SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, work, trigger, overcoming, self sabotage, self doubt, inner critic, mindset, fear, limiting beliefs, clarity, coping, tolerated, toxic, recovery, blinders on, dream career, Core Energy Coaching, visioning exercises, meditation, future self, confident, peaceful, life plan, personal mission statements, values, freedom, passion, authenticity, state of flow, passive participant, foundational principles, shiny object syndrome

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Betty Kempa

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. I’m really excited to bring you Betty Kampa. 

In this episode, Betty is a Certified Professional Coach. She’s one of the industry’s top Career Change Strategists. She specializes in helping mid to senior level corporate women transition out of unfulfilling jobs and into careers they love using her signature 5 Step Career Bliss Coaching formula. Betty and I went to the same Coaching School, the Institute For Professional Excellence in Coaching and met and bonded because she quit drinking not years ago. 

 

She is incredible to talk to. I wanted to bring her on, particularly because I know when I was drinking for years, one of my top triggers was work and stress and managing your career and your home life and business, travel and your home and spouse, and kids. And not only that, my work, my career, my business travel was one of my main excuses as to why I couldn’t quit drinking. Drinking was the way I bonded with my colleagues going out to constant happy hours, going out to dinners on the road. So it was a trigger. It was an excuse, and it’s what kept me drinking for years and years, even though I knew it wasn’t working for me. 

 

Betty is a thought leader in the industry. Who writes, speaks and coaches on topics such as building 6 figure Coaching businesses, overcoming imposter syndrome, dream career clarity, and effective career change strategy. 

 

Betty, I’m so glad that you’re here. 

 

Casey, I’m so excited to be here and be talking to you and your audience. Thank you. 

 

And one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on. I mentioned it a little in the intro, but it’s because so many women I coach and I talk to say that they work with their bosses and have career pressure. They feel like it drives them to drink. It’s the one way they can unwind after a long day at work, or they come home from the office or a long commute and just want to shut their minds off and have something for themselves while they’re still helping with homework and, you know, getting the kids ready for the evening or drink, which I did constantly. When hopping back on the computer. After I get the kids to bed. I would just sit there with my wine and type away. So I know women feel trapped, they feel stuck. They feel unhappy, but they don’t know what to do about it. And they’re really stressed out and in an unfulfilled job and wanted to bring you on to sort of pull that apart and separate the two, and think about what they can do in their current job to reduce stress, and also get rid of the fear and how stuck they feel in order to transition out of a job.

 

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that’s definitely the gist of the women that I’m working with. I mean, I’m, I’m working with all different types of women. But the one thing that they all have in common, besides being mid to senior level of corporate women is that they feel stuck. They feel unfulfilled in the job. They’re kind of like a square peg in a round hole. Right? They feel like something’s missing, but they can’t quite put their finger on what it is. And so yeah, that’s the idea is that you don’t have to kind of just take what’s being handed to you at your current job. You can proactively decide, how do I want to change things and whether that’s creating boundaries in your current job or, you know, really doing some deep introspection. And deciding, hey, you know what, this isn’t the right thing for me and I should be elsewhere and I don’t have to cope by drinking because I’m unhappy. 

 

Yeah, absolutely. And I know when I was working, I changed jobs quite a bit, thinking that work was so stressful, and that a different job or a different boss or a different company would make it better. But I also felt stuck in the career that I had gone into meaning I’d been in it for 20 years. I was in Digital Marketing at corporate companies and startups. I felt like I made so much money. Money that anywhere, you know, if I wanted to do something more fulfilling it would by definition be less, you know, financially secure, less less lucrative. And I had kids too, with a mortgage and so I felt like being stressed and feeling like anything else would be the straw that broke the camel’s back was just the way I needed to live. And I know when women come to you, a lot of them feel that same way. So, you know, you talk about how I should be happy, this should be enough. I should suck it up. Tell us more about it, so I call that, the case of the shoulds. 

 

You’re shooting yourself. Right? And you know, and I was there too, right? Like I… I was in a 6 figure corporate job. At one point, I was in what I thought was my dream company. And it just was so bizarre that every day I felt dread going into work and I felt dread at night thinking about the next day, but I felt like I should be happy. And same thing with the golden handcuffs, right? I’m making the money. I’m supporting my family. I’m the breadwinner, right? So you trap yourself with that mindset with that limiting belief before you’ve really done and I say you I mean, I’ve done it, we’ve we’ve all done it. You trap yourself there before you really do the work to figure out what else is out there. And what are the possibilities? Yeah, I mean, it’s really, I found like all my choices were being driven by my fear, not my hopes. Not dreaming anymore about what could be. And I think so many women get to midlife because I’ve talked to them and they say, okay, I’ve done everything that I’m supposed to do right. I went to college, maybe I went to graduate school. I got the good grades, I climbed the career ladder. I often got married and had kids and bought the house and why aren’t I happy yet? 

 

Absolutely. I absolutely hear the same thing. And, you know, a lot of us follow a path that we think we should be following. Right. I, I majored in Communications back in college. And so I followed that path I got a corporate communications job, but you know, they never teach you or maybe they do now, who knows, but back when I was in school, they didn’t teach you in college or, or any of that, how to figure out a career that would honor your values and your strengths and your mission statement. We kind of get thrown into these things and then beat ourselves up for not being happy. So this is kind of unwinding that. You know, that tight wound up, not that we’ve gotten ourselves in and figured it out. Wait a second. It’s… it’s taking that moment of introspection and saying you don’t have to beat yourself up because you’re not in a job that makes you happy.

 

Let’s explore that. Let’s figure out all the aspects of what makes you tick. And let’s align that with a career that will make you happy and bring in the salary you’re looking for. Right? Don’t trap yourself with a limiting belief that it’s either or. Either I can be happy and broke, or I can be in a miserable job and have a ton of money. Right? 

 

Yeah, and I know, that’s what my..where my mind was, you know, either I was going to have to take a big pay cut and not have financial security, or I was going to have to stay where I was, which by the way was causing me anxiety and checking my email at 9pm. And, you know, waking up and the first thing I would do was open emails and see what I’ve been sent overnight or from my boss. And you know, I know. So, so many Women, you know, they really feel beaten down, they feel deflated, they feel uninspired. And yet, they don’t know how to get out. 

 

And I know that when you’re drinking, this is a huge area too because you’re in such a cycle of feeling stuck. You’re trying to recover every morning from drinking, you drink at night to, you know, shut off your mind. And it’s really hard to take the moments that Betty’s talking about that we’re going to go through to actually get some clarity and realize that you have options. You have agency, you can change the way you’re living, both by taking a break from alcohol and by looking at, as Betty said, your limiting beliefs about work, about what opportunities are available for you. Because if you’re listening to this, or many women listening to this, you’re smart, you’re successful. You’re an overachiever, you make sure everyone else is taken care of. There’s a reason that you’ve climbed the corporate ladder. And those skills can also help you find a career you absolutely love. Where you don’t feel the dread that you’re feeling now and you don’t have to do either or – have money or happiness. 

 

Absolutely. And to your point to Casey, you know, this process, the career plus coaching formula that I walk women through, it’s 5 steps. And step one and two that we are kind of touching on step 1 is getting your mind right. It’s the mindset. It’s the facing your fear and the fear of failure and limiting beliefs. And step 2 is getting that clarity on Wait a second, let me take a look at who I am. What really makes me happy and what kind of careers align with that. Those two steps alone. I’m not gonna lie that they’re not easy. You definitely have to have a clear brain about you when you’re going through this stuff. And if you’re foggy, hung over or whatever it looks like, it’s gonna be tough to get through steps 1 and 2, to just overcome those mental barriers and then get the clarity on what’s next. 

 

So I want to have you go into each step to give the women listening some, you know, real tangible ideas of how they might be able to move through this on their own, what working with you could be like, or the processes to do it. But first, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and about your journey because I know what you went through and where you were stuck and where you got free was a big part of the work you do today and why you’re so successful. 

 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you gave me a really good intro. That pretty much covers most of it. But you know, I am nine years sober and I cannot imagine going through the career transition process that I went through without having that serenity, that clarity of mind. There’s no way I could have gone through this career transition into something that I love without having that. So that was definitely a really important part of my journey. 

 

And I will say a side note, when I did get sober 9 years ago, I was still in the corporate world before going out on my own as a career coach. And after getting sober, I was promoted and I over doubled my income and I landed some amazing jobs. So it’s not like life was perfect, obviously. But boy, did it get better. And it really set the stage for eventually, you know, down the road as I’m in this corporate job. This case of the “shoulds” for me to really be introspective and feel enough confidence and clarity of mind to say, “What? Wait a sec”. I’ve been doing this for a decade. It feels like I need to be doing this. But I’m miserable. I don’t want to be this way. Right. And, you know, I went through a lot. I went through layoffs, I went through toxic bosses, you know, I’ve had some great ones, but I’ve had some toxic ones. And, you know, all those things together, is what really pushed me to start to do exactly what I walked my clients through. I started saying, okay, does it have to be that I have to be in this role? I remember when I first started getting clarity on becoming a coach, right? We both went to AIPAC. I googled what’s the salary of a Career Coach? Because I wanted to know, I was making a lot of money. And the same thing, and I was like, Yeah, you got to, so I’ll never forget, Google told me it was $40,000 and I thought, oh my god, I’m the breadwinner. This is crazy. But this is what makes me happy. And the long and short of it is, that is a limiting belief. Period. To believe Google when Google is telling you, this is what career coaches are making. I blew that away. My first year, I was back to six figures, my first year in business. So, you know, the point I’m trying to make here is I went through the same steps I walk my clients through, get over the limiting belief, get clarity on what makes you happy, and then build a strategy to get yourself there.

 

Absolutely, and one of the things that you touched on that I wanted to come back to as well is once I quit drinking, my job got so much easier. I mean, I don’t think there’s anyone who’s gone through this process of deciding that alcohol is not working for them. Who hasn’t felt the anxiety, the panic of waking up at 3am, wondering how the hell you’re going to pull yourself together for another day at work, the feeling like you’re strung so thin or that you can’t cope with one more deliverable landing on your desk. So that is incredibly common. When I quit drinking, I was not ready to look for another job at that moment. I just wanted to stop feeling so bad. And I always tell women I work with, even if you hate your job, even if you have questions about your marriage, your first hundred days should be just about not drinking because once you stop drinking, everything else gets better. It really does. So once I stopped and got some different coping tools and started having that negative feedback loop of drinking lift, I felt more able to cope with my job to handle the stress, to pivot with the changes. I had more energy. And once I had that both, I realized my job was a lot easier than I felt it was, when I was drinking. But also, I was capable of so much more. And I wasn’t trapped because I was good at what I did. And yet I also had more energy and more optimism to pursue other things. So, you know, it really is you know, you have to deal with item one first, getting out of the drinking hangover recovery cycle. 

 

But, you know, I think that hating your job or feeling trapped or feeling anxiety and panic. You know, that’s no way to live. And it’s a signal that something needs to change and you need to listen to that because, you know, holding on for another decade and thinking that maybe this is just what adulting is, is sort of dreading going in every day and being happy by planning a vacation or going to happy hour or your bottle of wine after work, that isn’t the way you’re meant to live. 

 

Yeah. Oh my gosh, so powerful. And I don’t know where this quote is from, but something along the lines of when the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of change. That’s when change happens. Right? So it’s like, that’s when women get off the hamster wheel. That’s when Enough is enough. And, you know, once you put the bottle down, and really take a look at what’s going on, then you are empowered to either say, Okay, I’m, I’m sticking around here, but there are some things that need to change in this role. And maybe there are some boundaries I need to create or some conversations I need to have with my boss. Right? You could… you could do that or down the road. You could say, you know, maybe I’m going to take this time to get some clarity on what’s right for me, maybe it’s not this. But all those things. You need to feel that clarity of mind and it really empowers you. It gives you confidence and courage to say, wait a sec, I thought I only had two options: stay and be miserable and have a glass of wine or, you know, whatever else but no, I have like 10 different options. And I get to choose and what a gift that is. 

 

Yeah, absolutely. So take us through step one. Absolutely. So Step 1 is what I call overcoming self sabotage. And so this is all about getting out of your own way. And we’ve touched on this but it’s overcoming fears and limiting beliefs around holding a job you love and making enough money. If you cling to that belief, cling cling, you’re not gonna move for I could find the perfect job for you and dangle it like a carrot over your head. You’re not going to reach out for that if you’re trapping yourself with mindset. So step one overcome self doubt. massage. And there’s all different things here. Right. And we learned about this together at AIPAC, there are limiting beliefs. There’s the inner critic who tells you that you’re not good enough to make a career switch into something you love. Right? It’s a thought problem. So it’s really getting to the heart of that and getting that on track so that once you do decide what you want to do next, your mindset is straight. That’s step one. Yeah, and I I see a lot of women in not just work but in all aspects of their lives. And this is where I was.

 

Both Betty and I do Core Energy Coaching. And there are 7 levels that you see the world through. They’re sort of your mindset or your default reaction. And a lot of what I see with women, especially women who are either in the drinking cycle or coming out, is they’re between level one and level three, and level three is coping, tolerated. Making excuses, bending over backwards to maintain the status quo so that you don’t have to change. So that you don’t have to engage in any level of conflict. So you’re really doing everything you can to excuse the way you feel. The second one is level one which is more victim, right? You feel powerless to make a change over people, places, things, situations. And when I was working in my, my last corporate job when I was drinking every night, I definitely felt a combination of that, right? So I felt that in terms of tolerating, explaining away, doing everything I could to cope, so as not to have to change I said, okay, but I’m making a really good salary. My boss was at the time very toxic, very hard. Our team had turned over. The entire team except me and her twice during my 4 years there. And I was the person holding everything together and filling the gaps in between and just under immense stress. And by the way, drinking didn’t help. That’s probably why I stayed stuck and didn’t leave when everybody else did. But what I said was, you know, I make a great salary. Yes. My boss is toxic. Yes, I’m drinking every night. Yes, I’m, you know, recovering every day. Yes. I hate looking at my email every morning, and yet, I like to walk to Starbucks. And some people in my office are nice. And there’s a nice courtyard outside and I can walk to the park and the commute is slow. And even though I’m dying of anxiety and panic, and everybody else had said, screw it. I’m out of here. This isn’t worth it. I can get another great job.

 

I was like, Well, I can take my son to baseball in the spring twice a week at 4:30, as long as I work till 10:00pm. So, I mean, that was such tolerating excellent lose, excusing, doing everything I could to not have to change. And that was based on level one pure fear, feeling powerless feeling like a victim thinking. If I took another job, it would probably be more business travel, I would have to commute, so I couldn’t take my daughter to the bus stop in the morning, I would no longer be able to take my son to baseball. And by the way, I’m also a victim because I’m the primary breadwinner and we have a mortgage and my kids are a decade away from college. Right? It was such a place of being stuck and not feeling opportunities and hopeful.

 

Yeah, oh my gosh, I love the way that you wove in the energy levels. With this topic. It’s so true. And you know, I actually love to give the energy leadership index debrief that… that uh, you know, you’re talking about here with the energy levels. I’m to kick it off with my clients, because I want to see which energy Are they sitting in so that they can have the awareness right? Because that’s the first step to know, you know, what’s really going on here. We’re not just zombies walking around. There’s…there’s an awareness about what’s really going on and then from there, you can make a choice and say, Do I want to sit in this? Or do I want to move out of this? And you know Step 2 of my process identifying your dream role is really what is, you know, it’s really moving you out at this level three tolerating. I’m tolerating things and excuses. Oh, but I got Starbucks, right? And step two, identify your dream role. That’s really I designed that to kind of try to put and I don’t want to do too much coaching, speak for your listeners here, but I designed step 2, identify your dream role around trying to move people into level 5 energy, which for your listeners is when you know instead of feeling stuck like you only have one two choices. All of a sudden, it’s almost like Wizard of Oz when she steps out of the black and white into color. And there’s this rainbow. And it’s like, the sky’s the limit now? Oh my gosh, I didn’t know the world was in color. Oh my gosh, look at all these choices infront of me. Right? That’s, that’s what it’s all about when you start to get clarity on what other options are out there for you. The whole world changes from black and white to color. And it’s incredible.

 

So I can imagine that that is the hardest part, like defining what your dream career is, because so many of us have sort of blinders on. And we’re just looking ahead and we’re looking at, you know, I remember thinking, I don’t want my boss’s job, I don’t want my boss’s boss’s job. And yet, I knew that I stayed for another five years. So, how do you even start to look around and see possibilities? 

 

Really good question. So this is a lot of the heart of the process that I work through with my clients. And I think where people struggle first. I’ll say where people struggle. And then I’ll talk about what I do differently with people. 

 

I think where people struggle when they’re unhappy, besides staying stuck or going home and drinking, is maybe they go home at the end of the day, and they just scroll job boards. Let me just scroll. Let me see what else is out there. Yeah. And that’s just gonna lead to more overwhelm, because you don’t know what you’re looking for at that point. When it seems so depressing in my mind, like I was at a big beauty company, and I’m like, yeah, this is the same job but kind of at a crappier company. So why would I possibly, if you’re scrolling the job boards without knowing what you’re looking for? I mean, our brains, sometimes they’re trained to look for similarities. So, you’re kind of already looking for similar roles without… you haven’t yet given yourself the chance to step out of what you’re already in. So I think that’s the part where I would say we actually want to work backwards. So instead of looking externally, what’s out there, first, you got to go inside. So, you know, some of the things I do with my clients, we do visioning exercises, right where you see and meet a version of your future self. 

 

And you know, often we we have these answers within us that when you do some meditation or some visioning exercises or work through it with a coach, it’s within you and and you know, you can kind of pull out to you, who is this future version of you? Regardless of the job, who is the future version of you that you want to become? Because from there, you can start to select a career that will help you become that human. So that’s part of it. 

And do you touch on sort of, you know, all aspects of it? Is it how you feel inside or is it where you live? Is it how much you travel for business versus pleasure? Like your values, what are the different areas? 

 

And you know, for your listeners, you guys could even get on YouTube and just search, visioning exercise or future visioning exercise. But essentially, you’re just meeting this version of your future self. And yeah, it’s all senses. How do you feel? How does she look? How does she carry herself? What does she tell you? Ask her a question. What’s the first thing I need to do to get out of this, you know, feeling stuck? She’ll tell you, because she knows this future version of you that’s confident and peaceful. She knows what the first step is. And you know, what’s the first step you need to take to move out of this? So that’s a part of it. I also like to build out a life plan with my clients. So it’s not just about the JOB, JOB job. It’s like, Wait a second. What do you want your life to look like? Because the career is just a bridge to get you closer to that. The life that you want to be living. So it’s really important to sit down and pen to paper, build out what you want that life to look like, so that you can find a career that aligns with it. Personal mission statements. So I talk about personal mission statements with my clients a lot. And so we know as corporate, you know, former corporate women, when you sign on to a company, you’re signing onto their mission statement, you show up, they’ve got it on their wall or the handbook and you’re signing on to that. And it’s like, wait, wait a second, stop, reverse that. What’s your personal mission statement? So I will do coaching exercises with my clients designed to pull out to them again. We’re not even at the job yet, regardless of the job. What were you put on this earth to do? What’s your Why? What’s the thing that drives you? 

 

Right, and I absolutely love that and I hadn’t thought about it before, but I was in. I was in corporate marketing For years, so I came up with a million vision statements, right? And

really thinking about what are our core values, and I’ve never thought of applying that in a work setting. But I think that’s incredibly powerful. Because I know you and I with clients both do value statements. And one of the things you know, and they’re all these, you know, different personality tests and how you function and what you value. I did discovery insights in my last corporate job, there’s of course, Myers-Briggs, there are a million different ones. But I realized that a lot of the values when someone used to ask me, you know, in job interviews or something. What’s your greatest, you know, your greatest attribute, your greatest value, I would always say, I am competent and I am responsible, and I will never let you down. That was what you know, I will fulfill the job, the mission or you will know about it XYZ time ahead. Did you know I’ll find a solution? And that was how I was living my life, which are great values. But they were driving me to anxiety and unhappiness. And when I stepped back, I realized those were my parents’ values. They weren’t, they weren’t mine. Mine were working for a company with integrity and who treated everyone well, and a mission I believed in and something that inspired me, and friendship and love and all those things were my values. And yet, I was saying I’m competent and responsible and will deliver on your business goals. Which it’s, it’s just amazing. And I didn’t figure that out. So I was like, 40 years old because I just, I was like, yep, competition,

shooting yourself how I should be to get this next role. 

 

And to your point, my Yeah, you’re stepping into your parents values. How powerful is that? And you know, values have values that are so important. I definitely do a full exercise of values. Looking at, I look at both life values and career values. And sometimes those can be intertwined.

 

And it’s interesting again, going back to my story, too, I never thought about my values. When I was in the corporate world, I just showed up and did the job. And when I started doing this introspection, what I realized my values were, and this is on my, I believe it’s on my website, my LinkedIn page, but my values are freedom. I want to feel free. I don’t want to feel constricted. Passion, I want to feel passionate about what I do, and authenticity. If I can’t feel like I can just show up and be me. A lot of my last corporate jobs, I felt like I was getting a wrist slap for being me for just being who I was. So freedom, passion, authenticity. And again, like you have to take a look at what your values are. And then from that point, you can start to take a look at Okay, Which careers out there align with who I am at my core, that includes your values, your mission statement? 

 

You talked about strengths. I love the strengthsfinder assessment, your top five strengths, right? These are all clues about what makes you tick. And you really want to look at this part of the process as like you’re a detective, you’re coming at this with your detective hat on, and you’re looking under every nook and cranny about what makes you tick. Another really good one for people to think about is what I call state of flow. So state of flow, so you got to think about Okay, with all the jobs I’ve ever had, what were the times where I was doing a job function, where I felt like I was in a state of flow time just flew by. I didn’t even think I was still in it. And what are the parts of my day that I actually look forward to? And often for some of us, you know, in some of these roles that are unfulfilling, it could be the smallest slice of your day. Like for example, maybe if you’re working a corporate job, I look forward to just that moment where I get to coach, my direct report. I love that part. Right? And we want to pluck those out and find jobs where we can do more of that where you’re in that state of flow. Right? So this is all about clue gathering, personality type, all the things that make you who you are. And and from there, this is I think, the part where a coach comes in handy because we could take all the assessments in the world and then kind of sit there like, what do I do with this? What do I do with this info? And the process that I use, I use something called a dream career scorecard. 

 

So I have my clients list all of the things that make you tick, I call them “what makes you tick” topics, personality type values, mission strengths, and list them in the scorecard. And from there, a lot of the assessments that I’m giving them are spitting out Career recommendations, right. And I don’t like to lean on one assessment, I like to take a bunch, I have a library of them. And we list those at the top of the scorecard. And from there, I have my clients rank out to what degree each career option that you’re curious about, fulfills each of the what makes you tick topics, write my value is this is that fulfilled in this job? My strength is that business is fulfilled and you rank it out? And then you can actually quantify and total out which direction makes the most sense? 

 

Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. And when I took the strengthsfinder I was, you know, I took it after I’d left to become a Coach, and I was shocked at how many of my strengths lined up with coaching and did not line up with being a Director. Ecommerce. And yet I was successful at that. Because, you know, of course, I was some combination of a people pleaser slash overachiever, which kept me desperately wanting to prove myself every single day.

 

And why I mean, all the women I work with are highly successful. And, and we, you know, we were successful, right? It doesn’t just because you’re successful, however you define that. You know, title, money, whatever it is. We all know that I’m stating the obvious, but I’m just like, reaffirming. It doesn’t necessarily success does not necessarily equate to happiness and fulfillment, or passion. And that’s the disconnect. Right? And, and the irony is, once you step into your game, this is the funny part because when I decided I’m going to be a career coach, and I started getting certified and, you know, building my business and learning. I honestly didn’t know at that point. I didn’t know how this would all pan out, to be honest. But when you step into something you love, to success, and money just follows. Because you’re so in it, it’s so… it’s a pleasure for me to get up and do this work. And when that’s the way you feel it, success just follows that. Well, and I know that’s hard for a lot of women to imagine because you hear everything that you’re saying about. 

 

Yep, that makes sense. I feel like how you’re describing every day. I do want to believe there’s something else out there. And yet, I still have those fears and limiting beliefs and I think it doesn’t apply to me. So can you tell us just a couple stories about some of your clients and, you know, how they’ve transitioned and what.. What has happened because I think that helps so much and in building up, you know, so, you know, and first of all, I would say that, everybody, including me, Including my clients, everybody feels at first, oh, that doesn’t pertain to me. Or, you know, that couldn’t be me, we all do. 

 

And you know, side note, fear is not going to go away. It doesn’t just, it’s not like you should wait for the fear to go away before you start this journey. The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow. In fact, sometimes it’ll feel more intense. And that means you’re on the right track. So yeah, some of my clients, you know, I had one right now, this is interesting. A lot of my clients right now are corporate women. And, you know, maybe it has something to do with everything going on in the world right now. And the corporate jobs we thought were so secure, were my security.

 

A lot of them aren’t so secure anymore. Right? Tons of layoffs right now. I mean, it’s crazy. So I’m having a lot of clients coming to me that are saying, hey, I want to build a coaching business. How did you do that? How did you train that? Out of a corporate job into building your own business, how did you do that? So that’s really been a joy. I’ve had numerous clients that have exited the corporate world, they’ve been in director level, or vice president level positions, anything from director of learning and development are a head of VP of planning and allocation, a lot of corporate retail women because that was my background as well, that have opened up their own coaching businesses virtual right, so completely virtual right now. 

 

And it’s been just such a pleasure helping them build out those businesses. I have one that’s a Leadership Coach. I have one that’s creating a business coaching high school kids and their families on figuring out if they don’t go to college, what are they going to do next? And then I do have my corporate clients that just want a different corporate job, and that’s part of the process of figuring out which it’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure. Do I want to be in An entrepreneur, or do I want to get into just a different job? 

 

So I have one client, she was a Research Manager. And she came to me very unhappy with what she was doing. She was in the Education industry, highly successful. But she just wasn’t happy. And interestingly, she had gone before she came to me to a job search agency to say, help me get me into something else. And they hit a roadblock. Because Finally, her working with them, what they uncovered was, we need you to tell us what you want to do before we can give you these jobs. So she came to me like, Oh my gosh, I just realized I don’t know what else I want to do. So we did all the work. We went through, you know, steps one, step two, and it’s interesting, we uncovered for her the research portion of her role. She wanted to hold on to that. So we made some small tweaks for her. She left the education industry, and she went into the state bar. And a really high approach she was. She also wanted a promotion. She was stuck in her job. They weren’t promoting her. So we got her role as Director of Research. And you know, she got an additional 15,000 we negotiated onto her offer. So it just depends. I had one woman who was a VP of merchandise planning. She went into opening up a retail consultant business. So she goes in and helps small boutiques. She’s got all this corporate knowledge. That’s the cool thing is we’ve got all this knowledge, and we can use that for something else that makes us happy. 

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Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I find the other thing that happens to myself in a lot of women is, is you get into roles where you’re really in your sweet spot, and you’re doing what you love to do. And then you get promoted to the point where you’re no longer doing what you love. You know, my role got to the point where I was what the main part of my role was. 

 

And what was expected of me is to travel to New York or somewhere else for a week of every month and to present in high level meetings, and to manage profit and loss and financial projections and contingency plans. And what I love to do was the market research, the branding, the positioning, the analyzing what was working and what wasn’t working, understanding the customer, and none of that was my job anymore. And yet, you know, do you take a step back within an organization that’s hard to do with ego and logistics and all that too. I mentioned earlier that one of my Wake Up Calls and it’s probably Betty because I didn’t know you were out there then and I would have loved to work with you because I’m sure I stumbled around in the dark, much longer than I needed to, but I kept thinking, do I want what they have? And I looked at my boss and I looked at my boss’s boss, and the GM of our organization, and I thought, I don’t want their lives and there was no judgment there on their lives. It was just their life, their relationship, their travel schedule, their level of stress, their level of being tethered to the job, how difficult it was, for them to go on vacation, the way that they needed to interact with everyone in the organization and keep things so close to the vest because of corporate mandates, and then sort of announced changes that really impacted other people’s lives but needing to remain very detached from it. And when I thought I don’t want what they have been, why am I literally following in their footsteps? And why am I aligning my life to meet their priorities? They’re mandates and that was a big wake up call for me because I was, you know, the idea of, if you don’t change directions, you’re probably going to end up where you’re headed. And I was like I want I’m kind of a homebody and a world traveler. So I both wanted to be home with my kids. I did not want to be in a hotel room in New York going to present. That was not my jam. And yet I wanted to be home and also, I wanted you know, my future when you talk about visioning. 

 

My ultimate goal is, I want to… when my kids are out of high school, go with my husband and stay in an Airbnb, you know, an Alkmaar in the Netherlands for four months and take a train to Paris. I want to go to the beach on the eastern coast and rent a house in an adorable little town for four months. I want to live in New Mexico for four months until we find our optimal place and none of that was aligned with that. Corporate VP job ever. So it wasn’t until I realized that I was like, I’m heading down the road to build a life so good. And I definitely am working that job very similar. You take a job, it’s the job description, okay? This is what I signed up for, and it kind of mutates, right? Or somebody else gets laid off, and then you take on their responsibilities, and you’re at the way I mean, let’s be real, you’re at the whim of the company, right? Unless you’re working for an amazing organization, which is the goal, right? If you’re going to stay in the corporate world, you and I always tell my clients to create a target company list that will empower their employees, and there are ways to do that research.

 

But, um, you know what you said, I think that’s kind of the beauty of having a scorecard. I talked about or this process of defining what makes you tick or your non negotiables because once you have those things, that list of things that make you tick your non negotiables that grounds you that surrounds you so that no matter if your job morphs into something else, or you’re looking at something, you always have that list of, whoa, wait a second. This is my foundation. This is who I am at my core. Let me make sure oh, you know, say a recruiter reaches out to you, Hey, I have a new job. Okay, cool. Let me see if it aligns with what I’ve already defined is what makes me who I am. And I think also, you know, the story that you shared. There is a difference between being what I call a passive participant in your career. Like, here I am, I’m showing up, I’m doing the best I can do. I’m going home, I’m having a glass of wine. Fingers crossed. Maybe a recruiter will reach out. Let me scan a job board that’s being a passive participant of your career and life versus being a proactive designer. Right? Wait a second. Let me figure out what I want, what I want my life to look like and find a career that bridges me there. Which is what you’ve done. 

 

Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think the other thing is once I figured out what I wanted in my life, my career, I was much happier in my corporate job because I stayed there for two years while I went to coaching school and when I built my coaching practice, but my, my mindset had shifted. It wasn’t, I just need to stay here because it pays me a good salary and the commute is short. It was, I’m gonna stay here and do the work I need to do because I want that financial stability while I go to school while I watch my coaching practice. This is enabling me to do what I want to do in life. And I was so much more grateful for the job. I was so much happier. And people at work even noticed that they were like, I want to have whatever you have Casey because you are calm and flexible and I never used to be that way. When I was holding on tight and feeling like everything was happening to me. Yeah, well, you know, my weight shift. My ailing Seok is handcuffed, I have no choice to, oh, I do have a choice. Here’s something I’m working towards. 

 

And, you know, I had a similar path to when I decided I wanted to move into coaching. I didn’t just show up to my 6 figure corporate job and say peace out. I found my dream. See you later. No, No way, man. I’m very strategic. And I encourage my clients to be the same. You know, you got to figure out your finances and you got to do your budget and what’s your buffer amount that you need before you make the switch? Or you know, in the case of a lot of your listeners, you know, step one is to stop drinking before you make a million changes. So it’s okay, you know, to not just quit your job but when you know what you’re striving for ultimately, it does make it so much easier to show up. You know, I took a bridge job so I left my super stressful, toxic role that was killing me inside. I took a bridge job. So I was still in the corporate world, but it was less stressful. I wasn’t leading a huge team of people. I was leaving. This was during the iPad. I was leaving at 4:30 every day. So I could do my coaching and my certification. And that’s smart. 

 

Yeah, create a plan. But when you have that brass ring, that that, you know, is there that you’re, you’re showing up for each day, it does make it so much sweeter, even if you’re in the same role. 

 

Mm hmm. Yeah, well, and the other thing, even if you decide to go to another corporate role, which I know a lot of people do, it helps when you have that that checklist that you mentioned, you’re because you can say I am here, because this role aligns with these five things I want in my life, which is very different. Then, oh, I’m coming in here. And I thought this would be better. I don’t like that person. I think that I disagree with that with the strategic, you know, the tactical decisions that we’re having to make. But you’re saying, you know, if you go in and you’re like, here’s why I’m here. And you know what you want to get out of the job that’s very different. And the other thing, I had to go through a lot of sort of mental coaching work on my own and shifting where I was always, you know, as a security girl, right? Like, going from one corporate job to another corporate job because I thought that was safe. And I actually work in Marketing in Seattle. Lots of startups, lots of layoffs, lots of restructuring, lots of acquisitions and divestments. I had to switch. I mean, I survived and was a victim of layoffs many many times in two decades. The big shift I had to make was the idea that working for myself building something for myself was actually more stable and more sustainable than working in a corporate world role, where they might reorg me at any second and did. And that was a huge shift in my mind, but one that I think is making me so much happier and it’s one I needed to make to have the, the

power to go out. Session is everything. And you know, for all your listeners, too, it’s like you have to define what you have to decide. How important is security to me because there are a lot of different motivators. So you want to look at your motivators. What are my motivators at work, and you got to see where security falls in there, A and then B, you have to define security. What does security mean to me? And then from there, you can, you know, move into a role that gives you your definition of security. Similar to you. I.. I feel quite secure right now, which I never thought I would be as an entrepreneur. But I know that how much I pull in next month is up to me and nobody else. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world, it’s up to me. And that’s really cool. And you get to choose, right? You get to choose which projects you can do and which projects energize you. And I know you can do this in a corporate world too by pitching what you want to do and what energizes you as long as you know what it is. 

 

But, you know, I just started a podcast, the Hello Someday Podcast, and I love it. And I kind of knew I would, I mean, you’re being interviewed for this, but it really gives me the opportunity to have energizing interesting conversations with women, where I’m learning and connecting with people, I probably wouldn’t have the opportunity o do otherwise, and adding value, and I’m also getting energy from it. And you know, in my old role, I probably never would have had the opportunity to do a podcast. 

 

And you know, I’m excited to see that. No, I’m with there’s nothing better than feeling empowered every day when you wake up whether you’re in your own business or a corporate role, because there are corporate roles where and I can think of a couple where I had really cool leaders who empowered me to choose what projects I wanted to work on that maximized my strengths. And so, whatever it looks like for your listeners, whether you go off on your own, or you take a different corporate job, yeah, we all want to feel like we’re empowered to step into projects and things that put us in that state of flow. Right? That’s the name of the game and I had those bosses too, who are just inspiring and amazing leaders, and you just feel valued and you’re excited and contributing and your voices being heard. And I would think that working with those people who energize you would be part of your checklist right? As you’re defining what’s important to you, if that is something that you’re looking for, so that when an opportunity comes along, you actually know the pros and cons that you’re weighing aligned with your personal mission statement and your personal values. And that’s something that most of us never do the work to do. Probably because we just don’t know, too. But we’re really, you know, choosing between a buffet that they’ve laid out and not realizing it.

 

Absolutely, yeah, and they’re, you know, there are ways around this too, when you’re interviewing, and it’s so tough with interviews because it’s like a first date. You know, everybody’s showing up ticked and tied, and yeah, I got everything. And I’ll empower you, right? So, as a job seeker, if you’re deciding to move into a different corporate role, versus going off on your own. You really got to do the research ahead of time to figure out what kind of company culture is this? What do they encourage, speaking to other people in that company ahead of time? There are smart questions you can ask, you know, when your hiring manager says, What questions do you have for me to really uncover? Do they empower their people? Do they micromanage and do they maximize strengths? Right? So if you decide to stay in the corporate world, or whatever, you know, kind of business world you’re in. Really do that. Don’t. Don’t do it yourself. You want to do yourself justice, and do the research ahead of time and ask the right questions. 

 

Yeah, and I remember for the longest time my mentality was and I literally told myself this. You have to get a job before you decide if you want it, and the idea there was like sell yourself and listen, but you know, get the offer before you evaluate it. And I feel, like now, that’s not coming from a place of strength. That you have to know where, what you want, and evaluate them as a position of strength because I know myself well enough that once I’ve got an offer in hand or two offers in hand, they give you that time pressure to make a decision. And you’re like, ooh, am I really going to give up this job offer that I have in my hand for the unknown? And that kind of also rushes you into accepting something that’s not right. And if you’re super loyal, like I am, you could be five years down the road before you jump because you’re like, well, I like this person I work with and they have lattes that you can make it on every floor.

 

I worked at Starbucks for a while at a corporate, which by the way, was a great place, but their latte machines were really highlight coffee. But that.. that’s where.. that not the work hard the what makes you tick the non negotiables you can never go wrong with that I’ve had clients that were juggling two job offers, and oh my god, yeah, in that moment you feel pressured. And that’s where you bust that list out and you do a reality check. Does it fulfill all this because you start to forget about the stuff that’s important to you? You see that job offer, like a security, finance, and money. 

 

Like whoa, like step back. You’ve got your list of things that make you happy. Go through the list, go check, check, check, which one checks off more boxes? That will always ground you. Yeah. And I’ve had job offers where they’re like, Oh, yeah, there’s this grade and this grade, and we have flexibility here. And here’s your vacation, and here’s your big salary, and it’s 25% travel, does that work? And I’m like, Oh my God, that’s a week of every month that I would be away from my family. And my marriage doesn’t function well if we’re equal partners, and he has his own job, and I want to be with my kids and, and I would miss out on all these things, but at the time, you’re like, well, 25% you know, like, I guess that’s not that bad a job. Look at, you know, the 401k match.

 

Yeah, without having that medicine infront of you of what your, What are your foundational principles? What’s important to you? It is, you can. We’ve all done it, you step into shiny object syndrome. It’s like, it looks, sounds good. But the work that you do first, the work that you do with clients first about your strengths and your values and what your mindset is and the visioning. 

 

I can imagine that visioning is just so important. And that is work that a lot of us never do. Right? We’re unhappy and so we want to jump to something different and yet I can you know, we only know what we know. So that visioning work and the research I mean, I, I love what you do. I think it’s so important and I know that you do more, right? 

 

So, we only talked about the first two. Maybe we didn’t even touch on number three of your 5 step work. I know you then work once you decide on personal branding and building your personal brand, networking, interviewing, negotiating offers the whole piece but can we just touch on the personal brand aspect of it beside? 

 

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, it’s interesting when I first started Career Coaching. I was working with clients for a shorter period of time, and I found it to be unsettling because I feel like I was… I was you know, they were leaving the nest before I was ready for them to leave like they got the mindset and the clarity. But we didn’t get to build out the whole bridge to get them there. So now, the way that I’ve built out my package, is, you know, just enough time to not just get the clarity and get the mindset. But to build the bridge, I want you to move into the role. 

 

So Step 3 is personal brand revolution. And this is all about standing out from the sea of applicants. There, on average, there’s about 250 applicants per roll, corporate role online. And that is pre COVID, pre COVID, pre layoffs, all the crazy layoffs that have been happening. So you know, and 80% of jobs are not, you know, through applying online, there’s through networking. So, it’s really important that you build your personal brand and you can’t build a personal brand, until you first have direction. Once you have that direction. Then we want to, you know, look at your marketing material, your resume, your cover letter, your LinkedIn profile, your elevator pitch, the words coming out of your mouth, everything has to align, so that the hiring manager looks at you and even if you’re not Making a complete 180 career change. They get it, they get your story. They understand your transferable skills. And that’s all a part of the personal brand revolution that I walk my clients through. 

 

Yeah, and I know you I’m bringing in a LinkedIn expert and a resume expert and you know, really do the personal brand. Yeah. And you know, it’s so funny because I always, you know, again, I’m working with corporate women and I always say, Can you imagine with your current corporate job showing up tomorrow and running your whole department all by yourself with no team behind you? That would be insane. So I challenge women out there to treat themselves as a company of one and get a team behind you. Right? So that’s why I bring in an executive resume writer and a LinkedIn LinkedIn branding specialist. It’s We are your team and you don’t have to go out this alone. It doesn’t have to be so. So painful. Yeah. 

 

And I love you know, Betty does a lot of writing, she does a lot of articles that I absolutely love. I will link to her website and, and maybe some of your favorite articles Betty that you write. But I know you wrote something about reflecting and exploring on what you want, where you want your career path to go. And you said, the process of introspection and exploration starting now is so important. You owe it to yourself to gain clarity on a career path that will allow you to be the best possible version of yourself. And I just thought that was so powerful because a lot of us just kind of get out of college, put our heads down want to be promoted, want to be successful, want the house want the vacations and of course we do, but we should also want to, you know, feel as good on the inside as our life look. On the outside and be building towards the version of yourself that makes you want to enjoy life every day and be proud of what you’re doing every day. 

So, I love this conversation with you. I think it’s so important. If you were to leave our listeners with a thought if they are in that place of, of feeling like they’re sort of tolerating and coping with their job and yet are afraid of making a change for whatever you tell them. 

 

I mean, here’s what I would say especially, you know, just think about your listeners, right? And it’s not about showing up to work tomorrow and quitting your job, right? It’s not about that, especially if the focus is let me you know, focus on the drinking first before I make a million changes. That doesn’t mean you still can start the work of introspection, you can still start to exam and you can still go to the same job and focus on you know, the drinking aspect of it first, but you can, you can start to be introspective, you can start to explore all the things we talked about today, your values, your strengths, start to piece together, what that scorecard could look like. You don’t have to wait. You can start that process now. 

 

Yeah, and understanding even your strengths, your personalities, your preferences, that can help you in your current job too. And it can help you understand. I did this through the Strengths Finder and through the Myers-Briggs, like, understand why certain situations make you uncomfortable. why certain situations energize you, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with understanding that each one of us has unique preferences and ways of viewing the world. And if yours doesn’t align with your corporate structure, even knowing that can give you some peace of mind, as opposed to what’s wrong with me. Why am I not responding to this in the same way my call? 

 

Oh, so true. Yeah, you start to move out of there something wrong with me into, oh yeah, I’m an INFJ. This is how I operate versus someone else. And you know, Bonus points if you have a leader who’s open to having these conversations about what your strengths are and what projects you’d like to work on to maximize those strengths are your personality type and the way you work? Are you a processor? Do you do well, when information is thrown at you, maybe you need to go back and think about it. Best case scenario in your current role is, you know, you have a leader that you can say, Hey, this is how I operate. And here’s how I think I would work best in helping achieve the company goals in a way that, you know, honors the way I work. And that’s right, that’s best case scenario, right is you find a leader who’s willing to work through that with you. And exactly what you said that’s part of your personal brand, too. Right, understanding your preferences, your strengths and your values. 

 

And whether you’re at your current company, or just navigating life as a human being, interacting with other people, friends, the mom on the playground, whatever it is, understanding who you are, what you bring to the table, what your strengths are, what you value, what you want. That is your personal brand moving through life. And the more you present that with deep confidence, because you know, it’s true of you. I think that just benefits you in every way. 

 

And you’re right, it trickles down into every area of your life, your values, your strengths, your personality type, whether it’s your relationship or Yeah, you go into the grocery store, how you’re interacting with people, like that’s who you are, and and it’s such a freeing feeling to feel okay with that. Versus, you know, I think about my corporate job. I’m an introvert. I like to work 1-on-1 with people and I I like to go really deep. And I felt in the corporate world in certain jobs, I was expected to be this extrovert and on my toes and collaborating, and it felt bad. It felt like something was wrong with me. And to your point. It’s cool to just be who you are. And to step into that. 

 

Yeah. And I think that when, you know, I always tell my coaching clients that you know, one of the things I love about coaching is taking you from where you are right now, to where you want to be in life. And that with drinking the question, never should be, Am I bad enough to quit? But rather, is this good enough to keep going in the direction I’m going? And when I think about work, the exact same question matters. I know that you have his stats, how long or what percent of their life are ours? Do most people? 

 

Oh, yeah. No, I think I have On my website, too. I think it’s like, we spend a third of our life working. That’s insane. To be unhappy for that amount of time. 90,000 hours of work over a lifetime. Yeah. So most people spend one third of their life working 90,000 hours of their life working. And I do think the question is not is this bad enough to quit? But is this good enough to keep going because there are so many other options out there and you deserve to be happy and the best possible version of yourself and you deserve to feel like you love your life every day. There’s always going to be ups and downs. But you don’t want to build a life or continue to live a life that you want to escape from 

 

Literally, you couldn’t have said it any better. You don’t want to be in a life that you want to escape from.

 

Alright, that’s it. And when you feel like you no longer need to escape, yeah, things get a lot easier. And opportunities just come to you. I feel like there’s this idea of you figure out what you want. And then you’re gonna start noticing these divine breadcrumbs that are all around you that are inviting you to take the next right step. But if you don’t have the knowledge about what you actually want in life, and what’s important to you and what you’re seeking, you will just walk by one of those. Oh, great. Yeah, having that awareness. It’s like when you want to buy a red car, all of a sudden you see a million red cars out there. 

 

Yeah, it’s totally the same thing that once you have defined your target, all these opportunities, it definitely happened for me. I’m sure it happened for you as well. These opportunities start to appear now that you’ve got that hat on you. It’s awareness. Right now. You’re where, and you see opportunities where before you might have glossed over it? 

 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much Betty. I know folks listening to this are going to have a lot to think about. I hope they’ll take a ton of value. From this. I will link to your website, your LinkedIn and your articles in the show notes because every time I see one of them pop up that you post that you rat wrote it and thank you so much. 

 

You’re one of my favorite people. And I love your podcast. So it’s been such a pleasure.