the bossbabe podcast - 84. Not An Entrepreneur? Here's How to get Clear on your next Career Move

Episode Date: March 7, 2020

If you’re struggling with what career path to pursue in life, then we have the perfect guest on The BossBabe Podcast to help you. Ashley Stahl is a career coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and host of the You Turn podcast. Before that, she was a counterterrorism professional for the American government.  Ashley shares her inspiring career evolution and the lessons that she’s learned along the way when it comes to discovering your ideal career path. She now helps thousands of people with finding career clarity through her online courses and private coaching. Ashley gives us actionable tips on how to identify your personality type and core skill sets so that you can zone in on what gives you fulfillment, purpose and the ability to create impact.  Ready to find your ideal career path? Tune in to this episode and take our Career Clarity Quiz at the end!  Find Your Ideal Career Path: bossbabe.com/clarityquiz  Get that glowy, dewy skin for yourself. Learn more and take the quiz to find your ultimate Glossier skincare routine. Plus, all new customers will get 10% off their first order on glossier.com/podcast/BOSSBABE

It is these high impact moments in our lives that we tend to make career decisions that we don't even realize that we're making. You don't know what you don't know about what's out there for you. Your degree and your past is here to serve you. You are not here to serve it. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, president and co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for this week's episode.

Now, I am so excited about this episode because as you guys know we really over deliver in the space of female entrepreneurship. That's why this podcast generally talks around being in business and starting and scaling a business but today's episode is a little bit different and super special because we are actually talking about progressing along the career ladder and you guys know that I was not a born entrepreneur. I was not the child who was selling sweets to the local children in the area. I actually fell into entrepreneurship much later and by accident. And so one thing I've been really passionate about at Boss Babe is not only delivering amazing products for female entrepreneurs, but actually starting to help those who want to progress at the career ladder. And really just recognizing

that sometimes that can actually be really, really challenging and you don't even know where to start sometimes you're kind of feeling like oh am I doing the right career do I enjoy this do I love this like this isn't I'm not quite happy here like where do I turn like what direction I can take and when I was looking at this there really is not that much guidance out there and you know from my experience and you're hearing the story I remember being asked at 14 to choose exactly what career I wanted to go in and I'm a completely different person as I was at 14 and so we really wanted to serve those ambitious women out there who are actually yes I don't want to be a female entrepreneur but I am ambitious and I do want to be successful and I want to have some help getting there so I'm really excited about this episode because I've actually

invited on an amazing career coach Ashley Stahl Now I have to say this woman is absolutely beautiful on the inside and out. And this interview is so inspiring. The value that she offers is next level. So I'm really, really excited for you guys to listen. And if any of you are in that space where you're just kind of thinking, I don't know what to do in my career, I don't know what's next, and I really want to seek clarity, then you are going to get so much from this interview. And one thing that's really amazing is Ashley actually shares so much of her experience because she actually started being a counter terrorism professional for the American government. And she actually switched to helping thousands of people really find their career clarity. And so I just know that, you know, you're going to want

to have your notepads and pens and make sure that you're taking notes and actually Ashley and I share an amazing new tool that we have created at Boss Baby we've been working on it for months so I'm really really excited that we actually get to present it to you guys and that is a free quiz completely free quiz helping you find clarity in your career so this is is going to be an amazing tool. I know it's going to help so many of you. It's completely free. You can find it at bossbib.com forward slash clarity quiz. So if you are a career woman and you are looking to gain clarity on your next step, then go and take that quiz. It's absolutely amazing. Bossbib.com forward slash clarity quiz. You're going to hear Ashley talk about it in a little more detail throughout this episode,

but I know that it was really going to help you find the next step so I would love for you to share your insights from this episode please tag myself at Danielle Canty tag at bossbabe.inc and also tag Ashley Starr and we really look forward to hearing all your takeaways a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe Podcast, Ashley. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to share all of the things about clarity with this community.

I am particularly excited about this episode because most people know us for delivering amazing content for ambitious women, but we actually do most of it for female entrepreneurs. So I'm really, really excited today to be actually talking about careers because a lot of people don't know is that I actually had a career before Boss Babe, whereas Nastia was like this born entrepreneur and always kind of moved in this entrepreneurial circle. She was the kid selling candy floss. Actually, I think you guys in America call it something different, but she was the kid like selling sweets, et cetera. Whereas I was the one who had like four jobs at a time and was like hustling. So before actually

transitioning into Boss Babe and becoming an entrepreneur, I was actually trained as a chiropractor. So I really relate to kind of feeling a little bit lost in career or really having that kind of, you know, desire to move up the ladder, which I feel like so many of these listeners actually really, really relate to. So I'm really excited to be diving into all things career driven, because you have had an amazing, amazing career. You were professional in national security, but you turned career coach and you've been helping women decide and gain clarity on their career. So I am ready to dive in. Woohoo. Yeah. It's always interesting when I look back on my early twenties and think about

running a program for the Pentagon and working in counterterrorism, not your usual experience in the workforce, but it wasn't always that flashy. My first job out of graduate school was as an admin assistant. And I remember sitting in my desk and feeling like, wow, if I don't come to work today, the world is no different. Worst case scenario, somebody's calendar or scheduling isn't going to be perfect. They'll have to order an Uber because their car service didn't show up when they were on travel. And I'm just not really making an impact. And I think for a lot of people, the most painful thing in the world isn't hating your job. It's not knowing where to go next. Because when you sit in that hopelessness of not knowing how to fix the problem, where to go. It's unlike anything

else I've ever experienced. And I didn't have the tools that I have now. I didn't have the understanding that I have now as a career expert on what it really was going to take for me to figure out my dream career path, what really made sense for me. And it's just been such an honor to be helping people in this way, because I know that there are very few pains in life quite like not knowing where to go and yearning for some sort of purpose fulfillment or impact yeah and because let's face it you know you go to work for eight hours at least every single day and when you're not having that fulfillment and that impact that's painful and actually that's not how we want to be living our lives so I'm really excited to be like you know I know you're going to share a bit more of your journey now and opening this conversation out to be like, yeah,

you know what? Like we're so used to looking at the social, the highlight reels on social media and everyone's saying how wonderful their lives are. But the reality is a lot of people are in careers that they are not enjoying and don't know where to go. So first of all, how did you find yourself in national security, in counterterrorism, actually? Because you're right, this was not a normal career path for a young woman. Yeah, it's interesting. I was always really curious about people. I remember in college going to the career services office because I had to pick a major and I felt totally overwhelmed at the thought of committing to something because I didn't even know who I was,

let alone what career path would make sense for me. And I think at a very young age, we're told to be a veterinarian, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a firefighter. It's like these are the careers we're presented. And now as a career coach, I'm aware whether I'm helping somebody with their job hunt or with their clarity, there are so many different careers that you haven't even thought about, even if you know what you're meant to be doing, or you have some ideas on it. And in my case, I walked in and she said all the things that everybody always says to you. She said, follow your passion, follow your bliss, do what you love, the money will follow. All of these trite sayings that really were a fast track for me to nowhere. And I found over the years in this space that that really is the case for anyone that

follow your passion isn't exactly the best advice. And in my case, that was all I could really do. So what did I do? I decided to major in government history and French more because I was indecisive and I didn't know which one to choose. I did a triple major. I was the only graduate to focus on all three. Wow. I remember it's so random and going to France to study abroad in 2008.

And I was so lucky that I got the scholarship to be able to do that. And there was this moment, it was a rainy Sunday. And I remember looking around and hearing a slap sound in an alleyway. And I was studying government history at the time, my junior year. And I was totally interested and curious about what was going on in the Middle East. I had family in New York on 9-11. So I was really impacted by that, left a mark on me. And I remember turning around in the alleyway and noticing this man hit his wife and she had a baby in her arms. Yeah. And the baby was crying and he was yelling at her in a language that I wasn't familiar with. And she locked eyes with me for one quick moment in the rain. And I remember looking around, trying to find a police

officer, trying to get her help. And it was in that moment that I wanted to save her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to spare her. But instead, I made a career decision about her. And it is these high impact moments in our lives that we tend to make career decisions that we don't even realize that we're making because we're not conscious to the meaning that we're making of our experiences and how they lend themselves to our career decisions. So anybody who's listening to us in this moment, I would just advise them to ask themselves, what moments in your life became career decisions for you? Because for me, seeing this woman get slapped, I immediately, after studying government, thought I'm going into national security. I want

to protect people. I want to make an impact and I want to help women. And the way that was current that I knew how to do that was working in counterterrorism. It was, you know, at any given moment, if you turn on the news, everybody was talking about Al Qaeda. ISIS wasn't a thing yet. I was studying Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb. I was studying Arabic and French. I hadn't started studying Arabic quite yet, but I was fluent in French. And that kind of opened the door for me to understanding North Africa and being able to speak the language there. And I told myself in that moment, I'm going to pour every piece of myself into this career path. I'm going to study the language. I'm going to outwork everyone and I'm going to join the CIA. And from that moment on, I did everything right. I got the degrees.

I went to a top school I could out in the UK at King's College London to get my master's in the Department of War Studies. I invested all of myself into this career. And then I came home to Los Angeles ready to get that dream job in DC. And there were moments along the way that these little whispers would come up in my mind. And the whisper would say something to me like, this is an interest for you. This is not a calling. And I remember in grad school, particularly, I was around people who were obsessed with national security and studying. And after getting out of a three-hour lecture, they wanted to keep talking about it over happy hour, whereas I was just interested. And if you are going to join or choose a career path where

you need to be immersed in some sort of subject matter, you need to be obsessed. And if you are going to join or choose a career path where you need to be immersed in some sort of subject matter, you need to be obsessed. And that difference of being interested versus obsessed with something is at the core of all of my different frameworks that I teach job seekers and people who are seeking career clarity now in my career fit formula of really understanding what's the difference between an obsession and an interest. When should you promote an interest into a career path? So in my case, I came back to LA, I had some questions inside like, am I actually meant for this career path? Or is this just an interest of mine? Am I meant to read The Economist on a Sunday or turn it into an entire career? And I applied, I applied,

I applied and ended up getting no job offers after months, sleeping on my mom and dad's couch, just wondering when it would change for me. And finally, I bought into the myth that I just had to take what I could get and that there wasn't anything out there for me or that in the recession, that this was just going to be my new normal. And so eventually, I just took a job to get my foot in the door, which is one of the biggest mistakes any job seeker can make because taking a job to get your foot in the door usually pigeonholes you. You come in with an agenda to get some other job, but usually the person hiring you has an agenda to train you and invest in you to keep you in that job. So I ended up taking this admin assistant job and just feeling that despair of, wow, is this really it for me? And I held onto my plan to work in counterterrorism,

even though I knew it wasn't right for me because I was petrified of not having a plan. I was petrified of looking myself in the mirror and saying, you know what, where you are sucks. And I actually don't even know where I'm truly supposed to go, but I've really invested years of my life into this counterterrorism thing and I don't want to waste it. So I'm going to go to DC and give it a fair shot. And I think so many people will put so much time into a career that they're not meant for because they have the belief that they wasted time to get there. And it will never cease to amaze me the amount of time people will continue to chug along in a career path that they're not meant for because of the time they put into it. And I always remind clients, it's like your degree

and your past is here to serve you. You are not here to serve it. I ended up just stuffing it down, not wanting to listen to that voice in my head and making my way out to DC. And the way that I did it is actually quite interesting and lends itself to a lot of my job hunting frameworks now, which kind of taught me how to be a career coach was I contacted my university. I said, do you have a list of people who graduated and moved to DC? And they sent me a list of 2000 names, emails, and phone numbers. And I worked my way through those 2000. I had cold called and cold emailed all of those people over six months. And I mean, obviously the nature of a counterterrorism national security job lends itself to privacy. So it was like a whole nother level of cold calling and rejection,

you know, like people being like, who is this girl? I'm like, I'm an alumni. Can you help? How did she get my number? I would think. And from there, I ended up getting the confidence to move to DC. And over the course of six weeks, I went from being that admin assistant making barely minimum wage in Los Angeles to getting three job offers, tripling my salary and running a program for the Pentagon. And the biggest thing I learned that I would say to anybody listening now is when you follow what feels right for you in some way, even if it's not 100% right. If you're being pulled, trust that your purpose, what you're really supposed to be doing in the

workforce or not in the workforce as an entrepreneur is either right in front of you or on the periphery of that. And following my itch to job hunt and go to DC, even though there were these whispers inside of me saying that it was a maybe for me, ended up serving me in so many ways. And when I finally got to the Pentagon, I replaced a colonel who they told me, he really wants to delegate because that's what you learn in the military. We need somebody who's hyper and energized and willing to do all of this work. And I was like, that's me. Two hands in the air. Yeah. I got it. I'm willing to do all of this work. And I was like, that's me. Two hands in the air. Yeah, like, I got it. I'm ready to do it all. I was so hyper and excited about this career path.

And so I kind of walked into the building. But you know, from day one, those whispers got louder and really turned into a scream of this isn't the path for you either. And I got this fear of, oh my gosh, I was an admin assistant. It was so empty for me and unfulfilling. And now I pursued the thing I thought maybe would be it. And it's definitely not. Now, who am I? Now, where do I belong? Now, what am I meant for? And what I noticed later was on the periphery of that, people were asking me, hey, can you help me with my job hunt? You've got so many job offers. How are you making six figures? You know, I was 23 years old and I was in this leadership position

and I was doing well at my job, even if it wasn't the best job for me. And I remember thinking to myself and anybody who's listening, it's like, if you are doing a good job in a job you don't like or where you feel like something's missing for you, imagine what kind of job

and how much you would thrive in a job that you would do if you loved what you were doing. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped

us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe yeah yeah and i ended up teaching people how to job hunt just as friends i'd say hey meet me at starbucks and we would sit in dupont circle in washington dc and what was one person on the

weekend turned into three people turned into 40 people turned into me getting kicked out of starbucks because i was literally using it as a workshop and then people said you, you should be a career coach. And I was like, what is that? Like, all I heard of was like a hockey or a basketball coach. Like, do they cheer on the sidelines of your career? You know? And then I ended up looking up career coaching online and I saw a bunch of purple websites and rainbows and waterfalls and was like, oh my gosh, no way. I'm not going to be one of these. And then I became one and I've since been doing it for 10 years. And I'm just so honored to be helping so many people land job offers, figure out what they're meant to do in their career path and just help them understand what options exist for them because you don't know

what you don't know about what's out there for you, you know, until usually somebody will tell you or help teach you what it looks like. I completely agree with that. And I just think it's mind blowing that, you know, the only bit of career advice most people get is when they're at school and you're expected to make decisions that affect your whole life. And then we also never really invest in like looking at whether that decision was right. We invest so much in going to colleges. We invest so much in various different points of our lives, but we don't actually invest in the thing that we're doing 40 hours a week and actually going, actually, is this right for me? Do I want to move forwards with this? So, you know, I feel like there's a big cultural piece that's previously

been missing, but I think now people are actually open to opportunities and, you know, that's what's created positions like yours where people need career advice. Like people want it. And actually people do want to sit down and kind of go, oh, you know, am I happy doing this? And one thing that you said that really stood out for me is, well, there were two things that you said about getting your foot in the door. And I remember that being said so many times. And I think so many people will have done that,

that have got their foot in the door. And then 10 years later, that foot is still in that same door. And what was going to be just a one year thing or a few month thing is actually now a career. And it's like, oh, well, I've invested this time in this. I'm scared to start again. But the way I see it, and I actually talk about this a lot with entrepreneurs, I have a lot of people in as part of the boss community that change careers or change from a career to a business. And they feel like when they're starting even a new business, they're starting at scratch and they're not. You are starting with all of that experience.

So even if you did want to change career, or even if you do want to pivot, those five years, six years, 10 years before it are always going to help you. Yes, it might be easier the sooner you do it, the better, but it's always going to help you. Is that your experience? Like what are some of the things that most people come and talk to you about as a career coach, Ashley? Well, I mean, gosh, there's so many great things you just covered there. I think first, just this topic of clarity. I think not having clarity is incredibly expensive for your career financially and also emotionally, spiritually, because when you don't have clarity, you just keep hopping around trying to scratch that itch of something missing.

And either it's emotionally expensive because you stay where you are stuck and you're unhappy, or it's financially expensive because you keep turning your resume into this graveyard of trial and error without any intentionality because you didn't invest in your career because there were no options to do that. I didn't have one class that I heard about when I was growing up that actually seemed like it could help me in my career. And it's so amazing that now we are in this digital age where there is so much for people to invest in and learn. And on that note, it's like you spend 90,000 hours of your waking time on this planet on average at work. And so chances are, if you hate your job, you kind of hate your life. And it doesn't have to be that way. And so I would say a lot of people come to me saying, I need clarity. And that to me itself is also a myth because it's not that people need

clarity. It's usually that they need to connect with themselves. When you're connected to yourself, you know what your interests are, your likes are, your passions are, your skills are, it becomes quite easy to say, okay, this is who I am. What's a match for it in the workforce? I think the work that I do as a career coach is just having a really good aperture open of what the options are, what career paths exist that people might not have heard of. I mean, I've worked with everybody from a celebrity who doesn't want to be in movies anymore to a taste tester, a beverage brand who wants to taste test or become somebody else to a doctor, to a lawyer, to an assistant. I mean, it's across the board. But one thing is for sure, kind of going back to what you were saying, taking a job to get your foot in the door, it just doesn't work. And you're exactly right. You either get your foot

stuck in the door, but more importantly, you're making a career choice out of scarcity and out of reactivity, which is one of the most powerless places you can be when you choose your career path. When you are trying to get your foot in the door, what you're really saying is, I can't get what I actually want. I can't start at the bottom of a ladder that I actually want to climb. And so I just need to take something else and hope somebody notices me or cares about me enough to hear what I want. It's just such a scarce approach. The reality of that is that an employer is going to invest in you. Meanwhile, somebody else is going to come in when there's finally an opening on the team you want to be on. They're going to fill that job because you're doing your job that they hired you for perfectly. And it just takes a lot of time. And that's why

I'm so passionate about teaching people not only what their options are, but how to job hunt. Because when you know how to job hunt, when you know how to create options for yourself, it's your golden ticket in your career. It helps you open doors. It helps you ask for what you actually want and get what you actually want versus wasting so much time doing things you don't want to do. That being said, or you talked about this idea of taking your past and making it make sense for your future, especially if you're making a career pivot. And that touches on one of the biggest misunderstandings I think people have in their career is that if they were a marketing person for five years or 10 years or even three years, how do they make that pivot into something different, whether it's finance or tech or whatever have you. And here's the truth of the matter.

All of your experience counts. And your resume is a document that highlights your relevant experience, emphasis on relevance. So what you need to ask yourself when you're making a career pivot is what experience, what function, what skill set is relevant for the future of where I'm headed, of where I want to be going, and how do I pull from the thread of my past and look at ways that I've used that skill set that would be relevant for the future. And of course, that takes quite a bit of clarity. I think one of the biggest mistakes people often make when they're on that quest for clarity is they focus too much on what industry that they should be in. Do I want to be in entertainment? Do I want to be in cosmetics? Do I want to be in whatever? And it's like each of those industries are like pies with many different slices.

If you say, do I want to be in marketing or do I want to be in entertainment, for example, it's like entertainment has many different functions within it. You could be a lawyer in entertainment doing legal. You could be a finance person in entertainment. And that's where people get really stuck. I'm going to go into this industry. And then they lower their standard of exactly what they should be doing, what slice of that pie they want to be eating. Or worse, they'll go into an industry, like in my case, I was in government and I had a client I remember who she was at the State Department and she kind of did that approach of like, take a job to get my foot in the door. I just need a government job. And I've coached so

many people that are not in the government, but this is what's just coming to mind. And it kind of applies across the board. She ended up on the Africa desk, but she had studied the European Union. And so it was like, she came to me and said, you know, I don't know if government is actually for me, or I don't know if the state department is actually for me. So she was ready to throw away the entire pie. And I think this is what gets people stuck in their career. So maybe you work in marketing and you're doing it in the fashion world, but really you want to do marketing for tech. It's very tempting to say, wow, maybe this whole thing isn't for me. I see it a lot with sales, especially. People think sales aren't for them because they don't want to be doing cold calling, but there's many versions, many shades of sales. There's account management,

which is managing an existing portfolio of clients. There's partnerships, using your people skills to create collaborations. There's cold calling. I mean, there's so many different ways to do sales that are not just smile and dial. And people end up throwing away the whole pie versus questioning whether there's the wrong nuance that they're in. I think that is so true. I think as well, it's because people get to the end of their tether with it. It's like, you can't see the wood from the trees because you're so in it and it feels so hard in that moment that people kind of miss like, oh, actually, if I just deviated here, like I think it's sometimes it's like very easy for someone on the outside to kind of look in,

or if you're to like walk through a process to discover that so as a career clarity coach like let's say someone comes to you and they're just like look Ashley I am so unhappy in my role right now like how do you start them on that journey to discover like okay why are you happy and what are you going to do about it I ultimately change like what does that process look like yeah I've coached so many different people across the board so it's different with everyone but what I would say if the board. So it's different with everyone. But what I would say, if somebody is really unhappy, it's quite clear they need to change. I think a lot of people are actually living lives of silent desperation where they're just fine.

And people don't realize, I think there's no such thing as neutral energy. You're either expanding or you're putting up with, which is an energy leak. The first thing I'm trying to figure out is what's working for them and what isn't and how unhappy are they? Because one of the expectations I like to manage in the workforce, and this is quite unusual for a career coach to really admit this, is I like to hear people 80% happy or more with their job. I think that there's an unrealistic expectation that people should be in love with what they do. And I think people should be really fulfilled, inspired, expanding at the thought of what they do. But it doesn't mean that there's not a slice of their job that they don't enjoy. I think that's part of life. And so the first thing

I would want to know is how unhappy are you? And then I would want to assess where are you expanding? Where are you contracting? Where are you feeling like your day feels light and enjoyable for you? Even if it's standing in the lunch line and talking to people, that's information for me. And what project have you ever worked on that you felt like you really enjoyed yourself? So I just want to understand where that person feels expansive. I would also want to understand how they're using their energy and what feels like a violation of their energy to them. Like what tasks felt like they were just, it was like a total Dracula task where it was just sucking the life out of them. I'm going to want to understand where they lose energy. And then I'm going to want to tie that into a skillset because

over the past decade doing this and having focused on courses and all of these different journeys that I have supported people in, what I've learned is there's 10 core skill sets that really exist in the workforce. And most people have either a primary or a primary and a secondary of the 10 that I've uncovered. And I can kind of briefly go through them now if it's helpful. I thought it'd be super helpful. I know that so many people listening to this are going to be like, actually, you're speaking to my heart right now. This is me. So let's just go through those. Yeah, I think your core skill set is really the foundation of your career. And you know, you are in your core when you turn any job into that. So for example, my core skill set is words. That's one of the 10. And you could put me in like the most solo job where there's no opportunity to communicate or write and I'm going to find a way

to use my words. So you know what your foundational skillset is or your core skillset is because you turn anything into that anyway. It's your natural way of being and talent and gift. It's obvious to you, not so obvious to everybody else. So words is one of the 10. And this is something that I know we're doing a webinar.

I know you asked me to do an online workshop for your audience about this just because so many people have been asking for clarity and struggling with that. So this is something I want to go into much more deeply. So anybody who's on your email list, I know they'll be hearing about that. But the first one's words. The second one is innovation. This is the creative. I know Natalie is probably this one. This is the entrepreneur. It's also the intrapreneur, the person who's innovative and within an organization. And a lot of people will ask me, how do I know if I'm supposed to be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, the highly creative creator within a company? And what I've said is it really comes down to your relationship between freedom and flexibility. If you feel a deep pain for not having freedom, like meaning you don't want to work when you don't want to work, you want to be where you want to be. And there's a deep pain of being told where to be, when to be. Maybe you're meant to be an entrepreneur. Most people just yearn for flexibility, meaning they just want a corporate culture that doesn't

make it weird for them to have to go to the dentist at 2pm or pick up their kid from school. So I think that's the question to be asking yourself for the innovator core skill set. So there's words, there's innovation, there's building. This is the person that wants to put something together. Maybe it's an event, maybe it's a website, maybe it's an engineer that wants to build a product. There's something about putting pieces together that gets them really excited. There's motion. That's the fourth core skillset. Motion is all about the mover, literally the physical mover. That could be the construction worker. That could be the fitness personality, the trainer, somebody who wants to be out and about on their feet. I think what's also really interesting about human behavior is that we'd love to kind of like hear

what we're fitting into. So already, like when you're talking about this I'm like oh do I fit into this one or do I fit into this one so I know that like you say you're going to do like a complete deep dive into this in the webinar training that we're going to do which I'm so excited about because we do service we do lots of trainings for female entrepreneurs so I'm really really excited that we're actually going to be doing one for career women so that they can kind of feel like okay where do I do I fit in? So this is super, super powerful. Yes. And I'll just briefly list the others. And then those who come on the career training on the career clarity training on how to discover their best career path can hear a little bit more, but there's service. This is, you know, the helper there's coordination. This is the

logistics person. There's analysis. This is the person who is the bookkeeper, the financial analyst, the researcher, the intelligence person. There's the numbers person. There's the tech person. And there's the beauty person. This is the person who loves aesthetics and putting aesthetics together and creating beauty around them. But again, going into this in our online workshop, there's so much more depth I could talk about.

But I know that we also created a quiz together. And so I could kind of decode I know that we also created a quiz together. And so I could kind of decode some of the different quiz personalities for those of you who want to take the quiz and figure out a little bit more about what your core skillset is and what that means for you in the workforce. Would that be helpful? 100%. Because again, like I felt like when you're in career, I felt like it's very under supported in that sense of like, what is the next direction? I know we've spoken about people being unhappy, but there is also listeners who will be kind of tuning in and going, hey, well, I'm not unhappy, but I want to move up the ladder too. So I feel like this whole combination

around like, how do I get clarity on what my next step is? All of it is around like, okay, uncovering, okay, I want to learn a bit more about my personality and how can I apply this? So I would also love to know about the four different skill sets that you kind of talk about in the career clarity quiz. So yeah, let's share those too. Yes. And I know that your team just got it up at bossbabe.com slash clarity quiz. So anybody can take it and go even deeper, but I would love to give just an overview of these four personalities that I tend to see beyond, you know, these 10 core skill sets. The four personalities I tend to see is the helper. This is the humanitarian. This is the service-based, cause-based, high-impact valuing

person. This is the person who feels the most alive when they're in some sort of supporting, generous function of giving. They tend to like to work in teams. One key element of each of these four prototypes that I'll go through right now that we go through in the quiz even more deeply is whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, that really lends itself to what sorts of jobs are really best for you. Because if you're a helper and you're an introvert, you might want to do customer service behind your computer, community management, something like that. But if you're a helper and you're an extrovert, that might mean that you want to do live events and be on the events team or something that a little bit has more of a people element. The second personality that you might be

when you take the quiz is the analyst. So the analyst is the researcher. They want to know why things are the way that they are. The introvert is going to tend to be researching off finding information on their own. The extrovert could be a speaker who wants to share all of their research like Brene Brown. She's partially an analyst. She's partially the third personality that I go through in the quiz, which is the communicator. This one's mine. The introvert is easily the writer. The extrovert is easily the speaker or the career coach like me. It takes many different forms, but the communicator is the one that values that core skillset I talked about in that top 10 of words. And you'll see that on me. I'm always turning things into words. And then of course, the entrepreneur or the intrapreneur,

the highly creative person who sees solutions out of thin air, the one that wants to make their thoughts into form. That's usually the entrepreneur intrapreneur. And when you take the quiz, what I go through is all of the different career paths that could make sense for that personality based on whether you're an introvert, an extrovert. And I know over at Boss Babe, you guys are providing some resources when you email them about their quiz results to help them really hone in on that clarity of how they should be using this personality archetype, whether they're the helper, analyst, the communicator, or the entrepreneur. So yeah, bossbabe.com slash clarity quiz. Hopefully that will help those of you who are looking into it. And I know if you get on the Boss Baby

list, you'll also hear about our free online workshop, which would be really helpful, I'm sure, for those of you who are meant for it. Do you know what's hilarious is I'm just sat here thinking, yeah, you are a communicator. I didn't even need to be here actually like it's amazing I love it so if you guys want to know what kind of career you should be having into because Ashley clearly knows what she's talking about she's got her nail to her tee you can like this head to bossway.com forward slash clarity quiz to download that because it is jam-packed full of trainings and you know insights and I think think we started off by saying so many of us go down a path that we didn't even consciously choose, or we chose it when we were at such a young age and we are completely different person to where we are now. And so I think investing time in this now,

whatever age you're at is so, so important. And it might be, yeah, confirmation that, yeah, I am on the right path or, hey, it might be, look, I am desperate for a solution on this. In fact, I have a friend who is a doctor and all when we were kids, like, I think she decided she wanted to be a doctor when she was like 11, 10 or 11. And now she's in her 30s going, I'm not sure if this is the career for me. And, you know, there's so many women out there who have, who find this in this situation. I think it's really lovely that we're actually talking about this very openly because a lot of people, like we also spoke about earlier, kind of feel like they've spent so long doing the training, doing the extracurricular training, you know, spending those 10 years in that position. And actually it's too late to

change, but it's not too late to change. And I think those insights that you shared earlier around like, okay, it doesn't need to change the whole whole pie you might just need to change a slice of the pie and you know what I love about the training that we're going to be doing together is that we give this insight as well like it's not just like oh yeah you have to throw everything out the window and start all over again it's not like that it's about helping you guys decide what is the next step which works for you and it that could be one step to the side or that could be two three four ten steps to the side but that is in your control and I think what I'm loving about working with you with Ashley and this podcast and the trainers that we're doing and the

quiz is that actually we're allowing women in this position to then take a little bit of control of it and decide for themselves how many steps that needs to be or they want it to be yeah you know it's so painful for me to watch in the career coaching space. And where I'm a bit contrarian, I guess, is that a lot of people that are career coaches, they buy into the belief that they should not be telling people what career path to choose. And a good coach is going to ask questions and help their client come into the answers. But the truth of the matter is that there are so many different jobs available in the workforce. It's just outright helpful when we have resources like this quiz or this training or just this conversation.

There's so many podcast episodes that people could tune into on Boss Babe in the name of clarity, even if they're not an entrepreneur. I know you have a lot of episodes just on mindset that are out there. And I'm just a firm believer in letting people know what options actually do make sense for them and not telling them what to do, but saying, here's some jobs that you probably didn't know existed. And just by providing that, I think you open so many doors for people. And that's something that I'm the most excited can happen through resources like the ones you have. Yeah, me too. And I want to ask you just to provide clarity for the people looking for clarity with the quizzes. Obviously, we've got the quiz for helping them understand what kind of person they are, what kind of archetype they're falling into. Is that also worth doing if somebody,

they're happy in their job, but they're still kind of thinking, okay, I want to understand how I can take the next step in my next role and move up the ladder. Is that quiz still worth them doing? Yes, definitely. I think what we've got over at bossbabe.com slash clarity quiz, it's a quiz that is so comprehensive in educating somebody, not just on the archetype, but what it really means about who they are, what their strengths are, is something that we talk about in our emails to them, but also what their weaknesses are, where they might not realize that they have a shadow or they need to improve based on their

archetype. And so I think that that is number one across the board. I remember interviewing Carter Cass, the former CEO of walmart.com. And of all of his years as a leader and as an executive, he said to me, the number one thing that managers don't know that hurt their career is their shadow. So that's something that I really took the time to focus on when we were creating this quiz for your audience because I know that a lot of people listening right now, you might know where you're maybe just okay. You might have some ideas of where you can improve, but this really spells it out for them.

So yes, definitely. I love it. Well, I just want to say thank you so much, Ashley, for coming on the podcast because you've provided so much value. And I know loads of listeners are going to just have had so many takeaways from this so many breakthroughs and actually it's so nice to be able to give them like an actionable step so like Ashley has said and communicated so well you can take the quiz at bossbabe.com forward slash clarity quiz you're

going to find out the exact type of person that you are what career is going to help you you're going to be given resources and there's going to be free training workshops. So definitely, definitely head over there and do that. And also we would love to make sure if you're listening to this episode that you tag myself at Danielle Canty, you tag at Valspaid.inc and you also tag Ashley. Do you want to give your handle Ashley? Because I want to make sure that it's on. Woohoo. At Ashley Stahl. It's A-S-H-L-E-Y-S-T-A-H-L. Amazing. And make sure that you guys are following at bossbabe.inc. This is exactly what we're going to be covering in the free online workshop. So make sure you're watching at bossbabe.inc so that you don't miss it too. Thank you so much, Ashley. Woohoo. Talked your ear off. Thank you so

much. And I hope everybody got as much value out of this as it's brought into my own life in the lives of so many people who have applied it. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were. And I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbabe.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP. And since we love Instagram, you can go to the hashtag the bossbabe podcast and find

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