Blaze Your Own Trail - Episode 13: From Curious to Career Consultant With Kristin Sherry

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

In the episode we talk about: Kristin in her early years How she got into business How she came up with YouMap Her books What she's up to next Get in touch with Kristin: Website: https://www.myyoumap.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinsherry/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/careerkristin/ One-on-one YouMap Consultation with Kristin: https://www.myyoumap.com/schedule-one-on-one Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone, I can't wait for you to hear this episode with Kristen Sherry. We definitely unpackage a lot, so I will get right to it, and I will chat with you right after the episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza, and I've got a very special guest with me today. Her name is Kristen Sherry. And Kristen, can you go ahead and tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Sure, thank you, Jordan. I appreciate you having me on your show.

My name is Kristen Sherry and I am a career consultant and the creator of a career profile called UMAP. And UMAP uncovers a person's four pillars of career fit. Their strengths, values, preferred skills, and personality. And what I do is I certify people such as HR folks, career services, consultants, to use that with employees, with students, or with their clients. or with their clients as the basis of self-discovery. That is awesome. And so I want to rewind a little bit and go back to Kristen in her early years.

So because I'm sure you haven't always been a career consultant. So I want to try to get some context of, you know, how this all came to fruition, how it all started. So what kind of kid were you back in the day? The two words my mother used to describe me were a going concern. My mother said I was a going concern. I was always getting into things. I was very curious and very bold and probably bossy. And essentially, I liked to push boundaries when I was a child.

So very independent. I spent a lot of time reading. climbing trees. Okay. Very good. And so how were you in high school? Were you, you know, part of any clubs or different groups or into sports, anything like that? You know, I really didn't like high school. I was bullied in high school by a guy who later reached out to me to apologize through Facebook as part of his 12-step program. It was, that was just a really bad time for me. It made me sort of withdraw and become antisocial. I really didn't know him. He targeted me and, I mean, dumped Pepsi on my head and just he prank phone called my house,

like all night long, every night through high school. So I had a really terrible, not to bring a downer on your podcast, but I had a terrible high school experience. But we're still Facebook friends this day because I forgave him when he reached out to me so sincerely and apologized. No, and I think don't apologize at all for bringing that up because, I mean, like, things happen to people, right? We go through experiences and we go through circumstances and, you know, it's a part of life, right? And the fact that he reached out to you to apologize years later, I mean, that's a big win, right? Because you don't seem like the person that tried to retaliate or tried to, you know, do anything to get back. you kind of just, you know, took it as it was and moved on, right?

I mean, it had nothing to do with me. He had a lot of issues, obviously. I think he ended up going to prison for a little while and had some addiction issues. So it had nothing to do with me, which is why it was so easy to forgive him, because how could I hold a grudge against somebody who was unwell? I mean, I couldn't anyway. So it was an easy decision to accept his appointment. and to forgive him. And it was really nice because I feel like that was a part of my life that was

very hard and it was stressful for my family as well. So it closed the chapter. It gave me disclosure and I didn't, it doesn't bother me anymore. I can talk about it. It's not hurtful. It doesn't cause me pain. It's really just an observation of the past when I share it now. There's no hurt associated with it. Yeah. And I think that. that's a testament of, you know, your character to be able to, you know, for one, handle it and then for to be able to, you know, forgive the person. And like you said, close that chapter because now you sharing that, there's going to be someone in the audience listening that says, man, like, I had a similar experience and the grace that you've shown through that and to be able to forgive.

I think that will really speak to some people. I hope so because holding on to that stuff is really quite toxic for yourself. But to answer your other question, I was an athlete. So I played baseball. I did track and field. And I played baseball up until I was about 19. I played fast pitch on an all-star traveling team in a province of Ontario where I grew up. So I followed in my dad's footsteps.

He was a lover of baseball and played baseball. and I think I did it to have that hobby in common with him more than anything. But yeah, so I was an athlete. I also was a martial artist. I took karate, Wadokai karate. That is awesome. And so let's talk about baseball for a second because you said you followed and your dad's footsteps, you know, wanted to make him proud by playing the same sport that he played.

Now, when you think about baseball and you think about business, right, you're an entrepreneur, or you've got a business. How do those two things translate and kind of meld together, if you will? Well, I played first base, and so I was involved in every play because you're always throwing to first base. Well, I say that. If somebody really hit it, hit it out and was going to get a home run, it would never make it to me. But for the most part, unless somebody didn't catch that, that hit, they were throwing it to me. and I felt like that in business. Like, it's all on me when I first started my company that I had to be involved in every

play. And then I realized, no, I don't have to be involved in every play. I can have other people do things. I was kind of control freak woman when I first started my business where, and I'm not a micromanager of people, but of the products and services, I was very much, I have to do everything. And ever since I've realized that baseball is a team sport and entrepreneurship can be as well and brought people in to help me, my life got a lot happier. Yeah, because there's, you know, there's more than one player on the field, right? And so,

and certain people might have different skills and abilities and, you know, they might actually have your business thrive because of what they bring to the table and into the various outlets of your company. So that's awesome that you, you know, looked at it from a different perspective and, you know, because it's exhausting, right? Like when you're doing everything, it definitely isn't easy and it can be super exhausting and hard. So, you know, being able to have people that you count on for in various things, I'm sure it's made a big impact. Is that right? Well, it absolutely did in terms of my own job satisfaction. But let's be honest, I have to practice what I preach. I equip people to help other people know what their burnout skills are,

the skills they enjoy and are good at, their natural talents, how they should, the roles they should be playing in their business, because some of our UMAP coaches, coach entrepreneurs and help them figure out what services they should provide and the role they should play in their business. And I, because that was at the forefront of my mind, I thought, I need to go through my UMAP and figure out what I need to not be doing. And so I did that. And my life satisfaction skyrocketed when I was no longer doing administrative and project-based work. I don't like projects. I don't like administrative work. And I honestly don't like, it sounds funny to say, but I don't like a lot of collaboration. I like to know. And I like to brainstorm collaboratively,

but I don't like to execute collaboratively. Well, I think those are definitely important things to know about yourself, right? And I'm actually very similar in the regard that I do not like the administrative end, right? I think in my corporate role, you have to do it, right? It's part of your responsibilities. And so things like expense reports and spreadsheets and all of the things that drive me absolutely bananas, like I have to do that because it's important for. me to have a position in the organization, right? Like, because if it were up to me, I would just be

creating the content and facilitating the content and, you know, social media, like all the things that I have strengths in, but, you know, there are times when you cannot always operate in all of the strengths that you have. You know what I've, you've touched on something really important. You know what I noticed of why I didn't like working in the corporate world? So if you look at talent, people's natural gifting, it tends to be in four areas. People are gifted at building one-on-one connections with people. They're gifted in influencing, persuading, and motivating people to action. They're gifted in getting results by doing, and they're gifted in thinking talents like futuristic thinking and learning quickly and strategy and analysis and things like that.

Well, I don't have any of the executing talents about putting hand to plow and getting things done that way, like the spreadsheets and the reports and all of that. But what tends to happen is a lot of managers don't understand that there's tremendous value in things that don't necessarily have a tangible outcome that you can see and feel in touch. like building strong relationships and visionary thinking. If you're not putting, you know, creating output, what are we paying you for? And so a lot of the workforce is relegated to becoming worker bees when their actual talent might be envisioning something and then exerting influence to get other people to do it. That makes a lot of sense. Makes a ton of sense, right?

And I think if more people were to be able to like take that for face value, there'd be a lot more happy employees at a lot of different organizations. Absolutely. It's really so interesting to me how I can look at data of a person, what their talents are, what their values are, what their skills are. And I can look at that data and say to them, you know, if you made just a couple of tweaks, you would feel like, like you had a different job. You don't necessarily have to abandon your entire career and go into a new role. If someone just has a, it's like when you have a cylinder misfiring in your car or a spark plug isn't firing. I'm not a mechanic, so I don't, I'm probably butchering the terms. You don't scrap the car and buy a new car. You do the maintenance, right, so that all cylinders are firing.

And managers could really save themselves a lot of effort by getting to know what motivates their employees and making small tweaks. It's so much less work for that manager to have to hire a new person, go through the whole hiring process. It's much less work for them to just do some small tweaks with their employees instead of that person leaving. That's absolutely right. And so, you know, we've we've talked kind of offline about this before, but I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of assessments. You know, I've taken and I facilitate a class on the, you know, strengths finder, which is now the Clifton Strengths Assessment. You know, I facilitate a class in the leadership program for the emotional intelligence assessment, and I'm certified in Myers-Briggs. So what I want to find out is, would you, just knowing me, and, you know, we've kind of built this relationship about, I don't know, six or seven months, and a lot of this was just,

through LinkedIn, would you be able to guess one of my top five strengths? One of your top five strengths? If I had to guess, I would say you have Wu winning others over. Okay, survey says, it's probably number six. I thought I thought I should, I thought Wu was going to be in there too. And I was like, it's got to be number six. Like, it's got to be number six, you know. So that actually is not one of mine. You have community. Yes, that is number three. Oh, I'm doing well, huh? Yeah, number three, communication.

Okay, so give me a hint. Are your other themes, I would guess you have more people facing strengths than inward. So you're probably going to have more relating and influencing strengths than you have the N-word executing and thinking. Is that right? Yeah, so here we'll run them down the list. And I've never done this on an episode. So I think this is kind of cool. I'm excited.

So my top five are number one is self-assurance. Oh, I love that. Number two is Activator. I was going to guess Activator. Three is communication. Four is strategic and five is Achiever. Okay. So you have self-assurance, activator.

Communication, strategic, and achiever. Okay. So it's really, I love this. So the way Jordan shows up in the world is he's got this inner compass and he's confident in the decisions that he makes. And it influences people to listen to you or to or even agree with you or to go along with your decision because you seem so self-assured in a world where the majority of people suffer with imposter syndrome and lack confidence. It is in the bottom quartile self-assurance, the bottom quartile in frequency in the population. It's not a common strength. In fact, I've coached over 2,000 people one-on-one in Strengthsfinder, and I've probably met

six people who have this. Wow. I mean, it's even less rare than that. So you're very self-assured about your decisions. And once you've decided, you want to get going. You want to turn that thought into action. you're very creative in turning your thoughts and ideas into programs and services or training or whatever you're trying to create. But you have this sense of urgency to get started, but there's

always a thought or an idea behind that action. And you influence other people because you say, let's go through your communication. You start to sort of sell your idea to people and get them on board and build alignment around this whatever it is that you want to start doing and using your communication you host and describe and facilitate and you're really good which is why you have a podcast because you have communication in your top five really good at describing your thoughts and feelings and other people as well but because you have strategic you know the best way to get that whatever it is done you can see you start with the end of what we're going to try and do, what this activator wants to do,

and then you work backwards and look at all the options and immediately figure out this is the right one. This is going to be the most efficient, effective, best way to get this done. And then your achiever gives you that tremendous power and drive to keep pushing to pull that vision into reality. Does that sound anything like you? That sounds exactly like me, which is amazing. And it's so funny because, you know, when I wanted to launch this podcast, and a lot of people don't really know this, I think I've maybe shared this on one or two episodes with guests, but I originally started a show. I recorded two episodes on Buzz Sprout. They probably are out in the internet world somewhere. No one's probably listened to

them. But I wasn't committed to the title. I wasn't committed to the content. And so I scrap the whole thing. And then it was probably not until September. I was like, you know what? I need to launch this show. I now know what I want the title to be to be. So the title, Blaze Your Own Trail is I wanted to interview people that have blazed their own trail in business in life and really share their stories with the world. And I'm also from Portland, Oregon. I'm a massive Trailblazers fan. So I got the show I wanted with a dual meaning, right? And then once I knew that, I said, I want to launch on New Year's Day.

And I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to figure this out. And on New Year's Day, I launched with three episodes, you know. So, but, you know, the way that you explain it is exactly the way that I think. You know, I get something. I get an idea. I'm super confident in everything, even if it's not the best idea in the end. Like, I'm super confident that it's going to work. And it's funny sometimes, like, when I'm like, hey, let's do this.

This is amazing. Let's do it. And then someone's like, yeah, that's a great idea. but no, and I'm just like, you know, I get brought back down to earth, you know. But I'm like, I'm okay because I'm like, all right, well, I've got more ideas. So let me, you know, work on these other things. So I think you did a great job of piecing that together. And that makes a lot of sense on why that's part of your business.

And you know what? Your strengths are in the title of your podcast. Blaze Your Own Trail speaks confidence into people, right? it has a sense of urgency of activator it has a sense of that personal power that you get from achiever and strategic speaks to the trail like this is your path i know the best path for me and the and just the phrasing is is very powerful from a communication point of view so i actually see your strengths in the title of your podcast that's awesome see i i i did not make that correlation, but now that you brought it up and you've been able to decipher this,

it definitely makes a lot of sense. People speak their strengths. Our strengths are what set our priorities every day. And if you listen to what people say, even their LinkedIn headlines when they have phrases and sentences, I can tell, I play this game. I'll ask people, do you have whatever in your top five, if they've done GAL, up and they're like, yeah, I do. How did you know? I'm like, because we speak our strengths and it's in your headline. That is awesome. All right. So let's talk a little bit about business because

I want to really find out when you knew that, you know, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to have my own business and these are the types of services I want to offer. These are the type of people I want to impact. So, you know, where were you? When was this? And how did, kind of the first iteration of your company come to fruition? I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur as soon as I became career-minded. So I would say that would probably be high school. But I thought that I had to go and pay my dues in the business world until I was about 40 and then people would take me seriously.

So I thought I have to go get a series of jobs, get some knowledge, build some skill, and then I can be an entrepreneur. But when I started working, I would sit at my desk and try to ideate products that I could invent. So I could quit my job. And it didn't occur to me until later that I could be an entrepreneur that offered services instead of products. But I was a programmer for a lot of years. And I would sit at my desk while I was writing code and try to invent things. I have ideation in my top five strengths.

So I'm a huge idea person. And that's how I would spend a lot of my time doing this serial processing while I was writing code is trying to invent products. What is a problem? I literally used to say that to myself before it was popular before the cool kids were saying it. What's a problem I have in my life that I could create an invention to solve? And that's what I did with UMAP. The problem I had as a career coach is I didn't have a tool that was holistic. So I thought, well, I have to create one.

That's awesome. And so when did the first version of the assessment? Because I'm assuming I don't really know the background of it, that it had to have kind of evolved from kind of the first ideas that you laid out. So, you know, what did it look like in the beginning? And then tell the audience a little bit about, give them some context of what all is involved in that assessment today. So at first, I was trying to patch together.

I've always known, I'm a holistic thinker. I'm a systems thinker. I'm a big picture thinker. So I've always known that I needed more than one tool to look at a person because that's like a one-legged stool. So I was using other people's tools. So I got a lot of certifications. I got certified in a number of tools like workplace, big,

5 and and disc and a few other ones. And I started piecing things together. And I was always mindful of, is this more information than I need? Because I have strategic too. So I can always find the shortest path to a goal. So I don't over assess my clients. I wanted the bare minimum information I needed to know to crack that person's puzzle, if you will. So it started by going in, into coaching forums and saying, what tools do you use and what are you using? I knew Strengths Finder was definitely a tool I needed to use because I've been using it since 2004. And so I knew I needed to know a person's talent. But I started talking to people and listening to what they were telling me about why they didn't like their job. And I started to see patterns

of I'm underwater or no matter how much I try, I'm just not good. at this work and I'm on a performance plan and I just doesn't matter how much effort I don't get any better or they would say I'm really bored and unchallenged and that's people not using their talents then people would say to me I'm so stressed at work I feel like I'm going to have a nervous breakdown I'm having panic attacks I'm going to have to go out on medical leave you don't go out on medical leave and break out in hives because you're not using your talent at work those are values violations. I started to connect the dots of what people would say.

My manager disrespects me. They yell at me in front of other employees, and they valued things like respect. So I thought, okay, I have to have a values piece in here to understand when people have conflict, a lot of times you're crossing someone's values, right? So I value autonomy and you're pinching my freedom by managing me to. closely or I value accomplishment and growth and I'm doing this routine repetitive job and my manager won't give me any stretch opportunities. So that's how the values piece came in and I couldn't find a values assessment I liked. So I created my own and I started testing it on job seekers

because I actually served in a nonprofit with job seekers. So I had all these job seekers I could test my process on. And then I thought, okay, when people say things like I'm really wiped out at the end of the day, I'm so tired. I have no energy. I knew people were doing burnout skills, right? You're having to do detailed spreadsheets all day, but you're this relationship-oriented person or whatever. So I was using a skills assessment that I had found online, but ended up building my own.

And then the last pillar, I noticed that people, people would say things like, I'm just not interested in this. I don't feel like this fits who I am, and that was the personality piece. So at first, UMAP was literally a word document that I would piece together and paste data in this word document. And I thought to myself, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to hire a designer and make it professional. And that's how it turned into a professional assessment. Well, ultimately, my clients started sharing it with people, and the first person to call me was a recruiter. Where can I get this? I want to use this. And I thought, well, oh, I just use it with my clients. I wasn't intending on opening it up to anyone. And she said, would you train me to use it?

And I said, all right. So I built the certification program. And the rest is history. I've certified 65 people around the world now. that what an awesome story you know and and journey right and you know you and really this is this has come from your childhood years right like like i see a lot of the kid still having a conversation with that kid right now that you know saw saw things and and wanted to figure out how to make them better right and oh yeah maximizer's one of my driving strengths i like to take things from good to great and make them better. That's awesome.

So awesome. So let's talk a little bit about the book. And then I know we were talking offline and, you know, you actually have several books. So for the audience, just so they can get some context. And, you know, your books are all about, you know, helping others grow, helping people grow. So I think the audience will get a lot of value in, you know, going from first, to the latest. And then we'll kind of wrap it up with some of the other projects that you're working on and let everyone know where they can find you because I think you've provided a lot of value

and there are going to be people that say, you know what? That sounds like me. I'm in that position and I think I would benefit from the assessment or one of the other endeavors you've got going on. Yeah, so the first book I wrote was called Follow Your Star, Career Lessons I Learned from Mom. And that book is a women's empowerment book. It's based on the five success factors for women. What are the five things that if you exert effort, you will level up your career? So I give strategies how to build those five areas. The second book I wrote was called Five Surprising Steps to Land the Job Now.

And I literally wrote that book because people just kept I-Ming me or DMing me on LinkedIn saying, hey, I've got an interview, any advice? And I got so tired of answering it over and over. and over again that I wrote an interview book and just threw it up for like five bucks on Amazon so I could send the link save myself some time and you know it's been it's really interesting because it has like 19 five star reviews it's like one of my most effective books because people always get an offer I've had people who had two years of interviewing and no offers and then they read the book and got their next the next interview they got an offer but I never talk about it even though it's

really effective. I don't know. I should probably mention it. People are going to go now. Yeah. And then book three was UMAP, which is, of course, what we just talked about, your four pillars of career fit. My fourth book is, your team loves Mondays, right? And essentially, it's a management book to help managers not suck. It just helps them really build their skill on hiring their right people and knowing how to onboard people properly and train them and retain them and develop them and offboard them if needed. And I'm working on a book right now called Maximize 365, and it's a year of practical tips to level up your life, essentially.

And I'm also writing a children's book, and it's a pre-career book for kids to discover who they are. That's amazing. And so really, you know, with all of your books, you're hitting a lot of different audiences, which is fantastic. And, you know, they truly are books that, that in my eyes are going to make an impact for people, whether it's with direction or empowering them, you know, like those are all super important things to have out into the world. So definitely

congrats on all of the success with the books. And so where's the best place to find Christian Sherry if someone wants to reach out. If someone hears this episode and just says, hey, thanks. I would love to get in touch with you to find out about these books or the UMAP assessment. Where is the best place to find you? Probably through myUmap.com. You can contact me through the website. I would say LinkedIn, as long as you know how to spell my name. Yeah, Kristen Sherry on LinkedIn, I think there's maybe seven of us on there, but I'm the one in North Carolina.

Okay. Well, very good. And listen, I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. You're writing like three more books right now, right? One launching and writing two others. So I'm sure that you've got other things going on. So I appreciate you taking the time tonight. And everybody, that was Kristen Sherry.

You can find her on LinkedIn. I'll put a link to her website as well down in the show notes. Thank you so much, Kristen, for coming on. Thank you, Jordan. It was a pleasure. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Kristen. Wow, she's a powerhouse.

She's got so much going on. many different accomplishments. If you enjoyed it, please, please, please make sure you subscribe and share the podcast with your friends so that they can hear these conversations as well. I thank you so much for the support and I can't wait to share the next episode with you soon.