Behind the Scenes- Planning a Summit

This week on the podcast, I am sharing a "behind the scenes" conversation as I plan a summit with a few friends. More information is comiing soon!

 Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

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We are talking about pivots. We believe that there's a value in what we share right now. People going through a time with either an unintentional or an intentional pause to their career. We want to be an encouragement and an example for other people. That's why we're doing this summit. The foundational idea that connects the four of us is the idea of abundance. We believe in collaboration and connections. Maybe I know somebody who knows somebody, and we could create that kind of connection that moves somebody forward. The goal is to create a summit that brings people together while they're navigating transition. So having one focus. Navigating transition allows people to receive that from where they are. Some people are in a career change. Some have experienced layoffs. We're thinking multi-day, multi-session. If you feel compelled to lean in, we're here for you. A really inspiring thing for me to remember. We're supposed to pivot. Expect, embrace the pivots. And the four of us showing up and saying, Hey, this is what we've done on repeat, we've pivoted i'm open to the unique insights and skills that each of us bring to this group. And as we are sharing that with confidence, to begin to notice things that they haven't noticed before. It might be time to turn from this skill to something new. We are offering this from the idea that there's plenty, there's more than enough. We have an abundance mindset. So if three people come, my belief is those three people tell three people who tell three people, right? This is version one. I think we throw spaghetti at the wall and then we see what works, what didn't work, what we do differently. I think abundance unites us. I began this path of self-awareness from scarcity. The nuance of both can be true. Both can be true. It's kinda like the ebbs and the flows, right? Mm-hmm. And so this is kind of where our lives go, right? Sometimes we feel a little bit of lack, like it's not unusual. We're not in abundance a hundred percent of the time, right? We Are people gonna work with us? Right? Like, what does this look like? What does it feel like? We're abundance now. We recognize it. We appreciate it. We're grateful for it. But there was a time when we weren't in this space of abundance. I am constantly talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because I like to show up as the person who's in the mess still. Even though I am abundant and I am successful and I do great things and explore and I have all kinds of stuff that happens and I could wake up worried every moment of every day. Just because there's always more to do. And I always talk about the fact that if you have more to do, you're gonna feel angst because you can't help it. Right. But you just get present and remind yourself and go out and enjoy the little things. I was thinking about a variety of things that I could do, about pivoting, because I pivot. My middle name should be pivot. No. Keep it joy. Yes. Right. I think that there's a chance that abundance right around the corner. Some people don't necessarily have scarcity. They have more anger than they have scarcity. And so I think Fear I think you don't recognize fear necessarily unless you've had abundance. Some people get brought up in some pretty dark days and they just, if they have fear, that's how they fight. Then some people have fear and they're like, oh, what am I gonna do with myself? I can't live like this. You know? And so I think it's important if we show up like we got it all together, then it's hard to jump on that wagon with us, which is why we're not, I had this idea. I know. Thank you. An abundance mindset does not mean we're living in this Pollyanna energy, that life is always up and to the right. Like us being authentic is huge. If you like Noah Kahan, he's on Jay Shetty this week talking exactly about this, of, you know, stick season was so big, will it ever be like that again? So I think every single human has this constant daily work of what's your mindset? There is not enough or somehow there is. Our networks are gonna be important. Can we think of three examples of how we've connected with people? Some of us it's LinkedIn, some of us it's Instagram, some of it's in person. I like the idea of having more than one way that we connect and trying to use that. Connected related to your network. How did it feel when you were laid off? Like how did it feel when you were pivoting? I can actually speak to how this resonates with me. If we decide to become entrepreneurs, or even if you're representing a company. You go to a networking event, right? How does it feel? Right? If it doesn't feel good mm-hmm. You're gonna leave. And I've had that happen, right? And you're always evolving. So I was a part of this group for I think five years, and it felt great. It felt so welcoming. The first time I walked in I'm like, oh my God, this is for me. Mm. You know? Eventually I became president, and then after president I was like, oh my God, I can't do this anymore. I just, I like, I need to go, I'm done. I, I've outgrown. I'm done like this. I am done. Like I can't do this. And so last year, late last year, I was reevaluating all the different networking groups I was going to. What was serving, what was not, what felt good, what did not. And it wasn't about how much, how many clients I was getting. It was just how was I feeling going in. Was I talking to people who are like tuning out? Do they not care what I do? Or are these people who are very supportive? Right. So now I just belong to three networking groups and I love them all. How do I feel going in and sharing what I do? Mm-hmm. You outgrowth things sometimes. And that is a really interesting idea. I also feel like networking because if there are people who are in corporate, like myself, only corporate, and then we pivot to I'm on my own. Right? What is this? What does this look like? Is it like a Cutco situation where I'm like asking my friends and my friends of friends and my friend, right. No, this is us going out and what are the possibilities? And there are some that are international, some that are national, some that are just local. And you can still, we can still talk about like our local ones and, and what that might look like. I think that could be a session in and of itself. Mm-hmm. And something that you're passionate about. Totally. That's what we see, right? Like what's rising to the top as this is what I talk about. Yeah. Right. Anything else about network before we keep going? I'll just say it's all I ever talk about with people in terms of finding a job. It was so many more steps than I thought it would be. I think a lot of people can be like, oh, I don't have anybody in my network. I I don't know anybody who lives in Wales or whatever. Right. And then it's like, oh, but I know Jennifer who maybe knows somebody, you know? Yep. And those are all good reminders for some people who have already heard it and they're really good for people who've never heard it. You never know, right? It's this connection to that connection. Connect with people and support and be supported. That's the energy I think behind what we're trying to create here. Our focus is on helping. It's not saying we have all the answers and we know how to get you a job, but we do have something that we're bringing to you to support you and that's why we're doing this. Back to what Erica just said. We don't even know how that could happen. That a person is in a small room with the other person and all of a sudden that happens. The other goal is the seeds that we're planting. Something that is growing inside of us and we share it in a way that it makes sense. I did a job search bootcamp and I did create just a super basic Google sheet for everybody to share their LinkedIn. And one of the things I was like, grow your LinkedIn connections. There were like 33 people on the sheet. Amazing. That all friended each other. Right. And I was accept everybody's request. Who comes through today? Like these aren't spam people. These are people here. Yeah. And some of those people went and met with each other. Wow. Every time one of you says something here, I go, oh yeah. And that is what the beauty of connecting is that it expands and expands. You know, there's just so much more that we can think of, and that's the confidence level that like we know that, right? That's our abundance factor, right? We're like, we know that. That's really a huge piece for people to know that they get to be confident that it will work. You have to just figure out and meet and talk and, I mean, I'm not even the best networker, uh, but I could tell you how to network the pants off. Okay. When it's my time to do it. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh God, my anxiousness is coming up now. Okay. You know? So it's interesting that, uh, how much we can learn from one another. Yeah. Monica. Maybe this is not the first time in the summit, but an opportunity, like the more people we have, like maybe we have breakout rooms and people can connect one-on-one. Mm-hmm. Or you know, a, a small group of people and start seeing how they can support each other. I love the idea of like doing things on repeat. The first time it's the number of people who know the four of us and trust us enough to send somebody our way. But then when they come and they have an aha, um, planting the seeds, you know, Jennifer, you're the first person after I met you, I heard about the fire movement, but I had never heard about it. And I had never seen an example of a woman saying, this is possible. Right? And now once you see something, you can't help but see it. So that's what I think the planting the seeds are. My story is more, I would never have chosen any of the things that ended to end. Each of those careers felt like a lifetime career, but they were meant to end so I could become the next version of me. That might be inspiring for somebody else. Right. So I think listening to everybody talk today, a good reminder is we are going to continue to have this AI disruption. People are going to continue to need to pivot. When two people are up for a role. Someone who's in an abundance energy and someone who's in a scarcity fear energy are gonna have different results trying to find the next spot. Right? So that's part of what we gift them with. Two thoughts. Um, one is thanks for saying the disrupt because you're right and we do need to disrupt. So, you know, the question is that maybe we have AI help us, but like, how can we disrupt the norm of whatever it is so that we can kind of inch our way in and speak really loudly. The other thing is I, so I'm an Ayurvedic health coach. I went to an Ayurvedic, summit or conference last year, and what was really fascinating to me is how many engineers there were who pivoted from engineering to Ayurvedic doctor, to Ayurvedic practitioner, to Ayurvedic health coach. I was stunned And you thought you were like the odd person out. It feels it, you know, it kind of feels that way when I was. In my, in the beginning of my career as an engineer, I had one, friend. She left after two years, said, I'm tired of being an engineer at Boeing. She went on to pharmacy school and is now a pharmacist. I had another guy who started as an engineer and he decided he wanted to become a doctor, so he went off to med school. So it's not like unheard of for me, I guess it was just more of a reminder because I haven't seen it a lot because I left engineering and everybody just kind of, at that point being so many years in engineering, they were all gonna kind of stay in engineering. But it's just interesting to revisit that and hear it and I'm like, what? This is crazy. Yeah. Like, I, I'm not, but you're right, I'm not alone. Right. The value of that, right? Whether it's podcasts we put out or we do these summits online, or for people to just feel like I'm not alone in wanting to do this thing, that my mother would be so upset that I'm doing, you did this degree and now you're not staying with it. Okay? So the seeds is part of what we're doing. Keeping it small. If we look at ourselves as an example mm-hmm. Um, and at the research,, that one of my teachers has done, and that is we generally tend to pivot, women tend to pivot in their midlife. Mm-hmm. So 45 to 55, something like that. A lot of women are going, actually my therapist, she has a podcast with, another, uh, colleague of mine, and they're calling it the third act. Mm-hmm. She's a few years older than me. I think there might be a book named that. We think about what's our second career? What's So everything, like everyone kind of went, I guess, into the health field now that I think of it. Although, do you know that healthcare is like the number one industry that isn't being impacted right now? That's interesting. From a hiring perspective, it's for sure getting and going to be impacted. There's huge impact in the healthcare space, but being disrupted at a different rate from AI now, I mean, I have all my own arguments on which ones are gonna be disrupted first in the medical field also, but we're not there yet. We talked about pivoting and we've also talked a lot about disruption If we're attracting people like us, Jennifer, one of the things I think that you have exhibited with your life is the willingness to be brave. Which doesn't mean you weren't scared goes back to that first thing of like, the abundance isn't always up into the right. That's why I was saying I think taking things in bite-sized for people is important. Yeah. Because if you're, if you're doing too much, especially if it's shorter windows of time. So if you're doing something too big, it's really challenging to walk away with something particularly and if I'm going to something, I'm trying to walk away with something, do you know that I can actually go, I can do something with that today. What I'm leaning into for this first round is doing a, I like the purpose slash icky guy. I'm a huge icky guy fan. Love that. So it's kinda like a partial, icky guy, but I kind of feel like everybody being able to, you know, know what their strengths are and they might know different things, right? They might know their strengths from strength finders from, whatever. So just kind of putting it in general, like all of their strengths, what they love to do, what's good, and it'll help them, I think, to figure out like what their next steps are. Putting something like that together so they can see all their awesomeness, all their greatness and everything that they have to offer. Starting off on a positive note. Erica, when you say 2026 job market, what does that mean? I can talk to any portion of that, but I would say that it's more specific to people wanting to get hired. Okay. When I say the job market, I mean the getting hired part of the job market. You're saying I can specifically help you, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, I think that we all grow our own individual business. I think the first time we do it, we're gonna have information from the end of it. So there's things we can do we can reach out in different places and say, is this a felt need? Would you know somebody who would come? And then I think keeping this as short as possible for the first one. Where each of us would have a topic that we would say you would leave with this. I know they would leave with an understanding that people respond differently in stress. They would have some clarity of are they in stress in health and the people that they're with. Because part of being in this time of pivot is you're probably gonna be in stress. So what, what does that look like? Right. The thing that comes up for me right now is like how we respond to the disruption. So Monica, I look at your lifestyle wellness during transition, and I know that that comes up for me so much with my clients. What are you doing to take care of yourself? There's so much that's valid, right? And I think this is like a really good starting point. What does this look like? Right? How can we support, we figure out your purpose and what's next. I think what would be really great- can we use part of this for the podcast? Here's a bonus, here's what we're working on. Right? The best thing that we can keep saying is, do you know somebody do you know somebody Yep. The workshop itself could be 60 minutes, it could be a little bit longer. Wellness could be half an hour maybe or or 45 minutes. Um, if it's not interactive. What do you think about the responding to the disruption? I love it. I wrote it down. I think this is great. I think it's a good title. Yeah. I was thinking already, like breaking the mold for every topic we do. What are we doing that's breaking the mold? When you're disruptive, sometimes you're totally breaking the mold and stepping completely out of it. Sometimes you're actually, breaking what has been and trying to make it better. I was thinking about that for each one of us. If we were gonna go with that theme, have you done positive intelligence? I have an hour long workshop on the three step reset. And it is teaching that whole framework. But I think it's very good for disruption. Yeah. Yeah. It really is challenging to every day, to do those things. I'm doing 10 podcasts, starting like in two weeks. I'm gonna have one every single day for each of the saboteurs. Nice. Very nice. Yes. We've all done all these different things. And you guys, if you think there's something that you don't do, but there might be something that would be of value throw it at me because I don't mind figuring out like what to do. I can talk about managing your own morale and getting present and, how to make a two year plan to stay at your job and not hate it. Well, you've done such a massive pivot. That's what I mean. There's a lot of stuff and it could be along those lines. Where are our gaps? There's probably a gap that I could look at and go like, oh, I can do that. You know what I mean, and help around that? Because, I can mentor, I can do whatever. What are people who are in this mode, what are they looking for?