The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Power Moves: How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career of Purpose by Lauren McGoodwin

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Power Moves: How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career of Purpose by Lauren McGoodwin careercontessa.com Lauren McGoodwin is Career Contessa’s CEO, #1 power move advocate, and has a life mission to help women build successful and fulfilling careers on their terms. Lauren launched Career Contessa in 2013 out of her master’s thesis project to close the gap in career development resources for women. Career Contessa now helps over 2 million women each year with their careers through content, online learning courses, and job listings. Formerly, Lauren was a Recruiter for Hulu focused on hiring, employer branding, and talent development. She has a Bachelor's in Education from University of Oregon and a Master’s in Communication Management from USC where she wrote her thesis on millennial women and career resources. Lauren has spoken at TED Women, Watermark Conference for Women, and South by Southwest, appeared on Cheddar TV, Good Day LA, and regularly contributes on career advice to outlets like Good Morning America, Goop, and more. Lauren is also the host of Career Contessa’s podcast, The Femails, covering all things work, women, and traits of success, and just released her first book, Power Moves: How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career of Purpose, from Harper Business, and loves to stay in touch on Instagram.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us on YouTube. Hit that bell notification. You certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube. Hit that bell notification. You can see the whole video version. If you listen to the audio version, there's some of the iTunes

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show to your friends neighbors relatives uh grab their phones sign them up get them to subscribe to the cvpn.com or chris voss podcast network.com nine podcasts what do i get the time to do what i do i don't know i'm still asking myself that question but we have the greatest chris in the whole whole wide world maybe the universe we're still working on the legal analysts of that and whether or not we can attorneys will let us say that but until then we'll just say we are uh today we have a most exceptional author on the program her name is lauren mcgoodwin lauren mcgoodwin is the ceo of career contessa she's a number one power move advocate and has a life mission to help women build successful and fulfilling careers on their

terms she's launched career contessa in 2013 out of her master's thesis project to close the gap in career development resources for women career Contessa now helps over 2 million women each year with their careers through content, online learning courses, and job listings. Formerly, Lauren was a recruiter for Hulu focused on hiring, employer branding, and talent development. She has a bachelor's in education from University of Oregon and a master's in communication management from USC, where she wrote her thesis on millennial women and career resources. She's spoken at TED Women, Watermark Conference for Women, and South by Southwest,

appeared on Cheddar TV, Good Day LA, and regularly contributes on Career Advice to outlets like Good Morning America, Goop, and more. Lauren is also the host of Career Contest's podcast, The Females, covering all things work, women, traits of success, and her just released book, Power Moves, How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career Purpose from Harper Business. And she loves to stay in touch on Instagram. Lauren, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Good. Thank you for having me. Awesome sauce. It's great to have you on, and I got a chance to listen to some of your book. It's awesome. Can you give us the dot-coms and links that people can take and look you up on the interwebs?

Yeah, so the Career Contessa website is just careercontessa.com. Power Moves, the book, can be found at powermovesbook.com. And then we're at Career Contessa on every single social channel you can think of. Awesome sauce. And you've got this great book, Power Moves, How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career Purpose. And so this is pretty awesome, probably especially for times right now where a lot of people are going to be looking for a job, new career moves, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. It's very nice that the timing of the book had the word pivot in the tagline. I don't know if I would recommend launching your

first book in between, you know, a crisis slash pandemic, but it is what it is. And I'm happy. It's helpful right now. I think it's going to be important to take it out because people are kind of pivoting whether they like it or not right now, unfortunately. Yeah. Everybody's career has changed. Whether you work for yourself, you work for someone else. It does not matter. Even if you're still employed, your job has changed probably right now. And it may change in the future too, the way things are going. And, you know, one of the things I have talked about to people during this whole crisis is not only is educating themselves to make themselves more valuable, whether they go to work for someone else or whether they maybe go up the ladder

as things shift around. Sometimes they're getting rid of upper management, middle management, and all this stuff. So your book's a great way that people can go get educated, get prepared. And I've been telling people, read great books, get educated, get ready, because you don't know what the future holds. But if you're smarter, you'll have a better chance in this marketplace. Yeah, absolutely.

I think whether you are looking for a job right now or you're trying to remain valuable and influential in the one you have, there's tips for all that in my book. It was not meant for just the job searcher or just the person who's running their company. All the tips are really applicable. And you've got great insight being formally the university recruiter for Hulu. So you were focused on hiring, employer branding, and program manager and management for them. So you know what people are looking for. And then of course, you've been on the other side of the table as well. Yeah, absolutely. I graduated during a recession when there were no jobs. I know what it's like to have to take a job just to be able to pay the bills. I was able to land my recruiting job at Hulu with no prior experience. So I understand how to make a career transition

and a pivot. And now of course, running Career Contessa, my job is every day, day in and day out to talk to other people about their challenges, find the best answers for them. I learn from so many of our readers, you know, just crowdsourcing for information. So I have the best job, and it will never change or will never end, I mean, because careers are deeply personal, and it's humans usually working with other humans and those dynamics. So there's a lot to be said, not just about being on the other side of the hiring table and knowing what hiring managers are looking for, but also being in the room with managers when they make decisions about who gets promoted and things like that. That's awesome. That's definitely data you would want

to have when you're looking for a job and how to prepare yourself. You know, what sort of background did you have in coming up that got you motivated to get in this career, write this book and everything else? Yeah. So I was mostly motivated by just sort of my own expectation hangover of like, I went to college, I got good grades, I had internships, you know, I quote unquote checked all the right boxes to have said great career, basically graduated and like fell flat on my face of like, whoa, none of my expectations were met in any way, shape or form. Working as an admin assistant inside of a dental school was very boring. Very, just like I was just waiting for the phone to ring.

And so I think I was mostly motivated to figure out how people not hate going to work every day. Cause it was like day one. I was like, there's no way I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. So I think that was motivation. I certainly, when I got my job at Hulu, which I loved, I loved the people I worked with. I loved, I think that was my first like aha moment of like, if you can find the career and the company that are a good fit, actually things do click into place. Um, and then as far as career contesta, I was actually, when I, when I transitioned over to Hulu, I was maybe like one or two classes shy of graduating, uh, with my master's degree. So, which I was doing part-time. And so I was getting ready to write my thesis. I wrote it on millennial women and career resources and Career Contessa was

actually the prototype of that thesis. So I didn't launch Career Contessa to be a business. I launched it actually to be a school project, but it's obviously very serendipitous that it turned into that. And a lot of that was just as many entrepreneurs would probably say, like, I needed this tool and it didn't exist. And so I created it. And it's just kind of snowballed into really this very, very comprehensive resource versus, you know, just a blog from the beginning. And so many women, so many people looking for jobs need these tools, right? And so you find people that are in the same place. I love the experience of an entrepreneur where you basically go, Hey, I have a pain or a problem and I'm going to fix it for me. And then you're like, wow, everyone else is the same sort of pain. Yeah.

Let's make everybody make the world a better place. I think this is a great way you've taken and done. I was reading through some of the different reviews in your books and some of the, some of the different audience people that you had in our research. And a lot of people just love following your emails. They follow your email. I guess you have an email list that goes out and stuff to help support people. And they've just, they just love it. They talk really highly about it.

So you're motivating a lot of people. I can tell from what I'm seeing out in our research. And then you have your own podcast. So you're doing that as well so people can tune in yep it's called the females it has sort of a funky spelling it's f-e-m-a-i-l-s so it's supposed to be like female and emails mixed together yes the females there you go yeah i know sometimes i'm like maybe i shouldn't have gotten that clever with the name, but it's a great podcast. And every episode we teach somebody or we teach people something new that they can implement into work that day. So that's kind of cool. There you go. If you're looking for a job, you may want to tune into that.

Definitely. So give us some more rundown, some information more on the book, some of the details that are in it. Yeah. So the book is called power moves and what a power move is, is an intentional proactive move in your career. So the opposite of a power move would be, uh, being reactive, like whatever's going to happen, you're going to just let it happen. Um, the opposite of a power move is doing things because you think you're supposed to be doing them or taking shortcuts to get to the necessary places in life. So power moves. And what I've found over, you know, seven plus years of running career Contessa is that the women who had successful and fulfilling careers, they were making intentional proactive moves or power moves,

as I call them in their career. It might be in power moves. So just so everyone knows they can be daily, like your daily morning routine. They can be more in the medium. Um, so medium might be like pitching a project or they can be big, like starting your own company. There's not just one type of power move and everybody's able to make power moves their habits, behaviors that lead you to building a successful career on your terms. So what I wanted to do with the book is obviously give examples of power moves, but also lay this out in a framework that people could use as an approach to their career. So the book is actually laid out in a framework that's broken into four pieces. So we start with self-care, then we talk about relationships, career, and then money. And that order is actually really

intentional because if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not going to be able to build good relationships, have a great career, manage your money, right? And so each of those items builds on themselves. And in the book, I give people foundational power moves that they should be making. And then the idea is that once you have this really nice foundational toolkit in practice, then you'll start recognizing power moves and being able to make them in your day-to-day life and career, especially. I like how you laid that out, where you took care of the self-care first and then move through the progression of career or, you know, taking care of everything, because

that does make sense. With self-care, let's get into that a little bit. What are some of the aspects of that that stand out in some of the things and how people should care better for themselves so they can have a good career? Yeah, I mean, I know people are probably like, oh, self-care, what a buzzword. I know that we've branded it all cool, but at the end of the day, self-care is extremely important. It's the reason why they say put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help others because you can't bring your best self to work or to life, to your family, to anything if you're not taking care of yourself. So some of them are related to just good sleep. Are you creating like a nighttime routine or ritual to help you sleep well?

Are you eating healthy vegetables, right? Are you managing your emotional, physical, mental, maybe even spiritual health for yourself? Those are all things that people, especially when they get busy, just, oh, I thought I was going to sneeze. They just ignore. And the problem is, is that it basically catches up to you. There's no, similar to sleep, you can't sleep for 10 hours to make up on the fact that you've slept for one hour, five nights in a row or something like that. So those are some of the self-care items you can do. Another one that I really love is managing your inner critic. So the narratives that you tell yourself, your brain starts to believe those things. And so what

you actually say to yourself is incredibly important. They can be negative or they can be really positive. One of the tips I give to people in the book is to actually change it from being an inner critic to an inner coach. You know, inner critics might be the thing that motivate a lot of people. I know a lot of high achievers, they kind of actually love their inner critic. But I would challenge people to say, all right, I get why it's there and it maybe does motivate you, but can you change the role of your inner critic from an inner critic to an inner coach? Coaches are there to support you. Critics are there to take you down. So when I talk about self-care, I don't just mean the physical,

I mean the emotional as well as the spiritual, mental and all that good stuff. That's really awesome. Wow, I need to write that on a shirt or put that on a computer, be an inner coach, especially the, you know, that self ego that people have that can be really critical. That's one of my things. I got that dude in the head who goes, you're, you know, posture syndrome, you're stupid. You're, you know, and I imagine a lot of people have that same sort of thing. Um, and, uh, and uh in fact my my inner critic is actually the sergeant guy from full metal jacket you know and that's mine so yeah i don't have that um do you find a lot of women have issues with that because i know one thing about women is they're multitaskers and especially they're like a family they have a lot going on there's a lot going on in their head like men are really multitaskers but women are and and i imagine it's probably

easier to get lost with all that with all the noise and stimuli and you know the agendas and everything that they're working uh for what they want to take and do and juggling you know motherhood etc etc um do you find that a lot of women have trouble with that, with the inner criticism and, you know, self-care? Yeah. I mean, self-care in general, I think is very challenging for women because for a few reasons, you're right. We are multitaskers, so we have a hard time decompartmentalizing, but also society and the way we were raised was very much giving us messages of girls are supposed to be nice. Girls are supposed to be people pleasers. You know, putting other people before us were very empathetic.

So we feel the emotions of people around us more often than men do. And so for women, it's incredibly important that you recognize these patterns for yourself because it, it snowballs out of control very quickly where doing, you know, putting the task that you need to do for yourself, uh, to the side one night turns into now it's now you never have gone back to it, you know? Um, and I think that for women, it seems like the more we put on our plate, the actually the more we're able to handle. So we actually need to start recognizing like, just because you can put it on your plate and add it to your plate and probably manage it doesn't mean that you should.

And I think for that it's about prioritization and being really clear about your boundaries and what to say no to. And that is just always incredibly hard, not just because it's hard for women, but also society expects women to be more willing to go with the flow and to help them and things like that. So it's a relearning, I think, for everybody, too, with the expectations of that. I know, you know, mothers will do that thing where they'll take care of the kids, they'll cook the food, they'll do everything. They won't eat all day long, but, you know, they make sure everyone else eats first. And, and, uh, that's why mothers are such great people. But I, I can imagine that's the thing, but laying that foundation is really smart

in my mind because you're, you're, you're making sure that you, like you say, you can't take care of anybody else if you don't take care of yourself first. Otherwise you just wear yourself down and then you're at the end of your rope and you can't perform well and you can't think well and yeah you know uh so what's the next step after self-care so the next step is relationships so they actually found the researchers uh found that the next thing that makes people actually the most fulfilled in their life outside of you know obviously just being healthy and and whatnot um is their relationships to other people. So I always encourage people to think about that when you think about how can I find my quote unquote dream job, which I don't believe in, but let's just use that because it's a common phrase that we see everywhere. It's like

dream jobs maybe don't necessarily exist, but dream coworkers, dream teams, and what makes those where you have respect, you have trust, you have good communication. So relationships and who you have in your life. And I, I'm talking about relationships at work, but also your relationships outside of work. Those are something that you really have to prioritize because they're actually the thing that when people are always like, well, what will make me happy? It's like good relationships will make you happy. And that's not about having the most amount of friends. It's about having good friends. It's about cultivating those relationships and not just having a bunch of people in your network or followers on your Instagram or LinkedIn or

anything like that. And I think right now, especially during the pandemic, everyone is hearing this advice of like network, network, network. Well, that's great. But I think we, you know, there's a lot of tips in the book that talk about how to network correctly, how to be a respectful networker, how to prepare to have a successful informational interview or first phone call. So I'm all about people building connections, but you need to think of it almost like an ATM. If you're just withdrawing all the time from your network, there's going to be nothing left.

So you need to be making more deposits than you do withdrawals when it comes to building those relationships. And it will actually make you happier in the end too. That's what my bank keeps telling me. No, but you are correct. You know, recently I've been doing an audit of my Twitter and my LinkedIn account. And and on linkedin i was like an open networker so i you know i accepted everybody and i maxed out to 30 000 and same

thing with twitter and now i'm going back through it going who the heck are these people and yeah you know and turns out like half of them in india and people in india are really nice people but they really can't do that much for what I want to do for business for me. And it's really hard to get the money out of them too. Because they're like, well, we don't know who you are on the other side of the world. And, you know, someone from Texas can come collect from me if I don't pay them. But so, you know, like you say, there needs to be value in those sort of stuff. So you recommend people use their social aspects, LinkedIn, different things,

to try and make sure they network and it's easier to find jobs for them. Yeah. I mean, networking is a great way to find jobs when you do it correctly. There is a correct way of doing it. One of my favorite tips in the book is called Respect the Double Opt-in, which is if someone asks me to make an introduction to you, Chris, instead of just making the introduction, first, you ask Chris, hey, are you okay with me making an introduction to this person? Once he opts in, then I say, okay, great. Now I'm going to make an introduction for you. So both people need to

be opting into the connection before we just start constantly interviewing people on email. Not only is it going to make a more successful introduction, but also we need to be very respectful of people's time. Not everybody can or wants to network all the time. And so that's something I see like one of the networking rules that I think definitely needs to be spread more often. The other thing about networking is being really respectful of people's time. The other tip I would say for networking is be prepared. So for example, if I was going to have an informational interview with someone, let's say I had been an entrepreneur, but now because of

COVID, I was going to go back to looking for a full-time job. And I was having an informational interview with someone that works at a company. Do as much research about that person and that company as you can so that when you take the 20 minutes, max 30 minutes to have a conversation with them, not only are you guiding the conversation, but you're asking the questions that you can't already find online or, you know, that are easy to find. So you're making the most of that time that you do spend with somebody. And if you are really impressive in these networking conversations, guess what? People are going to want to help you. People are going to want to connect you for jobs and things like that. But especially right now where everybody is kind of, you know,

hammering down on, you know, networking and who can help them do this or that, you have to be really, really thoughtful and provide value, even if the value is just being really respectful of their time and asking good questions. You know, some of the really coolest people I've ever known have been like monster networkers. Like they know everybody, they've taken the time, know everybody, they take the time to know you. And, and, and not only are they, they usually give more than they take.

Well, Adam Grant talks about givers, you know, and givers are the most successful. So that's exactly what you're saying. There's science behind to prove why they're successful. There definitely is. I mean, it's just amazing. I mean, I have people call, they'll call me up and be like, hey, do you need anything, Chris? I'm like, no, I'm really good, but I know who to call if I need to. But, you know, you always want to help those people.

They always want to help you because they're givers. And, you know, you bring up some really good points. I love the points and the analogies and you brought to stuff that's kind of thinking out of the box. People do need to do these things. What's the third step in the four-step process? So the next step is, the next step is career. So career is probably self-explanatory and to be very honest, it could be its own entire book. But what I started with career is first helping people identify what did it, like, the first question we get all the time at Career Contest is how do I figure out what I want to do? And what I encourage people to do is start by understanding your career, what I call

your career ideals. So what are your must-haves in a job? What are your deal breakers going to have? What are your nice-ves in a job? What are your deal breakers going to have? What are your nice to haves? And most people don't ever start their job search thinking about what am I good at? What do I want to have in my next role? What they do is they go on LinkedIn or indeed.com and they just hit apply, apply, apply, apply. We have this term in recruiting called spray and pray where you spray your resume everywhere and you pray that someone will pick it up. They're not going to pick it up. And it's because you haven't actually done anything that's

going to make your application intentional, right? You probably have one resume and you're sending it out everywhere. So in the book, I take you through how to figure out your career ideals. And then the next step is to, instead of focusing on the job title, focus on the companies. I find that that really helps people get unstuck in the whole job search thing. If instead of focusing on the job title that you want to pinpoint, think about where do you want to work. Industries, companies, your career ideals will obviously help support that. And then you basically match the two lists together. And then hopefully you've narrowed it down to maybe five amazing companies that you know are a good fit for you. You guys align on values, you align

on all the other good stuff that you are, your have to haves. And then what you can do is you can kind of work your way backwards into a job there, start networking with people that work there, start thinking about what skills gaps you need to fill. And that makes it much less overwhelming than just being a sea of applications in front of you and applying and hoping that somebody calls you back. So those are kind of the important parts when it comes to the job search. And then of course, in the book, the other part is all about how to be successful within the role that you have and really focusing on your ongoing career development and advancement in your career. Because, you know, everyone focuses so much on getting a job, but it's like, that's just

kind of one step in the career process. You get the job, but then what? You have to be successful. You want to build your way. You want to develop your career. You want to create value and influence at work. How do you do all those things? So let me ask you this, to your, the, if I was a woman,

one of the things I want to be doing is looking for companies that are really big on equality and making sure that women have that equal opportunity to raise the ranks companies that really, you know, kind of, they signal that in their communications and their values and stuff. I would imagine that's a smart thing to take and do maybe. Yeah, absolutely. I would imagine that's a smart thing to take and do, maybe. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you are a working parent finding a company whose culture

has paid paternity leave, maybe it's a company where the CEO is a parent. What's important to you? And you can learn so much more about a company than you can about a job title. And that will also tell you, because at the end of the day, a lot than you can about a job title. And that will also tell you, because at the end of the day, a lot of people can do a lot of different skills. You can learn on the job, but when you're part of a company and the culture of that company and the values of those companies, those you don't change very often. So, you know, for me, yeah, certainly a place that, you know, has been vocal about equality, has been vocal about, you know, supporting not just women in the workplace, but working families. It would be great to see female leaders. You know,

I think it's becoming more important to like, hey, what is the diversity mixer of your demographic, of your team? Is everybody who works here white from an Ivy League school? Because that's not a lot of diversity. Do people actually feel like there's solid inclusion at this company? There's a lot of things that are more important to people than I think when people think, oh, it must be salary. That's the most important. Most people don't rate salary as the most important thing for them at a job. It's who their boss is, the people they work with, the values of the company. And also they would rather have flexibility in their career than unlimited vacation days, you know, things like that. So it's, it's figuring out you're not, it's kind of like when you go to buy a house, unless you have an unlimited budget, AKA,

you don't have to work. You're not going to get everything you want in that house, right? You're going to prioritize, all right, I really want wood floors. I really want, you know, whatever, X amount of bathrooms. And, like, that's kind of the same thing when you're searching for a job. You're not going to get everything you want. But what are the three most important things for you? I love the idea, the concept of putting down the ideals because then you're focused on something just more like,

and then just, I need a job. Yeah. Oh, totally. I find too, the most frustrating part about a job search for people is they don't feel like they have any control over it. So this does give you control. And when you figure out where you want to work, then you can figure out, oh, I've never worked for that type of tech company before. Fine. Go find ways to fill those skills gaps. You know, when people talk to me about career transitions and I ask them, all right, what have you done to fill the skills gaps? They're like, well, I don't know what the skills gaps are. Who are you talking to at those companies to find out what the skills gaps are? I mean, every careers at the end of the day, sometimes can be as simple as just following the breadcrumbs that you lay down to get to the next

step or the next goal. And if I was a woman, I'd be looking at the hierarchy of their boardroom, you know, their management, whatever it's called, the thing they usually have on the website. And I'd be like, how many women are here? What sort of opportunity, you know, things are changing and getting better with glass, not having glass ceilings, but still, you know, I mean, we're far enough into this where a lot of boardrooms should have women and high manager positions. I know anytime I look at certain of those trees of hierarchy, I just go, that's a lot of white guys. That needs to change. What about glassdoor.com? Would you ever check Glassdoor?

Because I've read, there are some companies that are on Glassdoor. They're like fun to read because they're like a just complete car crash of bad managers and bad CEOs. I would be checking that just to, you know. I think wherever you can find information is great. Glassdoor, I always encourage people to remember that a disgruntled employee writing something. So you just have to remember where. It's like, is the company always going to say they're so amazing on their careers page? Of course. So look through that lens a little differently. Look through the lens of Glassdoor a little differently, and also do your own research. Everybody wants to be able to just read about something online because it's fast, but my best advice is go straight to the source of people who do work there right now and talk to them about it. What about, I don't know, this is kind of an

off-topic thing, but not an off-topic, but it's kind of from left field because I don't know if it's in your book, but if I really wanted a I really wanted a job at a place and I'm really good at LinkedIn and I'm really good at like reaching out to finding other people that work there and worming my way around, uh, I would almost kind of like, you know, I would send him a resume to HR or whatever, but I'd almost kind of like maybe reach out to some executives that work there and go, Hey, I was thinking about working for your company. Uh, what's it like over there? Maybe, maybe, you know, just see if I can get an edge or an in, I don't know. Yeah, no, definitely. No, it's not crazy at all. And you know, a lot of companies hire based on referrals. They literally reward employees for referrals that get hired. Um, so people, you know,

you sometimes have an incentive to take the phone call. And it's not crazy at all. I always tell people when they're applying for a job, if you just sent it through an online application, that's all you did, then you have not finished applying for the job. You need to make sure you send your resume to a real person. If you can find, you know, the recruiter's name and email address, you can do it that way. If you can network your way into it, it doesn't even mean that you're going to get the job, but it means that somebody's real eyeballs might look at it. You know, and that is incredibly important, especially right now when there are fewer jobs and there are people applying for them,

it's going to, I don't know that it's 100%, but I would say that it's going to be the majority of jobs are found through networking because employers don't have to take a risk at hiring someone that they can't, they don't know anything about too. So, you know, these are people are probably listening and being like, oh, I hate that. It's not fair. It's you're right. It's not fair or it's not right but I'm just giving I'm just giving you the insider's point of view of sometimes how how I've heard of other people getting jobs and so you should think about that for your own strategy careers are not just like a box that you you know you follow the rules and everything goes your way that's why so many people get frustrated with job searches so you have to be a creative problem solver. And it seems to me like with the tips of a spouse, this kind of focuses you into going with companies that are more along your set of values, more along your set of ideals.

And you're not going to be spending so many hours driving all over town, you know, going to all these interviews. You know, we used to interview a lot of people with my company and there were some times you'd just be in the resume, going through your resume with them. And you're like, why are you here? Cause I don't even think you understand number one, the job you're applying for. And number two, you're just not, you're not even a fit. Like, you know, we were, we were looking for a pipe fitter and you have secretarial skills and there's nothing wrong with either, but, but still you still, you'd just be like, you're wasting your time, and I'm wasting my time, but I feel bad for you

because you're looking for a job. And so you help people get it narrowed down to something that's more fitting for them. And then hopefully when they get that job, it's going to be more fulfilling. Because I've been on the side where you can earn a lot of money, but if your work is miserable and you hate everyone around you, there's just not enough money to deal with that. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like one of the

things you really want are to create these good habits with your career upfront, or, you know, if you're in the middle of your career and you're listening to this, there's never too late to start creating good habits, like advocating for yourself, learning how boundaries in place, keeping a work journal so that you can track your accomplishments and your patterns. Maybe you start to recognize, oh, this is when I have this interpersonal challenge. And like being, again, proactive, right? You can either be the person who sits in that job for 30 years waiting for it to end

and clocking in, clocking out. There's nothing wrong with that. Like I said, the power moves are the difference between being successful and fulfilled versus maybe just someone who's successful, which is totally possible to do. But for me, I want to be engaged with some of the work that I'm doing. It's work. That doesn't mean every day is, uh, rainbows and butterflies and everything's amazing, you know, but I, I think that you, you have to start to think about how can I make these intentional moves versus again, just kind of sitting back. And I think that's important to, uh, you know, uh, the one young lady from Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, she wrote the book Lean In. And I've read a lot of things over the years that one thing women do is they do a job really well and they expect to get rewarded for that, like most people should. But then, you know, there's other different things that they get passed over or skipped, whether it's, you know, from the boys club or, or other issues,

but it sounds like what your power moves do is it helps position them to make sure that they're being seen and they're being, they're, you know, seen as a mover and shaker and like, Hey, this person is a go getter. Uh, they're, they're doing the right thing. Um, you know, it's just one of those things you, you have to, you kind of have to be your own, you have to be to be your own champion it's like if you ever had that roommate or that relationship with a person and they're like you never do the dishes and i'm like because you never see me do the dishes and so then you have to start just you know make sure they see you doing it and sometimes bosses are that way you've got to be like hey i did this great thing that journal that you mentioned that's probably important when you go in for like an annual what's the things they do or the yeah an

annual review a performance review their work journals are probably the best tip i can give to anybody who whether you're an entrepreneur or you are working inside of an organization tracking your accomplishments keeping track of the areas that need improvement, challenges you came across, lessons you've learned. You know, you can't change your patterns if you don't recognize them, if you don't kind of keep track of when do I fall into these habits or this thing or whatever it is. The other thing I like about work journals, whether you track it daily or at the end of each week, is that it's a habit that I found a lot of successful people do is they kind of track that kind of stuff. But also it helps you embrace progress

over perfection. Perfectionist, nothing's ever good enough. The finish line's always being moved on them, right? That's a kind of a miserable way to exist is everything's just never good enough. And you're always moving the finish line on yourself. Embracing progress, and there's actually this book called The Progress Principle where they found that when you start to embrace progress and you track it more often, it creates more forward momentum. So you actually end up getting more done than the perfectionist who is over there thinking, I'll make it better, better, better. So that's another really important tip is that are you embracing progress at your job? Are you looking at your careers as this thing

that's ever evolving? Or do you look at it like, well, I'm just not happy here. But when I change this job, everything will be different. Well, you take yourself wherever you go, right? So like you can change your environment. But if you're not tracking those patterns and you're not changing anything, it's probably going to be the same. Ralph Waldo Emerson, wherever you go, there you are. Yeah, exactly. I remember that. There was something else you mentioned in your thing, and I was so caught up in the information you were giving me. I would think, oh, with your journal, I would think that when you go to the review, that makes it easier for you to advocate for yourself.

Oh, 100%. Most people cannot remember what they had for dinner last night. So imagine when you're being asked, okay, over the last year, where did you make an impact? People are like, I've done nothing. They can't think of anything. So the work journal is incredibly important to help you walk into those reviews being like, I've done all these things. Here's the impact they've made. Here are the compliments people have given me. By the way, I'd like a raise and a promotion. It's a lot easier to ask that. Double my salary.

Boom. And, you know, people like that because they forget too i mean i i as a boss of thousands of people uh i would forget you know what people do and they'd be like yeah chris i did that one time and i'm like oh yeah wow okay yeah um and so bosses forget too i think if i were for other people if i ever did i like having my office like i'd make my own plaques like clean the copier today you know i just have like have in my office, like I'd make my own plaques, like clean the copier today. You know, I just have like a whole wall of people being like, wow, you achieve a lot. And I'm like, not really, but there's a lot of plaques. So maybe I'll get more pay. Is that legal to do

in a company? I don't know. I mean, what are they going to do? Fire me? Probably. So, fourth step in your book. So, the fourth step is money. Obviously, we can't talk about careers. The good part. Yeah. The good part. And not talk about money. So, you know, money is power.

Money gives you options and opportunity. It gives you security. So, it is an important part of your career. I do not ever use the words uh figure out what you're worth you're human you're already invaluable what i talk about is figuring out the market value for your skill set so you know that's just like a slight shift in language of how you talk about money is not about what you're worth but what about your market value for the skills that you bring because you can make more or less based on the market value of those skills.

So we talk a lot about in the book how to figure out what that market value is, how to negotiate for a raise or how to negotiate that first time salary. One of my favorite tips in the money section of the book is about starting a whisper network. So especially for entrepreneurs where maybe you're not being paid a salary,

but you're getting paid from one-off clients or speaking gigs or something like that. You want to make sure that you're paid fairly. Um, I'm part of a whisper network. There's five of us on a text message chain. Um, we're all fairly similar in what we do and we get asked to speak at a lot of the same stuff. And so when I get asked to speak, I'll text it to the group saying, um, I'm speaking at this thing. Here's how much they're paying me. If somebody else is also doing that, we'll double check it. We've had it done before on us where she was being paid a lot less than when I was being paid. And she was able to go back and advocate. And the whole point of the Whisper Network is that you don't share who's in it.

You don't let that information out, but those can be really valuable to just kind of have this maybe small group of people who you trust, make sure you're being paid fairly for your work. That's pretty awesome. That's really smart because a lot of people, um, you know, they're always negotiating whenever they call you up to speak or do stuff, uh, you know, and sometimes they want to see how much they can get for free. And, uh, and that way people can stand up for themselves and see more value. I mean, my big thing is I always, the worst thing you can ever do in a negotiation is find out later you left money on the table. I hate that. Yeah. It makes everybody feel gross. It makes the person who left it on the table feel like they never want to work with that person again. It's, it's just not good.

You feel a little cheated. Um, and, and, uh, but yeah, I, I love that idea. One of the ideas that I used to espouse back in the days when I, uh, my, my one partner that I'd had for 13 years left our company and, and I was kind of alone and so I didn't really have a board of directors to, to, uh, bounce stuff off of or anything else. And so I created what I called the virtual board of directors to bounce stuff off of or anything else. And so I created what I called the virtual board of directors. And so it was kind of like a whisper thing like you talk about where I'd be able to call five or six other entrepreneurs and bounce ideas off them and they would bounce their ideas off of me. And that kind of gave me that sort of thing. Going back to one element you talked about in the book that i i had a question

on earlier you talked about relationships um i i would imagine that you know how healthy your home life is how how uh making sure there's not a lot of contention there abuse uh there's probably a lot of different things that women have to deal with, you know, in being in quality relationships and then you've got your kids and everything that's going on and making sure there's a good health-life balance there or good relationships, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, I think finding a partner who is truly a partner for women is incredibly important. I will say that you can have the right partner, pick the timing of everything perfectly. And for women, it's still going to be like, you know, it's still hard to quote unquote, have it all. But I think having the right partner who your career is just as important as their career, They're an equal partner when it comes to home life and taking care of the kids.

That is invaluable. And it's something that I think a lot of women will tell you makes a night and day difference for pursuing their professional dreams, I should say, versus feeling like they can't. So I think that's definitely important. I think it's also really important in relationships that you're, you know, just like anything in life, healthy relationships or healthy balance of all things seems to work best. You know, moderation seems to be the answer for most things. Most definitely. So I love the power moves.

I really love that. I think that's really good. It puts women forth. It makes sure that they lean in and make sure that they, you know, they, they show they're active because I honestly, as an employer,

some of my best employees, especially ones that were, we're usually female, actually guys are idiots. And I know I've got a firsthand knowledge, but no, most of my great employees were females and they were usually the quietest workers. guys are idiots. And I know, I've got a firsthand knowledge. But no, most of my great employees were females, and they were usually the quietest workers.

Like, they would work hard. And long hours, I mean, they'd usually be the last ones to stay. But they wouldn't run around pom-pomming, going, hey, I'm working really hard, and I'm staying late. I remember one time we had one of my, a gal who worked for me, and we took on an insurance policy, and they wanted us to remove her because she had a lot of issues. She had shingles and different things. And I said, I'm not firing her.

She's one of my greatest employees. She's here like two hours past the thing. Most all my other employees, they're in that sprinter position at the line when you know four four fifty nine comes around right to run to the checkout and so um a lot of my best employees have been my most quietest place they're the heads down they do the work they they usually have the most highest amount of performance but one of the challenges they don't have that rah-rah where they go out and they push, you know. Meanwhile, I got the other guy who's in, you know, my office every day, humping my leg, you need a coffee, Chris?

You need a coffee? Oh, I'm your greatest employee, you know. And you're like, you find out later he's the guy stealing from you or something. I've seen that movie. Usually it's kind of interesting. One thing I found of being a boss, the harder someone just really spends their time trying to get in with me and make sure that I'm in.

The less time they're spending at their desk is they're working. And usually the more they're humping my leg, the more I got to go, I should really look into what their performance stats are. Yeah. And I'm a different manager than some people. There's managers that run things like a high school popularity contest. Those are the worst, or some of the worst. And so, you know, it comes down to the management style.

What about looking into the CEO? Because the one thing I've always been bound to, especially from all the learning I did, is everything comes down from the man or woman on the white horse. And they really set the tone for the company. Any thoughts on that? Yeah. I definitely think that the more structure you put in place, meaning people know what's expected of them, they have clarity around, you know, your values, your mission statement, your why behind, why are you all here? Like the more clarity and structure you can give people, the happier they seem to be with it. So, you know, putting together an

employee handbook that States, you know, what people should wear in the office, you know, small stuff like that, all the way to the big stuff of like, here are our values. Here's what we don't stand for. I think that most people do better with that. And a lot of bosses don't do that because it's, I know it's very time consuming too. Um, you know, making sure that people understand when you give bonuses or raises and, and, uh, promotions, understanding, um, how they will be evaluated. You know, there's, there's a lot of, um, I think kind of secrecy in the workplace where people are like, I don't really know where I stand with things. And so I think for a manager and look, being a manager or a CEO,

all of the above, it's really hard. And very few people actually get management and leadership training. So one of the things I would say to all leaders, managers, leaders of their companies is invest in your own development, whether that's hiring a coach or reading great books, listening, like there's so many ways that you can develop your career. But I think that, and it's true, people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad job or bad bosses, you know, and so and one of the things that I have found is that a lot of issues at work come down to a couple key areas. Management's one, communication is one, expectations is one, and just overall structure. You know, they don't know what is expected. And one of the other things I would say that would

be good for all teams to do is to have some upfront kind of conversations around like, how do you prefer to be communicated? When is a good time? Like, how does the communication style work here for everybody on the team? So there's a lot of things that bosses can do to be good bosses and to build environments or build teams that are built on trust and mutual respect and aligned values. And those are the most successful teams. And it trickles down to the organizations. If I was looking for a job at a place and using the great principles you put forth,

one of the things I'd be doing is watching videos, which is really great that we have all this content these days. I'd watch videos of CEOs and some of their talks and what they're espousing, what they're broadcasting as their values and stuff because a lot of them do that in these speeches they do and uh and i'm kind of trying to be get a sense of their management style because that's really where it's at when when uh you know the man or woman like i call it on the white horse um they set that tone for the corporation and depend upon that tone the values of those that corporation run through and so if you've got you know we can probably i don't know reference some politics and go well that tone clearly makes some some differences down the pathway that we go to. You can find bad corporations, I'm sure, too. I can't think of any off the top of my head where the CEO just is an awful person and the company is filled with awful people.

And so you don't want to go to work for those places. So this is a great book. I love the different techniques that you have in here. One question I have is a power move pushing the CEO and his chair down the fire steps so that you can get his job? Probably not a power move. Hang on one second. Let me write this down. Not a legal power move. Note to self, Lauren says that's bad. Don't do. I'll circle that just to make sure. All right, so good to know. I'm going to be empowered when I do this.

So I really appreciate you being with us here, Lauren. You've got some really great techniques and ideas. I love that you're helping empower women. I love women. I've been over the past couple years, going back to 2008, I've been wanting more women to be in politics to represent themselves in legislature. And we've been seeing them step up. We're seeing a lot more women entering the job force and everything else. And, and I think it's great.

I think it's great. I love, I love everything that looks like America does and everyone should have the same opportunities and freedoms and what they want to do. So, um, give us, uh, your last parting, uh us your last parting thing on what we should know further about you and we'll go out. Yeah. So last thing I'll just say is that Power Moves are available to everybody. Remember, they're not just for some people. Anybody can make a Power Move today. The book can be found at powermovesBook.com. And I encourage anybody who's thinking about any career stuff

to really give this a shot because a lot of the tools that we talk about are to help you be more fulfilled and successful in your career. And then my website is CareerContessa.com and then at Career Contessa on all the social media channels. Awesome sauce. And the book is Power Moves, How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career Purpose. This is awesome. Check it out. You can get it on Amazon.

I'm sure individual booksellers near you. Thanks, Lauren, for being on the show today and giving us these wonderful tips. This will be awesome for people that hopefully there won't be as many people looking for jobs, but I guess there already are, so I can't try and spin that. But definitely check out her book, Empower Yourself.

I think it's great. And it sounds like, like I said, some of the reviews I read of people that have been just really appreciative of what you're putting out with the Contessa website, they've been really like, this is awesome. So you're helping empower women and keep them engaged. Yeah, love my job. I this is awesome. So you're helping empower women and keep them engaged. Yeah. Love my job. I'm so lucky.

Thank you. There you go. I love it. You just took it right from a thesis. I think the guy, Fred Smith, who created the FedEx, his thing came from a college thesis that I think you've done. Oh, that's good news then. My understanding of the story is that his professor either failed him or gave him a D-. He says, this is the dumbest plan for FedEx ever.

Like, why would someone want to pay you extra when they can pay the post office? We know how that turned out. Yeah, we know how that turned out. So I love the power of entrepreneurs. Thanks to Manage for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube, hit that bell notification button so you can get all the notifications of entrepreneurs. Thanks to Manage for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube, hit that bell notification button so you

can get all the notifications of everything we do. Be sure to check out Lauren's book. There'll be a link on the Chris Voss show. You can take and hit that button or you can hit that on youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Be safe, be well, and we'll see you next time.