the way into counterterrorism, I ended up contacting my university and getting a list of 2000 alumni who had graduated and moved to D.C. I called every single person on that list. I fell on my face, you know, didn't know how to network and ended up getting multiple job offers. And what was so cool about this was that on my way into something I was interested in, on my way, into something that I was telling myself, I'm going to follow my intuition,

on the sidelines, on the periphery of that, I realized that I was a great job seeker. And I think that's exactly what happens when you follow what feels right, even if it doesn't make sense to you. You'll figure out what you're supposed to do either right in front of you or on the periphery of that. So, you know, my quest international security

forced me to learn how to job hunt in the middle of a recession. I was more scared of my life if I didn't learn how to get a job than I was of failing in front of 2,000 people falling on my face saying the wrong thing. I'm so grateful for that time. And once I got into the Department of Defense and National Security, so many friends were asking me, how did you get that job? Can you help me network? Can you help me with my resume?

And they would say all the time, you should be a career coach. And I remember thinking to myself, like, what does that even mean? I knew of sports coaches. So I'm like, does a career coach cheer? on the sidelines of your career? Like, what do they even do? And then, of course, here I am 10 years later with, as a career expert, a spokesperson, a podcast host,

an author, and all of the things. And I truly believe that the way I was relating to my curiosities is responsible for my fulfillment now. There are a few things that you said in there. One is you talked about relating to your curiosity, and I noticed that you use the word curiosity rather than passion. Is that because following your curiosity is, a little less loaded?

You know, I love that question. My message in my book is, don't do what you love, do what you are. And I think your curiosities are little nudges towards who you are. They're breadcrumbs. And it could be as simple as like a curiosity that's just telling you to check something out

so you can cross it off the list. Or it could be a curiosity, it's pulling you towards what you're really meant to do. I think your passions matter and they're relevant, but I see them as more of a backdrop, and here's why. I talk about core skill sets in which we can go through any of them if it's helpful, but I do believe that your natural gifts, where you're skilled, is what dictates the energy you're spending and using in your day.

One of the skill sets is words. That's my core skill set. My first job was at a preschool when I was 16. I remember I was helping the chef make meals for all the little kids, and I would always find typos in the flyers. It's like my core skill set has always been words. It bleeds through. You can have me flipping burgers and I'm finding typos.

And I think everybody does have that. And there was a while where I thought to myself, maybe not everyone has a special something. Maybe some people don't, but I've learned now over a decade doing this. Everyone does have a core skill set where they're uniquely talented and it's usually obvious for them. They don't notice that it's a part of who they are.

It's something that they're great at. And it's so important to follow those curiosities because for me, when I look at words as a core skill set, that skill set is what I'm carrying with me throughout my career. And it can look like many things. I could be a speaker. I could be doing my podcast. I could be writing my book. It's all words. It's not to say that for a certain portion of every day, I'm doing something else using other skills. It's just to say I know where my zone of genius is and I ensure that most of my time is spent there. And when I do that, my nine to five or whatever my hours feel good. What I'm using words for, that's maybe a passion, which is much more of a backdrop.

So let's say you love sports. You know, that's like a big pie, the sports pie. Many slices, right? You can do communications. You could do financial analysis. You could do, you know, there's so many different versions, a lawyer for a sports company. So you really want to look back at what is my top skill? Because your passion or your interest can be a backdrop.

But you're not going to be happy if, let's say, you love sports. but you're the chef in the kitchen at the sports company. You don't want to be a chef. It's not going to be fun for you. You're not going to care that you love sports anymore because it's not going to be using your skills. And that relates to another concept that you discuss, which is that just because you enjoy the consumer experience of something does not mean that you should necessarily be the producer of that thing. Love that you pointed that out.

It was exactly on my mind is like the amount of people I've heard in high school, college, saying, I love film, so I'm going to be a film. It's like, you can love consuming film, but that doesn't mean you're going to be a great producer of film. To me, the issue is that we've all been asking the wrong questions. Like, we've been asking ourselves, what do we love? What are we passionate about? But the question I would really ask is, what are you skilled at?

And that leads perfectly into the 10 core skill sets, which I'd like to go through. First, how did you arrive at the number 10? It's such a round number. I'm sure that it can be contracted to five or expanded to 15. But tell me about the concept behind forming this framework of 10 core skill sets. Yeah, I've been working on this for years. I've coached, I think it's like 400 something one-on-one and then 8,000 people. And I've just done surveys and I've been working on narrowing it down.

It initially was 16 and I was like, I've got to make sense of this. What led me to the 10 and it's pleasant. that it's a round number, but what really led me there was realizing that each skill isn't just the tactical piece. It's an energy that you can reside in. And it's a flow chart. And each skill is an invitation for many other ways of expressing that skill. And I think the biggest mistake anyone can make reading my skill sets is saying, okay, I'm a word skill set, so I need to go be a writer. No, no skill set is tied to one title. There's many different business types you can have or job titles you can have, but it's important to know how you're going to be spending your time,

what skill. And this just gives you a filtering system for each job. Right, right. So they're more, they're not skills in the sense that it would be something that you would necessarily see on a job description. They're more core ways in which you relate to the world. Yes. And they're like the umbrella over the entire job or the business that you have. So let's go through the 10 core skill sets because these can be, you know, for many of the people who are listening, who are interested in financial independence, retiring early, maybe transitioning to a second career. Let's walk through the 10 core skill sets such that that might be illuminating for people who are trying to figure out what their act to will be. Yes, and I love you even bringing up the second act because I think people

tend to believe that they have to, quote, unquote, start over, or they buy into the belief that their degree, that they're there to serve their degree versus realizing, you know, your degree is there to serve you. Your past is there to serve you. You're not there to serve it. And so these skills, I think, bring you back to who you are and you really can trace the threat of the past into where you're going in the future. And I think when you can communicate that, you know, the best job doesn't always go to the best candidate. It really does go to the best communicator. So when you can identify the skill set and you can communicate about it, that's your power when you have a second act. Number one is innovation. And they're not in any particular order. This is for the

creative self-starter who is a visionary and a problem solver. They can be an entrepreneur within a company or an entrepreneur who created the company. And the way you can kind of figure out which one you are, and I don't want to obscure and simplify it too much, but I do think it can be quite simple, is I do find that the entrepreneurs have a different relationship than the entrepreneurs when it comes to freedom and finances. So the entrepreneur I've found typically needs complete creative freedom. They don't want to work on ideas that are not the idea that they want to work on. They want freedom with their time. And then secondary to that is that their relationship with money and risk is lighter than somebody who potentially is an entrepreneur. They're willing to

take those risks. The gain and the possibility of the gain is better for them. The entrepreneur tends to just need flexibility and some level of creative autonomy or just autonomy in general, meaning that maybe they'll work on someone else's idea, but they have some ways of going about it and they have a little bit of freedom to do that. And that could be with scheduling and the hours they work as well. Number two is building. So the builders, you know, it can be quite literal like a construction worker or it can be more metaphorical, like a strategy consultant, that their work is in building something or figuring out

the strategy of how something is going to happen. It's all building energy. Number three is words, which I talked about for me. And this one actually brings up a really important question for everyone listening with any of these core skill sets is if your core skill set is any of these, in my case, words, you want to ask yourself, am I more introverted or extroverted? Because if you're introverted, you're going to express your core skill set internally. In my case with words, it's going to be more of a writer, more of, you know, I'm a little bit of a loner deep down. Like, you'll find me on my laptop a lot more than you'll find me on stage. And even though I do a lot of keynote speaking and stuff like that, I definitely sleep for like 24 hours after because no matter how much fun I have, I'm an introvert.

And then the extroverts obviously could be the speakers or the business development or the talent agents, people who are turning words into, Number four is motion, and this one's quite interesting, and this was the one that I sat with the most, because it felt kind of nebulous. I believe that there is a group of people who genuinely their skill resides in being on their feet in some way. Maybe they are a tour guide. Maybe they're a fitness trainer. They're using physical energy to carry their career. And I find them quite interesting. So it's important for people to kind of reflect on that one.

And number five is service. So I love the service skill set because there's so much to ask about this one. So obviously, this is the supporters, the helpers, the humanitarians. And the thing about them is that I found that a lot of people who say to me, I'm service, I'm a service person. I think to myself, are you, though, or were you taught to be a people pleaser in your family dynamic? And it's not to say that you were and you could be both. Maybe you come from a little bit of a wounded place.

You were forced to be someone, but you also really resonate with it. That's okay. I just think it's important to ask that question of, is this who I was told to be and I learned to be, or is this who I am, or maybe both? Number six is coordinating. Love the coordinators. Erin on your team is such a good coordinator, Paula. You know, I admire them so much.

These are the people who can cross the T's, dot the eyes, remember the details, project manage operations, they're incredible. Number seven is analysis, the analysts, the researchers, you know what's interesting about this one? Is it really in my own life can show you how much we can go off course and need to make what I like to call a U-turn when we misunderstand our skill set? So when I started working at the Pentagon, I thought to myself, oh, I'm doing intelligence analysis. That's a lot of words in writing. And I didn't have this framework, obviously, you know, to go, I remember thinking, I might really like this. You know, I'm writing intelligence reports. There's a big difference between being a wordsperson, a creative wordsmith writer, poetic,

you know, and being an analyst. Analyst are using a completely different side of their brain than what I would like to think I am when I'm in my words. And so one of the key ingredients to not liking your career is overriding your core skill set, misunderstanding your core skill set, being in the wrong core skill set, only being in your core skill set less than half of the time. And that was certainly me. I was, and that's the thing. I was just a couple millimeters off. And another thing that this one could bring up for me as it could with any of them is you could be a psychologist, for example.

Your gift is an analysis. That's your core skill set. And the way you capture people's patterns and come up with a summary for them to understand the patterns is incredible. You could also be a therapist where your core skill set is in analysis, it's words. And the creative way you express yourself is so healing and poetic and beautiful for the person receiving it. And that's where your superpower is. So it, again, kind of illustrates this idea that one job title is not tied to one skill set,

but you want to lead with that skill set. So number eight is numbers. You know, our number crunchers, bookkeepers, investment bankers, the list goes on. Number nine is technology, so the artificial intelligence creators, the visionaries in the technology world specifically, who have a knack for troubleshooting and creating IT. And then number 10 is my absolute favorite. It's beauty. And beauty is for the people who make art of the world around them.

This is for the musicians. This is for the makeup artists, the designers, the decorators. But again, I mean, you can't tie one skill to one job, but it's generally what I would consider. Right. Exactly. The builders make the shelf and the designers decide where in the room it's going to go. Exactly. And if you make a shelf builder, figure out a picture the person in the room building a shelf, telling him to help you figure out where it looks best.

It's like, that's draining for them. Right. Usually. Right. Right. Exactly. And I think that's a great analogy because you can sort of see how lots of different core skill sets come together on the same project.

You know, the numbers person figures out the cost of building the shelf. The builder builds it. The designer figures out where it's going to go. The words person writes up a great listing for it. You know, all of that goes behind the same project. Yes, exactly. Life is truly an experiment that meets you where you are. I think your career is truly an experiment.

and one of the biggest indicators for your own fulfillment is kind of what I was going back to with your body. It's what feels expansive, what makes you expand, what makes you contract, what makes you feel tired. There's really two dynamics in your career. So the first one is the what, which is what we talked about. It's your core skill set. It's how you spend your day. It's your responsibilities. I would say if, you know, at least anything less than 60 to 70% of your day is outside of that skill set, you're going to be tired.

and it's probably not the best fit for you. And this kind of answers that age-old question of, when should I stay? When should I go? When should I change my business? If I'm an entrepreneur, I always ask, well, how much are you using your core skill set? Or how much are you sharpening your core skill set? But the other element of the career now that we've gone through core skill set is the how.

And the how comes back to your core values. And to me, your core values are the non-negotiable principles by which you live your life. And if you are violating a core value, and I try to have people come up with five, so let's say you value integrity and you're a wordsperson. So you maybe work in sales,

but, you know, you're kind of exhausted because you have to sell something you don't believe in. That's an integrity issue. You know, so I think it's really important to be mindful of this piece of the puzzle where, you know, how you do something matters just as much as what you're doing, given that we especially know 50% of people leave their job because they don't like their boss. That has nothing to do with what their job actually is. So to recap, you said there's two dynamics in your career.

There's what you're doing and there's how you're doing it. What you're doing relates to core skill set. How you're doing it relates to your values, your core values. Exactly. And a really big mistake people make with values is that they're too aspirational with them. So to me, core values are family, balance, friendship, connection, intimacy, fun, freedom, authenticity, whatever have you. I think it's so important that people can take a look at that and say to themselves, which one of these isn't someone I want to be more of, but someone I am. I mean, what you want more of in your life, let's say a core value could be peace. That could be valuable to know, like, I don't know if I'm the most peaceful person, but I love peace and I want more of it. That's valuable, but it's still

not a core value. It's important to know that about yourself. For me, a core value is humor. And even though I'm like strictly business going through all my content right now, if you're a friend of mine and you're at my house for more than an hour and I'm not being funny, they will ask me, is something wrong? And it's because my being isn't there, like something's missing. And it's core value. So I think it's just important to kind of use that as a bar for, am I still me without this word? And if the answer is no, I'm not me anymore without this word, then you've probably landed on a core value. How can you in advance know whether or not a given industry or a given career will speak to those core values that you have, particularly given that company culture,

the values inside of a given company culture can differ greatly company to company even inside of the same industry? Yeah. You know, that's where I think. I think what's really important that comes in is asking the right questions, and that brings us back to the core values. The thing about values is once you know what they are, I see them as filters. I see the what, the core skill set as how you're spending your whole day. And I see the values as the filters for your yeses and your nose of job opportunities or business services if you're an entrepreneur. So let's say you value, like we can take the other example of integrity. you're going to want to ask perhaps that might guide you in your filter in your interviews to say,

let me ask about turnover. Like, why are people leaving? Or maybe because you value integrity, you want to ask more about their mission and what the culture is like or why people are leaving. So it's just really important to use those values as compasses for what you want to ask about when you're making decisions. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsor. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need servware and cookware.

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We've talked so far about your core skill set and your core values, but there's a separate concept that you also describe that's referred to as your core nature. What is a core nature and how does it differ from values and skill set? A core nature is the foundation of your career. I define it as the energy that you're in when you're in your most natural state. And a great way to figure out your core nature is to ask people around you, collect data. I mean, according to marital research, friends know if a couple's getting a divorce before the couple knows.

And I think it's kind of the same with your career. And so being able to ask the people around you, hey, how does the room change when I walk in? How would you describe the energy that I bring into the room? You're going to get so much information about yourself by taking a look at what words people in your life use to describe you. So in my case, people told me I'm chatty, I'm bubbly, I'm wise, I'm playful. and when you look at that foundational energy of your career, it's helpful to say,

who do I know that's kind of residing in this kind of energy? What are they up to? It's just to start for, you know, if I'm bubbly, I probably wouldn't make sense for the person working in the lab who's very much with themselves. If I'm chatty and bubbly and, you know, a lot going on.

So it's important to kind of look at your core nature as the foundation of your energy and to take a nice little sample size of the people in your life you can ask about it. It sounds to me then that core nature relates more to personality or character, whereas values are values and skills or skills. Would that be accurate? Yeah, I mean, I would say your core nature is more just the adjectives that people would use to describe your energy. But yeah, definitely I think that goes with it too. You talk about the five roots of burnout and how often being in violation of your core skill set, your core values, your core nature can lead to you. burnout. Can you elaborate a little bit on what those roots of burnout are? And for the people who are

listening who are wondering, am I burned out yet? How can how can they know whether what they're currently feeling is pandemic fatigue or genuine burnout that's indicative of the need to make a change? Yeah, I do think that, you know, when you override who you are and force yourself to be someone else. It's exhausting. And research is telling us that when you're in a deeper sense of burnout, you haven't tended to it for long enough. You are quite literally working out of a different brain because burnout changes the chemistry of your brain. The World Health Organization calls it vital exhaustion. I've gone through burnout and sometimes you just need a few weeks off where you can't read books to solve the problem on your vacation. You need to get out of your

email, whatever it is. But there are, I've found around five. root causes. The first one is powerlessness. So when you're in powerlessness, you feel like you have no agency, you have no control over a situation that really matters for you, and you feel a sense of hopelessness. You feel a sense of resignation, and eventually you get into a sense of numbness. You can only be in that state for so long until, I don't know, you're kind of just numb. The second one is basic. It's tiredness. If you don't get enough sleep, and I think that's why. why, you know, so many doctors are rated as one of the top burnout professions is if they don't get enough sleep, it's like, I love shopping, but I don't want to be shopping at two in the morning.

You know, like everybody needs sleep. Nobody loves anything so much that they can't get their basic well-being needs met and be happy about it. So eventually, if you're tired all the time, you will get into that hardened state of burnout where you are operating from a different brain. The third is loneliness. And this is about community. It can be very exhausting to feel alone, and it can burn you out no matter how good your situation is or is not. I mean, even if I look back to the research around like the caveman era, it's like you literally could not survive if you didn't have a village. Like the village was required to survive. So I think there's also something scientifically cellular to all of us needing community for our well-being and our survival.

Number four is lack of purpose. This means you don't feel connected from to the reason why you're putting your time into something, whether it's in your personal life or your professional life. And it's just so important that you're able to say to yourself, okay, I need to get back to my, why am I doing something? And it could be simple. Like, I'm doing this so that I can save this amount of money and start investing in this or that. or it can be as simple as it means so much to me to solve this problem in the world, that usually does come back to core values, your purpose. I do think we've been sold a vision of work where we have to do things that are aligned with some sort of purpose.

And I don't know, in my heart of hearts, I just think purpose moves, who you are, moves. We're always in transition, but it's important to know your values, and they point you to why you will or won't do something. And number five is self-esteem. It's going to be exhausting if you have a task, all the time at work or in your job or in your business, but you don't believe in yourself to fulfill on it. And as a result, you're constantly leaking energy

or spinning your wheels trying to feel worthy at work. Like this is the person who's trying to prove to their boss that they're working extra hours by logging on, but they're playing games at work to show people, to notice them, stuff like that. It's self-esteem and not believing in the value of your work and spinning your wheels in that way can cause a lot of burnout. So those of five, powerlessness, tiredness, loneliness, lack of purpose, self-esteem.

What can a person do? You know, there are many people who are listening to this who are thinking, hey, I'm 35 or 45 or 55, and I've been in my career for a long enough time at this point that I am bored with it and I would like to do something a little bit different and I've got some money saved up and I'd like to make that pivot. But at a actionable, practical, logistical level, even if they have some ideas as to what that pivot's going to be, they're a little stuck on the how. Oftentimes they don't want to go back to school or they don't have the ability to go back to school because who wants to take out a bunch of student debt in your 40s. And that how piece of how do I take what I've done so far and use this to find a role for myself or

find a job that might be drastically different, and yet I need to be qualified for it. You know, what is the first actionable step that they can take? So does this person not have clarity? They're looking for the clarity, or they have clarity and now they're making a pivot? Let's say that they perhaps have some rough ideas. They're not sold on the idea that they're definitely going to do X, but they've limited it down to. They know that they're interested in X and Y and Z. So they've got that. rough idea of what that second act was going to be. That's a really good position to be in. And I think the medicine for someone in that situation is to first have conversations. So whenever I'm in my business

and I feel like, oh, I'm hitting a plateau. I don't have clarity. You know, one of the biggest messages in my book is clarity comes from engagement. It doesn't just come from thought. And, you know, like Albert Einstein says, you know, you can't solve problems from the same level of thinking that created them. That's why I think conversations are so amazing. So being willing to get on LinkedIn, doing an advanced search, putting in your postal code, putting in some keywords that would jog the search engine to find some positions and people that are doing something you want to be doing, and sending messages and really seeing life like I talk about in the book as a numbers game, really saying, okay, I'm going to reach out to X men of people. I'm going to be in, you know,

my mantra for this is high intention, low attachment. Participate. Put yourself out there. Don't be attached. So I would say the name of the game for that is send some emails out, set the goal of having one or two new conversations every week, get curious with people because you can learn a lot through other people's lives. And sometimes people project their negative story of something on you, and it's important for you to be constantly sifting through the reality of their them and your you, and not to lose sight of that. So that would be just the most important place to start. And from there I would say once you're having conversations, you're looking at LinkedIn profiles, which can be very clarifying. The advanced search on LinkedIn is incredible. I mean,

the amount of people who use it for networking, I think should be using it also for clarity, because with the right key words, you can start looking at people who are doing things in the same vein that you didn't even think about. It's like a flow chart. I think the second piece outside of clarifying their internal compass, because, I mean, what inspired me to write my book was that when you don't have clarity, it's like the biggest operational. It costs you money because you're just in trial and error, you know? So you're putting time into that. So I would say once they get the clarity, the next step is how do you talk about yourself, your career, and where you're at? And I would say the answer to that is starting to really

pay attention to how you use what you've done in the past. So let's say what you've done in the past is a huge pie and it's at 100%. Look at all the slices. Maybe you, you were an admin assistant and you're like, okay, I did some filing, I did this, I did that. Oh, but I also did a lot of editing and maybe your next move is in communications. Then I would say, okay, then you want most of your communication or at least half of it, if most feels like a stretch given what you were doing, to be about how you were using that skill and how you're going to bring value through those experiences. So that's, I would say, a starting point. How do you ensure that you are having productive conversations. Are there certain questions that you should be asking? And how do you

determine what those are? Okay. So productive conversations with people you're networking with? Yeah, I would say it's so important when you're networking with someone to first, there's a couple key questions you can ask that turn into opportunities. And it's up to you if you feel inspired to ask them. The first one is if you want what they're doing, you're inspired, you can say, how, you know, I'm really inspired by what you're doing. Is there anything you recommend for me to stand out as a candidate at your company or at a company like yours? That's a very forward way without being too forward of saying, I'm interested in what you do and I want to be doing it. And if they want to, they can offer to reach out to HR on your behalf and pass your resume along,

but you're not putting the pressure on them for that. I'm not a really big believer in saying, can you pass my resume along? I actually like to just say, I really want to stand out where you are. Do you have any recommendations for me? I'm submitting an application. Let people offer if they want to offer it. It forms better networking relationships, not to overask. The second question is around their network.

So you can also say, do you know of any companies or people that are doing similar work that you think I should be looking into? and I reserve these for later in the conversation once you've built some rapport, that invites them to potentially offer you connecting you to friends. And I love when my networking turns into that because then it just becomes this chain effect and you build true community and it's so fulfilling. And, you know, one rule that I have with networking, it's not like such a numbers game to me that I'm going to trade my soul in for it.

If you don't like who you're networking with, if you don't feel comfortable, that matters. You know, and that's a message I have for so many people who, I don't know, I think they bind the belief like they need to like someone or they need to have grace with someone. And it can be really painful if you're forcing it for yourself. But that would be a starting point as far as a couple key questions. Outside of that, I would say, what do you like about what you do? What do you're doing? Why? What's missing for you? If you could change something about the industry, what would you change? These are the things that I find to be quite clarifying. One of the concepts that you talk about are sabotaging job hunting myths, and some of these myths are quite pervasive. Can you take us through these? Yeah, I'm kind of unusual with this one, and it's just, for me, the first and foremost thing is scarcity. You know, even in an economic downturn or a pandemic, these have historically been times of extraordinary innovation and business growth, even when other businesses are not growing. And so I think the take what you can get approach is limiting so many people. Like,

I just need to take a job to get my foot in the door. I just need to take what I can get. You need to trust that job opportunities are everywhere because they are. It's just a numbers game and you need to be willing to play it. And the discomfort of that is really the cost of admission for having a career you love. So, you know, even in the midst of the COVID-19 quarantine, clients would tell me, you know, maybe they should stand down in their job hunt. But companies are always hiring. I had a client get a $200,000 raise and a bidding war amongst a couple companies over him. Right in the thick of the pandemic, I think it was like mid late April in 2020. A second myth kind of plays with this one, which is the foot in the door. Like I just need to take a job to get my foot in the door.

It's really similar to the take what you can get. I need to take what I can get. But this one's a little more pointed. like there's a belief that if I get in the building, then it's going to happen for me. I hate to break it to anyone with this, but when you take a job simply to get your foot in the door, you're not priming yourself for the job you actually want. You're pigeonholing yourself for the job you don't want. And you need to remember the years you spend in that job you took to get your foot in the door are years that you're potentially investing in a skill set that. and we talked about core skills and how much that matters,

that neither you nor your employer will want to invest in, and especially if you're trying to go somewhere else. So at the bare minimum, you need to take a job related to the one you want if you're trying to get your foot in the door. Taking a job in hopes that you'll get to a different job out of it is like wishing a salad was a donut, you know, story of my life. It just doesn't work.

Rarely does someone say, I'm going to turn my personal assistant into a marketing manager. They want their personal assistant to be their personal assistant. It costs money to train somebody to do something else when they're doing their job right. And you really do get pigeonholed. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, two myths that we've talked about so far. The first is the myth of you've just got to take what you can get.

And that's that idea that's built out of scarcity. And then the second myth is you've got to get your foot in the door. and that can leave you pigeonhold. Exactly. Those are them. And then the third one is the network with family and friends approach. This was a mistake I made a long time ago at the beginning was putting too much stock and pressure on the connections of family and friends when it came to networking. And I mean, you tell me, when was the last time your friend's dad was hiring for the exact job you want to.

It's almost never. It may be, but most of the time, what you actually want, someone that you don't know is in the position to give it to you. That's why the best networking to me is cold networking, and I know it can sound overwhelming. But even cold contacts can become warm ones if you know how to have conversations and you really work on your elevator pitch. So stop networking with your friend's mom. I mean, it's totally worthwhile to talk to people, and I love that. But if you want to be effective and you're really serious about getting something new, most of your energy should be focused on people who are in an actual position to hire you and networking with them. And then the fourth one, which kind of plays with the first one, is something is always better

than nothing. This one's built on the belief that it's better to be spending your time somewhere. You know, I've learned personally that finding the one, you know, whatever this means, both in love and in work, isn't about finding that. the right one. It's just about saying no time after time to the wrong one. That means that when you take a job you don't want, there's an opportunity cost. And it's you being available to get the job you do want. And it zaps your time from job hunting and cold networking and putting yourself out there. And I totally get the need to make money. So I think my recommendation, if someone's saying,

you know, I've been laid off and I need to take something, then get something part time that can pay your bills so that you still have time to go where you actually want to go. There seems to be a lot of myths around part-time jobs not being awesome jobs. Like there's this social thought that if I work part-time, I'm taking the job that all the full-time people didn't want and it fell off the company's plate. And my response to that is, no, if you're working part-time, you took something really awesome that they didn't have the resources to pay someone to be doing full-time. And a lot of people who are listening to this podcast who are in the financial independence space, many people, even if they don't have full FI, they might have what we refer to here as FU money, which is enough money that you could tell your boss FU if you needed to and still have a runway of six months, nine months, 12 months before you find the next thing.

So a lot of people who are listening to this are not everyone, of course, but many are in the fortunate position where, they've got that runway. Yes. Well, and also, I mean, there's a few lily pads, I think, in your career. The first one is you don't know what you want to do. You don't like what you're doing. And it's too inconvenient to find out you're not willing to go on that path. And I think that's most people. And then the second one is where I try to get people. And that's knowing what your gift is. Because when you're operating in your gift, it's natural. What happens is that people notice you're good at something and you get more opportunities because people want someone who's good at something. It feels good to work with people who, you know, are great.

What's so interesting and important about that is it puts you in a river current where you keep attracting great things and you can start sifting and choosing out of those things. I think the next piece of the puzzle with that is around the third lily pad. And you're kind of swimming in between each one. It takes a journey to get to each one. Once you know what your gift is and you're sifting through opportunities, you have an opportunity. It's not a guarantee, but you have an opportunity to maybe discover what your actual Dharma is, what your purpose and calling and true sense of mission is in your work, which you have so much

purpose and mission in life. You don't have to find it in your work. When I was writing my book, it was the first time in my entire life where it felt like, wow, I've never created anything from this place. It feels like it feels like something is just channeling through my hands. It feels like such a privilege. I get to write this. I feel so connected.

And I feel this energetic harmony between me and the world around me. It was like this Dharma. And I notice it now because it was the only time I've ever fully been there where I'll see like an athlete on television who is motivated by something so much deeper. And clearly they've made it to the second lily pad. They know their gift and they're at the top of their game. pun intended, and I can see that they're operating out of that level of purpose. You can't get there until you know what your gift is. What you've just described reminds me of descriptions of states of flow or being in a flow state.

Yeah. I think that you give yourself the opportunity to go into some version of flow with your work. And for me, it was just the first time that me and my work became one and I lost track of time. it did feel like flow. It also felt like a sense of mission, though, as well. Like I wasn't just doing what I was doing, but I was in something bigger than myself. I imagine, you know, going back to the person who's listening to this,

who's thinking I'd like to transition careers, I'd like a second act. I have F you money. And the next time that my boss is pissing me off, I can just tell them FU, trying to find something that is a gift or will give them a state of flow feels like a tall order and feels like a rather intimidating order. We've talked about sort of that first step of going on LinkedIn, viewing LinkedIn,

not as a networking platform solely, but as a flow chart. No pun intended. As a flow chart for unlocking opportunities and then having constructive conversations with people in your field or in the field that you're thinking about going into so that you can find out what the opportunities are in those regions. Beyond that, are there any kind of first steps that you would recommend? Outside of having conversations, you mentioned something that I would not recommend, which is going back to school. I think school is amazing. And if I could do anything forevermore, I would just be a student because I love learning. But I would say the opportunity

cost of being out of the workforce and the debt, if you are taking on debt, if you can afford it, It's a completely different thing. That's a beautiful thing. But if you're taking on debt and you're in the opportunity cost of not being there, you really need to make sure that you're clear on what you want and that what you want requires, requires that degree. A lot of people get extra degrees and they really convince themselves that it's going to get them

somewhere. And I see more often than not that it does not get them somewhere that they want to be. Exactly. I agree with that 100%. Yes. Great. Well, thank you so much for taking this time. Where can people find you if they would like to know more about you?

Well, I had you on my show, the U-turn podcast. So I would love for people to come find me there. It's Y-O-U-Turn, two words. Or my book, U-turn. It's available everywhere books are sold. If you can't get it off Amazon, book depository, seems to be good shipping situation. And, of course, my website, Instagram, all the places.

I would love to hear what you took away from this episode. Thank you, Ashley. What are some of the frameworks that we did? discussed in this conversation. Here are five. Framework number one, the 10 core skill sets. As a recap,

the 10 core skills are, one, innovation. You're a creative self-starter, you're a visionary, you're an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur. Two, building. This might be literal, like you're great at construction or woodwork.

Or it might be metaphorical. You're a fantastic strategist. You can build. build companies you can build teams. Three, words. You love crafting sentences and being a wordsmith. Four, motion. Being on your feet, physical energy.

Five, service. Supporters, helpers, humanitarians. Six, coordinators. You're adept at crossing T's and dotting eyes, project managers, operations. Seven, analysts. You're great at pouring through data, thinking analytically. and rationally, being able to spot patterns in the noise.

Eight, numbers, accountants, mathematicians. Nine, technology. You're great at computer science, programming, web development. And 10, beauty. You're an artist, a decorator, a designer. Now, these 10 skills can be expressed differently, depending on whether you're an introvert or extrovert. So Ashley's example of words as a skill,

she prefers to write alone, but others are speakers. on a stage. It's important to not misunderstand your skill set. In Ashley's counterterrorism position, she did a lot of writing, but analysis was at the forefront of what she did, and as a result, she found her job to be less enjoyable. Another example, being a psychologist, and being an analyst versus being someone who's great with words. An analyst may notice patterns of behavior and point that out versus someone who's great with words is fantastic at expressing. or connecting with their message. Each skill isn't just the tactical piece.

It's an energy that you can reside in. Each skill is an invitation for many other ways of expressing that skill. And I think the biggest mistake anyone can make reading my skill sets is saying, okay, I'm a word skill set, so I need to go be a writer. No, no skill set is tied to one title. There's many different job titles you can have, but it's important to know how you're going to be spending your time, what skill.

and this just gives you a filtering system for each job. That is framework number one, the 10 core skill sets. Framework number two, core values and core nature. This can be described as what you do versus how you do it. Core values are non-negotiable principles. As Ashley says, they're part of you. If you're not sure if something is a core value or not, ask yourself, am I myself without this value?

The thing about values is once you know what they are, I see them as filters. I see the what, the core skill set as how you're spending your whole day, and I see the values as the filters for your yeses and your nose of job opportunities or business services if you're an entrepreneur. During job interviews, ask questions that relate to your values to figure out whether or not a company's values align with yours. Now, in contrast to core values, your core nature is your energy when you're in your most natural state. If you're not sure what that energy is, ask your friends and family what they notice about you.

What effect do you have when you walk into a room? How does the room change when I walk in? How would you describe the energy that I bring into the room? You're going to get so much information about yourself by taking a little. look at what words people in your life use to describe you. If you're unhappy or unfulfilled in your job, these two things core value and core nature could provide insight as to why. Maybe, as Ashley said, you're working for a company whose mission doesn't align with your values. Maybe you're not growing and one of your core values

is lifelong learning. Take a look at what you're doing and at how you're doing it. See if you can tweak either one, and if you can't, see if you can find another position that's a better fit for both your core values and your core nature. So that is the second framework, core values and core nature. Framework number three, the five root causes of burnout. Burnout can happen when your core values and your core nature are being disregarded. Here are the five causes of burnout that Ashley cited. One, powerlessness. If you don't don't feel like you can affect change if you feel hopeless and resigned to what's happening around you, you can start to numb out.

Two, tiredness. Sometimes this just comes from not getting enough sleep. If you feel like you're constantly running on empty, you might be on the road to burn out. Three, loneliness. Everyone needs community. We're wired for connection. Some people more so than others, but it can be exhausting to feel alone. And I think during the COVID crisis, a lot of us really felt this.

For lack of purpose. When you lose sight or connection to your why, you lose your reason for doing the thing you need to do. And five, self-esteem. If you don't believe in your ability to do something and you're constantly worried that you may fail, well, that's unsustainable. Feeling like you need to prove your worth at every turn is exhausting. When you override who you are and force yourself to be someone else, it's exhausting. and research is telling us that when you're in a deeper sense of burnout, you haven't tended to it for long enough.

You are quite literally working out of a different brain because burnout changes the chemistry of your brain. Ashley also provided an interesting framework for deciding whether to stick it out or not. She says if anything less than 60 to 70% of your day is outside of your core skill set, it's probably not the best fit for you. And so that is framework number three. Framework number four. Clarity comes from engagement, not thought.

This is especially true for anyone who wants to make a career change after years in their current career. If you aren't sure what you want to do, get out of your head and talk to people who are doing what you want to do. This can give you clarity that you wouldn't otherwise have. Ashley recommends running advanced searches on LinkedIn. Beyond connecting with people, you may discover interesting careers that you never knew existed. Now, how do you engage with people effectively? Ashley offers this for when you've built

enough rapport with someone. I'm not a really big believer in saying, can you pass my resume along? I actually like to just say, I really want to stand out where you are. Do you have any recommendations for me? I'm submitting an application. Let people offer if they want to offer it. It forms better networking relationships, not to over ask. The second question is around their network. So you can also say, do you know of any companies or people that are doing similar work that you think I should be looking into? So what if you're unsure of how to connect your existing skills and experience with your new career choice? Ashley recommends digging deep and thinking through the things that you've done in the past and how any element of what you have previously done,

anything at all, can relate to your new career. Oftentimes, even if your previous experience is not overtly similar, there are skills that will translate. And so that is the fourth framework. Clarity comes from engagement. Finally, framework number five. Here are four sabotaging job hunting myths. These job hunting myths have the potential to lead you down the wrong path, costing you time, energy, and money.

Number one, scarcity. This pops up often in recessions or when the news is circulating stories about high unemployment. the belief that jobs are scarce can often lead you down the road of taking something that's not a great fit. And of course, there are macroeconomic factors. We just came out of a pandemic. There were scarce jobs in many industries at that time. But we also see this play out sometimes when people just don't have the confidence.

You see it play out when people are recent college graduates and they don't have a lot of experience and they're lacking confidence and they're going to career fairs. where by definition the people, the employers who are at career fairs are employers who are hiring in mass, meaning they're larger companies. And so maybe their skill set is more applicable to a smaller company, a company of five or ten people. You're not going to find those companies at career fairs. But because they're getting a skewed snapshot of who the employers are, because they're going to big career fairs and they're seeing a bunch of big Fortune 500 companies, they get this idea that, oh, jobs are scarce, and it leads them down a wrong path.

It leads them to make desperate decisions. So that idea, the idea of scarcity, often causes people to make decisions that they later need to reverse. Now, sabotaging idea number two, foot in the door. It's not necessarily productive to be in a job that isn't directly related to where you want to be. As Ashley said, you might think that you're getting your foot in the door. by taking some position, any position at all, within a given industry that you're drawn to. But if you do that, you're not priming yourself for the job that you want. Instead, you're pigeonholing yourself into a job or a position that you don't want.

You are, in effect, teaching people within that industry to view you as X role rather than Y role. So taking a job just for the purpose of getting your quote-unquote foot in the door, that may also lead you down the wrong path. Number three, networking with family and friends. Now, this may feel productive, but is it going to result in a quality job offer related to the specific career that you want to build? Ashley says that often cold connections can be better than warm ones. Probabilistically thinking, what is the likelihood that some member of your family or some friend or friend of a friend has the right connections in the right industry that can help you at exactly the right. time, from a probabilistic perspective, it's highly unlikely that through the normal course of

your day-to-day life, you will happen to know exactly the right person for exactly the right thing. And by the way, this is great news if, like me, you come from a family where you don't really have a lot of connections. I mean, I come from an immigrant family. We are new to the United States. We don't really know anyone. We didn't have any connections. And I always worried, Jesus, this is going to hurt me. Because I saw it come up throughout my life. I mean, being in elementary school, when your elementary school launches a magazine drive, and they want the kids to all sell magazines to all your family and friends.

And I'm like, all of my family lives in Kathmandu, others than my parents. So who can I really sell this to? You know, I'd see that come up time and time again, not knowing who to sell Girl Scout cookies to. You know, you see the effects of not having, being new to a place and not having a network there. And at least from my own single person anecdotal experience, I agree with Ashley. The cold connections that I make, the strangers that I've met, have been much more valuable connections than anyone who came from my childhood or who came from a family network. The connections that I've made at conferences have been far more valuable to my career than the

connections that I've made through organic happenstance in my daily life. So don't waste your time networking with family and friends. Instead, spend your time going to industry events, going to conferences, being on LinkedIn, making tailored specific connections to people who are relevant to the type of career that you want to build. And number four, the myth that something is better than nothing. This is the idea that you just need to get whatever you can get and that having a long period of unemployment on your resume, is going to look bad, so you just need to take something. The reality is there's a high opportunity cost to this. By saying yes to a job that you know you don't want, you're saying no to other

better opportunities. Now, of course, if you need a job because you need the money, well, you need the money. So you do what you got to do to survive. You do what you got to do to keep groceries in the fridge. But it may be better to take a part-time job or some sort of a a gig, drive for DoorDash or Uber Eats, do some freelancing, weight tables, downsize into an apartment. You do what you need to do in order to keep the lights on, but don't go into a career, a job with a dental plan and a 401k match. Don't go into one of those just because you think that something is better than nothing. It's better to take the time if you are able to do so. take the time to search for the right job rather than settling for the wrong job too soon.

I think the take what you can get approach is limiting so many people. Like, I just need to take a job to get my foot in the door or I just need to take what I can get. You need to trust that job opportunities are everywhere because they are. It's just a numbers game and you need to be willing to play it. And the discomfort of that is really the cost of admission for having a career you love. And so those are five frameworks that came out of this conversation with Ashley Stahl. If you would like a synopsis of today's episode, you can get one, and you can get a synopsis of all of our episodes, by subscribing at afford anything.com slash show notes.

It's completely free. You will get a write-up of every interview that we've done. You will get a description of all of our Ask Paula and Joe episodes with timestamps. All of that is available for free by going to Afford Anything.com. slash show notes and signing up to get our show notes delivered directly to you. That's afford anything.com slash show notes. Now, maybe you want to make more money. Maybe you want to change careers.

You're not happy in the job that you're in. You don't want to go back to school. You don't want to re-enroll in school, go into a bunch of debt. Like, you want to change careers without having to take on a ton of student loan debt. If you want to learn more about how you can do that, how you can make more money, Without going back to school, I am co-hosting a live event along with Jonathan from the ChooseFI podcast. So me and Jonathan on Monday, June 28 at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific, are co-hosting a virtual

live event all about how you can make more money without going back to school. If you're a fan of ChooseFI and a fan of afford anything, you're going to absolutely love this. If you are sick of hearing about side hustles, like you want a job, you don't want a bunch of of different cobwood-gather side hustles, you're going to love this. If you're not happy with the job that you have, but you don't want to enroll in grad school, the thought of going into five figures of student loan debt on the chance that it might result in a better job, the thought of that just makes your skin crawl. If that's how you're feeling, we get it, you're going to love this live event. If you are someone who's like, I really want to make more, but entrepreneurship

just isn't right for me, cool. You are absolutely going to love this. We are co-hosting a virtual live event on Monday, June 28, at 8 p.m. Eastern, you can sign up for it by going to afford anything.com slash career. That's afford anything.com slash career. C-A-R-E-R. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, share it with a friend or a family member. That's a single most important thing that you can do to spread the message of building wealth and reaching financial independence. Number two, make sure that you are following. this podcast in whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Just open up that app, hit the follow button.

And number three, while you're in that app, please leave us a review. Thanks again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pan. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.