008 - Career Change Q&A: Bored at Work, Marketing Skills, and Beauty School Doubts

[0:00] - Welcome to Build Horizons, a show about picking the life that you wanna lead and how to make it happen. Today, we're going to answer questions about being, let's see, bored and unfulfilled at work, software engineering and marketing, plans and when they go awry, and Katy has some new workout plans. But first, we're going to do the intro.

[0:57] i'm jeff this is katy hit subscribe below uh do what the graphic says to do uh gotta obey the graphic obey the graphic uh obey the graphic so um before we go into some questions uh and katy has a thing to kick us off with uh if you have not you should go also follow us right now at the time that this episode will be going live i believe we'll be in sydney australia yep uh by sydney time we land right about when this uh episode comes out but because of how time zones work i think it will have been out for like 15 hours before then or something like that uh but yeah we'll be posting some stuff out there should be a fun time it'll be fun you should follow along follow us on socials we're gonna vlog our whole sydney adventure and i just have to say i am rocking my koala hat koala hat and you need to hit auto thank you you're welcome i got you um yeah my koala hat for one week till we leave for sydney i'm so excited it's gonna be fun i'm a little nervous for the run but it's gonna be fine all's everything's gonna be fine yeah i mean at this point the run is just going to be what the run is yeah like i i'm really banking on the heat acclimation to help us out um and and you

[2:15] know we have ran a other marathon in the last how long it sounds better if you sound like it make it sound like it's been sooner well it was early june but actually that was like yeah yeah it was june it was sometime in june which was only it was just july not too long ago that's true uh it's been a busy week we i guess one thing we didn't talk about we're actually kind of recording these back to back because we're trying to make sure all of our love l i can't talk all our episodes are ready by the time we leave for sydney yeah for you all these things are a week apart for katy and i they are less than 24 hours apart yep so but it was school this week school started yep school started i think it went good um we have fourth grade and second grade which is so crazy do you feel like you get more emotional now like i know we sent them on the bus this year um do you feel of all the years what was the hardest year to like do school oh kindergarten kindergarten 100 kindergarten i don't feel like i don't know i really love this season with the kids um so i didn't know if there was a butt that was coming at the end of that no no no so i just think it's been fun watching them get older now yeah so this was the first year that we've

[3:31] actually done busing um with our kids and oh my goodness jeff i big fan melted when the bus driver oh yeah he was the sweetest older older gentleman um like I can tell he has just like done this as in retirement like just picking up kids on the bus and oh it was the sweetest thing I'm just so excited to have them be able to have this thing that they can go and do together and get on the bus together and I don't know it's just so adorable it was so cute um but no I think it'll be a great school year I'm excited um summer was fun but i'm glad that we're back into a little more routine i'm a routine girl this episode also has a fun post-exercise energy that we've never done on the pod before uh yeah well i mean we haven't we've always like had to sacrifice the entire morning oh yeah we did yeah we've already ran we did a quick lift um so yeah we're like i feel like rocking and rolling today yeah now granted we didn't do our long run it was uh deferred that till tomorrow it'll be really nice it's a nice day did you look

[4:47] at the weather it's beautiful it's gonna be better than what it is today um today i think the high is what 108 and that feels like is like infinity the feels like is good night yeah but yeah so all right good so uh speaking of workout routines Katy, our intro to this, uh, this episode, I want you to tell me, cause we've talked about it barely, but, uh, also our listeners, what is your new workout plan that you've come up with here? Yeah. So it wasn't, this was kind of out of the blue. It wasn't planned this way, but, um, our son, he really loves doing training with trainers and it's just like his thing. He, um, isn't so much into like competitive sports loves golf but doesn't necessarily like to do things competitively which is totally fine um but obviously wanting to stay we we very much want to stay active and moving our bodies because it's really important so I went to our local YMCA and had been talking to a trainer there so went ahead and signed him up for personal training a couple times a week but how they their packages work is it's actually cheaper to pay for

[6:02] like a group essentially a group package rather than like personal personal training and so he's like well we can just go ahead and do the group and then it'll save you money and so I just kind of asked I was asking him if I could join I'm like well if I'm paying for group like how many people he's like well it's two and I'm like so could I do this with him and he's like sure yeah you could totally do it with him so I signed me and Averyn up for personal training um twice a week at the YMCA you're gonna do some personal training with a nine-year-old I am so almost 10 he's only 10 in like two weeks yeah but I'm really excited and it was really cute when I told him that mom was going to do personal training with him, his face just lit up and it was adorable and made me happy. And I think we're going to have good memories. And when I told you that his face lit up, you basically were like, we're still cool. So I don't know. It's fun. I'm excited. I think it'll be a good time. Yeah. The, uh, one thing that I can't ever stop, like it's one of those, um, like once you see it, you can't unsee it type things is the, the offer, like the

[7:19] structure of this thing to like make it an obvious, like upsell. I'm like Katy got, got, got, got. Yep. Um, did you think about that? Any like live in the like little pitch they gave you? Not really. I mean, it really wasn't a pitch it. Yeah. I don't know. I had also been thinking about doing some sort of training though, especially coming up on being done with marathon training, kind of refocusing a little bit more on like weight or lifting weight training and um i don't know sometimes it just is nice to have somebody do that yeah i just like guide you through that as someone who spent like so much time thinking about offers and things the would you like to pay a whole lot more for just one person or would you like to pay less and you could or the same and you could do multiple people yeah um and just the they they definitely have a particular place that they're trying to funnel Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. Turns out they're a business too. I don't know. It's just one of those things. Like I see that everywhere nowadays. You can't unsee it now that you started. It's literally, yeah. What I spend all my free time. That's now my hobby is understanding offers and things. All right. Should we do some questions? Yeah. I think that'd be super fun. Um, all right. You want to read the first one here or

[8:34] whichever one you, I mean, you're the question girl. I'm the question girl so question number one this question comes from tremendous coisty tremendous coisty okay i'm 29 and contemplating whether i've ended up in the wrong career um they go on to say that they are working in hr data at a university and they've been there for four years um but it is a little bored for them and left them feeling a little unfulfilled. Um, and they went on to say, I don't want to be rash, but at the same time, they didn't want to commit 10 years to a career they don't enjoy and then live with regret. Um, is it too late to consider changing careers? I have a degree in business and HR management, but not many other skills outside of my field that i can think of all right so is it too is it too late to you know to make or you know is it too late to make a change is it too late to have a big career change when you've been you know doing something for a while and they don't want to you know commit 10 years to it

[9:51] and then find not they don't like it yeah um so first off uh the i think you may have skipped it but the person's 29 oh sorry if i'm well i read that in the uh oh yeah that's the title yeah good call kitty yeah i got you i'm getting better yeah so they're 29 years old uh i would say and when we were talking about this you told me not to use these words but i'll use them anyways uh 29 is a baby oh my gosh no you're not a baby but uh in reality like you are so early on in your career um you know if you are going to work till let's say 60 years old uh you got another 30 years so you're not even a quarter of the way well if you're only four years into your career yeah you're like the first 10 of your career so yes you can definitely make a shift Um, I mean, unless you're asking this as a 50 some odd year old, I probably would still answer that the same way, but especially for a 29 year old. Um, I would, I would say though, um, one thing, anytime that anybody says that they are bored or they're, they're finding it unfulfilling my, the, that could be from a number of different reasons. Like the job truly

[11:09] could suck, um, or, or be boring, but more often than not, I feel like that is more of a opportunity than a problem. If there is, uh, I mean, presumably there's all kinds of other things going on at this, you know, at this job and there's always going to be opportunity to take on more things, uh, or have those conversations. And if you are the sort of person who wants to, uh, you know, say to your boss, like, Hey, I, I have some free time at the end of my day. Is there something that I could work on just to see if I could do that or not? And, and just like, not to take away from my other, other roles or responsibilities, but like, I, I want to see if I could do this. That has two benefits or probably more than that, but it has two main benefits that I can think of at the top. Uh, one is you are seen as, you know, someone to think of when there is some new thing to do. Um, there, and honestly, as a person who manages people, uh, I could definitely say there's nothing better than somebody eager to want to learn things. Um, and the, the other part of that too, is you're going to pick up a lot of new skills, presuming that that is

[12:26] something that you go through and do um so the the other other piece of that is while you are sorry that notification yeah i know i i'm so sorry i'm gonna turn off my notifications on my phone really fast you ever wanted to know if i have adhd a single notification can send me spiraling down i've been really good about turning my dude i disturb on when we record but i totally forgot and i had a few buzzes and it was in my back pocket and I'm like maybe it's not gonna come on and then I just got a loud notification I'm so sorry Jeff so I'm gonna gather my thoughts while you uh what well I actually have a couple things to say too to this um first of all you are like you have a actual story of this happening because of where you got hired on what department you got hired on firstly with your career and what you ended up turning that into so I think it would be really fun to talk about that a little bit because that is i don't know that's one of my favorite stories to tell people of how you kind of you know work yeah i could tell that worked from the bottom um and then also you know this person has a degree in business in hr management i feel like that is such a i don't know that that degree

[13:42] could open so many doors for you it that isn't really going to limit you to what you can do i think that there is like endless opportunity of what you can do with a degree like that um so don't feel tied down to just doing hr data at a university um and you know if you want to try something different then definitely don't feel like that that is going to make you stay where you are now and then also the other thing i wanted to say is they said that it's left them bored and left them feeling a little bit unfulfilled and sometimes I think too, it's not always the job kind of like what you said. It can also be just like the people you might need. Um, you might do the same job in a different environment and find it fulfilling and rewarding just because of the people that you're around. Um, you don't know a lot of the time what you're walking into with a new job, but that's also another thing to think about too is thinking it from a people point of view and um i don't know yeah i mean i also think though yeah the the danger of that is getting into the grass is greener on the other side yeah for sure yeah and i don't know that

[14:57] that's always the helpful perspective i mean depends on what type of issues it is like if you're just bored um but there's other opportunities to do stuff then that's one thing like if it's an unhealthy like oh yeah you're being treated like crap that's a completely different story well and one other thing i wanted to say too is i what i have my degree is in healthcare administration and what i am doing now is so far from healthcare administration and just don't think that your degree is going to limit you to what you can do because there's so much opportunity out there there are so many jobs and that is one thing that this job has taught me which i actually think we're going to talk about a little bit later on there are just so many opportunities out there that like i did there were there's jobs i didn't even know existed um so just don't don't feel tied down to something so i'm going to take another pass at the board thing because i mentioned asking your boss for new things right um but i that is that is definitely an option and in a perfect world your uh employer would keep you busy and and find things for you to do in my experience though that is a varied hit

[16:14] rate and that could be for a number of reasons that could be just a lack of skill on the boss's side that could be just the, uh, the busyness of the, the, the culture and environment that you're in. And so like, there may not be time to think of like, okay, what would be the best use of this person's time? And so, you know, spending the effort to figure that out for you and hand that to you on a silver platter. But if you are in a situation where you're bored, you probably have some free time. I would highly recommend figuring that out yourself and, and finding ways that nobody asked you to, to bring value to the company. And I'm not saying again, like, you know, you're going to have certain roles and responsibilities that you have to do. And like, you know, you should check those boxes. Uh, but, uh, man, it just kills me. Like, and I see this online all the time of like people being excited because they got to only work, you know, five hours a week at their 40 hour a week job. And they just get to just coast the rest of the time. And it's certainly, you know if if that's what you want to do like you know by all means god bless you but i i do want to say something that's not like super super popular on places like reddit and stuff like that which is you can also apply yourself to what you do uh and and apply yourself

[17:31] to your job and have a lot of fun doing it and find a lot of value and fulfillment uh for your day-to-day through that and what that looks like is thinking about the business that you're working at and how what are the things that you right now could either use the skills that you have or add skills to be able to like, like, Hey, I, I could do this thing with the spreadsheet and that would automate how this whole thing works. And it would be a lot better of a process. Maybe nobody's asked you to do that, but if you have the kind of vision, like, Hey, I think that this thing could be better, try it, try it, bring it up. And you know, the most of the things like what I'm reflecting back on my own career, some of the most impactful things that I have personally produced were not asked of me. They were things where I saw an opportunity and I'm like, I am going to go see if i can make this thing into reality and then spend the time to do it and then when you have something tangible to show people show people and and then like let that be the litmus test of whether or not we continue to push

[18:46] this thing forward maybe maybe it was just an idea but i you have to take some swings at that for years to start to figure out like what sort of stuff is valuable. What, and I think the, the cool part of that is the enthusiasm for trying to figure out other things to do is infectious and it could take a boring environment into like you caring about it at a higher degree than maybe others around you makes other people care about it a little bit more too. And that like, that is a, uh, virtuous cycle that makes an environment that could just be coasting into something that is like, you can apply yourself. You can use the creative part of your brain to come up with ways to make things better. And you learn a lot of skills along the way. And so it's not even, you know, yes, it will benefit the business. Absolutely. Like if you're doing a good job, that's the whole point of you being employed as you bring more value than you cost the business. That's, that's how it works, but you, it can also be a net benefit to you. You're building skills. You're learning how this stuff works. And you can carry that forward into your career. And whether that's at this place of business or somewhere else

[20:02] someday, it just raises the ceiling of what's possible. And I mean, it just anytime I hear people talk about how they're bored at work, like it just it kills me a little bit inside because that is such a missed opportunity. Yes. And again, I understand like in a perfect world, your employer should be able to fill that gap for you, but we don't live in a perfect world. And that, you know, what, what you do with that fact is up to you. Uh, but the, the situation that you're in is more in your control probably than you realize. Yeah, no, that's really good. Should I tell my, my story of my early part of my career that I think it's a great, I think it's very relevant to this. So, um, the story that I'm thinking of is just when I started doing analytics stuff. Okay. So I, I got my foot in the door at, uh, at my present employer as a contact center person. So taking calls and, uh, at my first annual review, my boss at the time asked me if I knew how to do anything in Excel, cause she needed some stuff done, she was wanting to do some, um, some data stuff. And, and I was like, well, that sounds like not taking calls and taking calls is very hard. To this day, I still think of that as like that was probably the hardest like

[21:18] season of my career, even though people think of that as an entry level job. That is a mentally tough thing to do is to answer call after call after call for eight hours. So, you know, it was an escape from that monotony and that grind. And I'm like, heck, yeah, I'll I don't know what you're wanting, but I can do it. I'll figure it out. And so I ended up doing analytics stuff and spreadsheet stuff and some, you know, automated data import stuff through Excel and built quite a little dashboard thing. And I would update it every morning and continue to make enhancements and stuff like that. Ultimately, what that turned into was an opportunity to do that for our company at a broader scale, not just for the contact center. And that was kind of my way to sneak into an IT type role. And since then, for the last decade and change, I've been doing more technology stuff. But the start of all that was, hey, here's an opportunity. Would you like to do something a little bit different? And then I could tell you for what that looked like was, you know, I got given the ability to spend a little bit of time every single week working on this stuff. And I mean, that was the most, like I was

[22:36] extremely focused, extremely intentional with how I did that and use that time to go so far above and beyond any, any time, any, any idea that I had that I'm like, Hey, what if we looked at it a little bit differently and spent the time to build that out in that time that I was allotted so that then when I would come back to her and be like, Hey, I thought of this other thing too, that would maybe be helpful in this way. And like that, that willingness to do more than what was asked just kind of snowballs and gotten to a much, um, you know, that, that set me down on a much different path. Yeah. Oh, it's really cool. Do you know if they still use it, uh, your spreadsheets that you made back in the day? No. I mean, we use some of the same principles, uh, but it is long since moved from Excel and does not, does not live in a spreadsheet any longer. Um, yeah. And then we, uh, we actually had some automation that we had built, uh, early on, like in 2013 or so, and we turned it off. I think it was like in 2019 or so. So it lived a good life. Yeah, I did live a good life, but yeah, it was, yeah, I had a little ceremony turning off that job that automated the output of all the data stuff. That's cool. That's really cool. all right question number two okay so

[23:53] question number two is from user i am j i j should a swe you know what a swe is katy it software i saw that somewhere i thought software help me come on get an e what's it what's an e profession name executive no engineer i was gonna say elephant it was like the only word i could think of software elephant should a software elephant okay engineer got it software engineer should a software engineer get a marketing degree um and they go on to say is it worth getting a bachelor's in marketing right now? Do I even need one to make the jump? And then they go on to ask what salary could someone with a technical background and a marketing degree command? I would need to be making more or above what I am making now. And would I even be able to land a job given I only have personal marketing experience um and then he did say that it seems like there's plenty but

[25:10] not all jobs that want three to five years of experience so kind of just wondering is it worth it and i should he get it um but anyways i forgot to also mention at the top so this person's 25 yeah oh yeah 25 yeah they're they're making a good salary right now 114k uh as a software engineer uh four years of experience they uh have a they they envision themselves as using the experience at their job to uh someday uh build a business so uh like that that's another important part of this question so they ask like a lot of a lot of interesting uh questions on this like a lot of questions within this question um so first off the software engineering plus marketing uh like that skill set combination the oh and one other thing they've done like some personal i kind of mentioned it one of the questions below but like on the side they've done certain business event like business ventures uh but they weren't able to get that to a point that it like exceeded their salary to the point where they would be able to quit

[26:25] their main job but they realized that they really enjoyed the marketing part of it um which is an interesting thing to combine with a software engineer background so uh first off with the software engineer is it makes sense to go learn some marketing stuff um i would say the skill set itself is like the probably most profitable two skill combination that we have in the like the current era of technology stuff that we're in yeah the reason why i say that is um since you can do so much of the legwork these days with development with ai um but you still need to have kind of a ability to understand the overall vision and what the different pieces are the technical software engineer side is valuable um because you can really maximize what you normally would have to have done by hand as long as you can still understand it and you get the like what the vision of the end outcome should be you can do a lot of work like you could have a huge amount of output that was not possible a year ago and certainly not possible prior to so and especially

[27:41] if you want to have your own business like the ability to create stuff with a software engineer background, super, super, super, super high these days. The, the other part of that, that I think a lot of people, including myself greatly underestimated is the amount of that. Like if you were to start your own business or want to do your own thing, the amount that marketing matters, uh, to the extent that without it, literally might as well just be all an academic exercise because the you have to be able to figure out how to get people to know about your thing that is the beyond the actual thing being good the obscurity um starting point is like insurmountable without some marketing chops so if you have the uh the interest in the the the marketing side of things and you have a software engineer background, I would say that's a really, really strong combination to start your own thing and make it profitable if that's the route you wanted to go down. But even if not, I would say that also makes you extremely valuable to a employer as well. But at the top, I really

[28:56] intentionally said, you know, these skills matter. The other part, and it's hit on in a couple different part of your questions, both on the experience side and, you know, do you, can you land a job with only personal marketing experience? Everybody's going to answer this a little bit different, like from an employer perspective. I will say from my perspective and probably the sort of places that you want to work at, the answer is going to be that the, how you acquired those skills doesn't matter. Um, the amount that the U S spins on, uh, education has, you know, stayed at the same high level that it always has. Um, but less and less of that is going toward formal education. More and more of that is being spent through, um, you know, online ways that people learn stuff like that. The, and that'll probably continue to shift over time. The, the, the main thing though, is like the skillsets matter. And can you demonstrate that, or do you have a portfolio or some way to show? So if you, if you do have a degree, it can be in some people's eyes, a

[30:12] shortcut to be able to say like, okay, well, this person has, you know, at least the, the baseline skillsets required. Some employers will value that really highly. Uh, me personally, I, I typically speaking, um, would more so value the personal experience or especially if you can demonstrate that through like, here's, here's my portfolio. I've made a little page that has some ads that I've made, or here's, um, five landing pages that I've created to me, that would be, um, 10 times more valuable than saying that you graduated from some university in four years. Um, I just, the world changes so rapidly, uh, in this space that the ability to demonstrate current skills, it shortcuts a lot of the like ambiguity of what you can do and not do. Yeah. Yeah. I actually totally agree. I think that there is a lot of value to showing that you've done the thing that you've grown a business that you've made money on ads. Um, that would mean a lot to a company, especially if you were coming in for an interview and had that to show. I think that that would be really valuable for sure. Um, one thing that I wanted to also mention, because this person has a background of like doing stuff on the side and

[31:28] that just wasn't able to make enough money to overtake their current salary. I would, I would take a second and think about what do you want to be true in five years like if you want to have you know if you just want to further your career and and take a different path you know certainly you can go down that road if you want to have your own business and have that be successful then it may make more sense to ride out what you're doing currently and focus more on building your skillset than it would be to like trying to further your career, make more money. Um, I, I, they're, they sound like they're the same thing. Like if you want to make more money, you do have to have some more skills and stuff. Um, but you are, you really would need to invest in your career and spend a lot of time and mental energy on building that, that you're not going to be able to spend building your own thing. Both are completely valid paths to go down, but they are counter. I don't think that you're going to try to find a new job that uses

[32:43] your marketing preferences and also be building toward being able to be self-employed or start your own business, own your own business. I think that you're going to delay one for the other, if that's the path you go down. So it really, before you do any of this exercise, uh, I think the first thing that you want to really think through is what do I want this to be in five years? And, and then if that is going to be your own business, then I would say you're making a good salary here. You're going to continue to learn some stuff. Um, and, and that can support things, but then I would, I would not worry about like, uh, going to school and I wouldn't worry about trying to, you know, find a job that uses that marketing stuff. I would continue to figure out like you've, you've done some stuff on the side. I would, I would triple down on that and, and find a thing and, and figure out how to get it to a point that it continues to grow. And then like, learn what that next bottleneck is and then fix that and then learn what the next bottleneck is and fix that and, and keep going down that path so that you can figure out what it would take to be your own

[33:58] thing. The other weird part about that too, is if you were to, you know, advance in your career, you're just setting that bar higher and higher and lifestyle creep is a real thing. And it's just going to be harder and harder to replace that income. Um, so if that's not your goal, if your goal is to be self-employed, um, then you'll have to figure that out. Um, and it's easier to figure that out earlier and focus on that earlier than it would be to go down the career route. Now that said, if you like working at a company and you just want to have this career shift, I still think the, I would, I would think about what, what sort of company you enjoy working at, like if you want to work at a really large company, then that formal education probably holds a little bit more weight. If you want to work at a midsize or smaller company, uh, demonstrated skill sets, uh, are, are probably more valuable. And so I would look at like, what, what sort of things do you have right now that you would be able to put on a, like a, you know, a portfolio website or something like that, that you could include in a CV on a job application. Um, if that doesn't exist yet and you haven't, then that's an opportunity for you to think through what skill sets do you think would be beneficial to

[35:14] demonstrate, like building, um, you know, landing pages, building some ads, um, you know, get all that built onto a website and, uh, or whatever the specifics may be that are the things that you're particularly passionate about. And, um, and then start that job search process. If that, you know, presuming that that's not available just at the current employer yeah and one thing i wanted to add to this is um to kind of piggyback off of what we previously said is you know if you have a good job you're at a good company you might have an opportunity to do something with the marketing department um so that might be another opportunity that you could maybe learn something from somebody that you're the field you're in and i don't know what they where they work or what they do but just another thought um and then also if you are wanting to learn more about marketing and I know we've kind of talked about this before if you can find a mentor that does have a lot of experience with marketing that you can sit down and really pick their brain and ask them questions about it um that's another really valuable thing that you could do um is trying to find somebody that has more experience in marketing that maybe has had a long time career in marketing and and

[36:30] really pick their brain on that and see even what their thoughts are and some ideas that they might be able to, you know, help you with, um, with your own portfolio. So that was just another couple of thoughts I had from what you said. Yeah. I mean the, yeah, I think it's actually a really good point to not undersell the opportunities in the current role. If that even, you know, if you do want to go down that marketing route, just because there's not like a part of your job that maybe intersects in a way that just organically has happened, it doesn't mean that you can't take that and force some of that stuff to happen, like force some of those interactions. I think people way underestimate how much people just like talking about their jobs and having other passionate people ask them questions and work on stuff together. And if you are doing some of the software engineering things, there's all kinds of things that you can do that help add transparency to a customer's journey. And if you can work with a marketing person, say like, hey, when you are marketing to these people, I saw that you used this wording. I think we can really reinforce that in

[37:47] our product by reinforcing how we do that through these, you know, however, whatever onboarding options or something like that. Um, and, or like picking their brain of like, Hey, I've, I've realized we've done this. It's probably because that, uh, gets more people to click on our thing and make it through our onboarding process. What can I do that would really hook that later on? You know, should we build something that is like after they've done something X number of times, should we figure something out? Like there's, there's just different, different, all kinds of different opportunities to intersect with that marketing brain, um, out and out in your company. And I think if that's not happening organically, you can force some of that to happen too. Yeah. Do you feel like while we've been, I say we, I am not nearly as much into marketing world as you are with the company, but do you feel like this has made you i don't know i don't know if respect's the right word but like understand the complexity of even what like your marketing people have to do at your daytime job and oh yeah and and they know i have like had some kind of weird interest in

[39:05] marketing things i ask them all kinds of questions yeah yeah that's what i was wondering is this you right now is are you asking people that you know are really good at marketing some you know yeah we have some fantastic marketers at our company and and it's been really cool to like pick their brain on what their strategy is uh for much much bigger things with much much bigger budgets than i'll ever have um the the opportunity to learn from them is tremendous and it's just fascinating to learn even if i don't use any of it directly the i think just the exposure to freaking brilliant people in that space is like you kind of become the people that you surround yourself with and you come and you can take like little pieces of things and apply that to you know whatever it is that you're trying to trying to do and so yeah i have a tremendous amount of respect and like even through some of the ads that we've done and seeing the difference of like what the you know click-through rate is on certain things the click-through rate on one of our ads was crap and one of our ads like based on benchmarks was actually like really solid but the really solid one a lot of work went into that and that took a lot of extra

[40:20] time and then i you know think through what that could look like if we did more stuff like that and all the downstream things and you know that's for our little business, but if you have hundreds of thousands of customers that are coming through the door and, um, like the, that tiny little thing for us that could have, you know, million dollar impacts if the business is large enough. And, and so just like through that lens, looking at some of the stuff that we do, uh, yeah, it's just, it's just, it's really fascinating to learn And, and, and like also just the mechanics of like what that looks like at a larger scale is just really fascinating as a person who loves details and, and the behind the scenes and how it all works, the opportunity, just again, people love to talk about what they do day to day. They don't like a lot of, a lot of times you just kind of get stuck in the like, okay, well I'm doing all this stuff that's come across my plate that I have to do. And you don't get to take a step back and actually talk with others that are interested in your stuff and so you can be that person that gives people the opportunity to talk about things yeah i think that's you can learn a ton along the way definitely do you want to read question number three i will read question number

[41:38] three this is from uh user cherry kissed with a one as the i in kissed how cute um wondering what my next move should be so this is a person who a little bit of wandering on what they've wanted to do. They are very young. I don't think they say in the actual question, but they mentioned, um, some stuff from when they were 18. That sounds like they were maybe just another year or two down the road. So let's call them 20 ish. Um, they've been working in a salon for a few months. Uh, they have, uh, spent a lot of money on going to beauty school and had thought that that was the industry that they wanted to spend, um, you know, their entire career doing, which I'll just note, like very common to feel like this is the thing that I wanted to do, get through school, start doing it, realize like, oh, I don't know about this. Um, it's a bit of a blow because, um, they're starting to have a little bit of doubts. Um, and they had truly believed that this would be the thing that they would do for the rest of their lives. Um, they also mentioned that, uh, my plan was to climb my way up a ladder of professions until I finally reached where I wanted to be. And they

[42:53] talk through a little bit of like going through a children's camp counselor to being a camp counselor, to being a park employee, to a park ranger, like as an example of one of the things they were thinking about before going into beauty school. Um, but yeah, the, the, the main crux of the question is trying to figure out what their next move should be given that they thought this beauty school thing would result in them taking a career down that beauty path. Um, but realizing that what they're doing right now, they don't really see it being a long-term thing. Yeah. So what would be, uh, your thoughts for our wayward 20 year old? Well, I think if you went to beauty school, you obviously have a little bit of interest in, you know, whatever that is, if it's, um, aesthetics, if it's hair, um, anything in that field. But, um, I know they mentioned that, you know, they have a passion for environments and environmental projects and, um, doing something when environmental sciences. And one thing that I am really grateful for with my career right now is I do get to work a little

[44:09] bit, um, in the beauty field, which is so, so fun to me. Um, and also what it has made me realize is there are so many jobs in the beauty field outside of just what you typically think of for doing, you know, doing hair or doing makeup or doing aesthetics. There are people and scientists that go and develop formulas that come up with packaging ideas that are more environment environmentally friendly finding ways to save energy on how they're manufacturing things there are so I think for me when I read this is oh my goodness there are so many opportunities if you wanted to stay in the beauty field but also really liked to think of something with that could help the environment there is like endless opportunity. So not thinking that you have to necessarily, it's so funny though, cause it could, I was kind of piggyback off of that first question that you don't necessarily have to go back to school. You could go look at manufacturing plants, look at places that do R and D

[45:24] development there, look at places that work on packaging for hair products for makeup products um there's just endless opportunity and that is one thing I don't know I've said it another time on this episode but of there are so many jobs out there and I did not realize how many jobs out there there were until I started working in the field a little bit um and it's a really really really fun field I highly recommend it and it's uh, it's so interesting and always changing and always a little different. I know you don't have as much obviously experience in beauty as I do, but not a lot of beauty happening in finance. Yeah. Um, just don't, don't, um, put yourself in a box just thinking that you could only do things that you learned from beauty school. Cause there's just endless opportunity out there that you could apply what you enjoy with beauty and putting it into something that you might feel that you get to go do more sciencey things. Um, even if you did like helping the environment or even if you wanted to do something, um, for example, formulating. Um, but anyways,

[46:42] yeah, just, just fun and interesting. Just something to think about that. I, I don't know as many people know that there are so many jobs out there that you could do some really fun things with in the beauty field. So, um, I have a question on that. I don't think anybody would, uh, argue that there's a lot of jobs out there that are, uh, like really, uh, spanning the spectrum of these two interests. But, um, especially after hearing you say that, I think, I think some people like are a little unaware, but then when they hear it, they're like, oh yeah, of course that makes sense. Right. But how would you go about actually figuring out what, like knowing, knowing that information is different than actually knowing what those opportunities are. How would you go about, I guess, first question, what, how would you go about learning what those different opportunities even are? Like what, what even jobs are out there knowing that, yeah, there's a bunch. how do I figure out what, what sort of stuff that even is? Well, I think you just have to do the research to figure out if, you know, if you look into manufacturing plant and understanding, because there's a lot more that's going on than just people, you know, filling

[47:58] products or machines, filling products. There's the scientists, there's the chemists, there's, um, people that are project managers working with clients. So you get to be a little creative on what you come up together come up with together so I think it's um you know looking at manufacturing plants understanding what it is they do and I think it's too because there's so many manufacturing plants um understanding what it is um if you want to do hair or if you want to do makeup or if you want to do color cosmetics now granted a lot of these people and places do it all um another thing that i thought was really fun um and i don't know where this person lives or what's local to them is um if they have something where there's a conference or like a makeup in new york or a makeup in la where you can go and talk to some people about it like people that are doing the things it's really interesting and really fun um so that's another way there's also so many free webinars that literally free you just sign up to do them um it just takes a little bit of research and figuring out what is out there i mean you're gonna have to spend time figuring out what it is that you want to do um but there's a lot of

[49:15] opportunity to grow in that space so i have a thought but i also want to know let's say you figure out a particular opportunity or maybe even a handful of companies that like do the sort of stuff that you are interested in how would you counsel a young 20-ish year old uh and how to get a job doing that at one of those places like i mean other than obviously if they have a job opening and they can apply right right how do you actually get into something like that yeah it's hard i think it's like you know if you can apply and get it. That's great experience. But I think if you can start learning about the industry, learning what it is that they're doing, learning about trends and and also having a passion for it, like making sure you really do enjoy that when you go into what because I mean, you're you're going to eventually have a job interview. I think when you have that and you can come in with that passion and that knowledge that it is going to help you stand out. And I think

[50:31] learning there's and I know we live in an age of social media. There are so many really cool social media things that you could learn about and see what's out there. And I don't know. I don't think I answered your question the best. But, you know, use LinkedIn. I think that that's a really valuable thing. You know, make those connections with people. People are really nice and they would love to talk to you, even if it is just virtually through things like that. And there are a lot of companies that do teaching things on it that a lot of the times you can email them and ask them questions and they have connections and you just have to do the work. You have to put the legwork and to get to know the thing and i mean it's not going to fall on your lap you have to be able to find ways to learn more about the industry to meet people and network and yeah i mean you gotta get yourself out there and do it yeah and that that was the last thing you hit on is kind of where my my head was at is if you've done some of the initial because you can you can do a lot of the research of like what companies do stuff and all the various fields around

[51:47] this without having to talk to anybody. But then like, if you want to actually find a way to get into these fields, I, I would say for one, you know, Katy, you mentioned it, like people are nice. And if you message 50 people on LinkedIn that are at the, the maybe say 10 companies that you are interested in. So like five people at each company, I would be shocked if you didn't get at least a handful of them that would be willing to just to talk to you about what they have going on. Um, so like not doing it for like a job interview or anything like that of just saying like, Hey, I'm 20 years old and I'm wanting to learn a little bit about this role, um, or like this field. And you have a job that's like literally exactly what i would like to do someday like that's my my career goal would you have a second just to spend like 20 15 minutes with me just to answer a couple questions i had a lot of people would say yes oh yeah if somebody asked me that on linkedin i would say yes yeah yeah 100 and and so you do that and you go and and like take that as a gold mine of opportunity to, to learn about things secretly. That does make you, uh, like

[53:04] the, a very high likelihood to get an interview. If you, if they do have a job opening, I think that you can kind of sneak your way into saying like, Hey, I noticed that you have this job opening. Do you think this would be something I should apply for based on what we talked about? Like, like if you want a secret way to get into that, that is a 10 out of 10 way to make that happen. Um, but you, you can just learn stuff and then you have things that then if you get into an interview you can mention like hey i am interested in doing this stuff and so i've done some research and i talked to this person at this company and this person at this company and i think these are the sort of things that i could do pretty good at and i would love to have the opportunity to you know bring that to the table at your company person interviewing me um but then yeah i i definitely so definitely would second like defining things on linkedin and and you know finding people to talk to the which i i say that as a introvert who um would be very uncomfortable doing that but if you want to make this thing happen like you're gonna have to do things that are hard and uncomfortable that's just part of it and it gets easier the more times you do it yeah for sure and it's like you're gonna make it up in your head of like it's gonna be inflated to the point where you know, especially if you're like me,

[54:20] it's going to be like, you're thinking through the hundred different bad ways that this could go. It, I, I mean, I even just had a meeting yesterday with some people out at a, another financial institution. And we just talked about our jobs. They were curious about some stuff that we had done and honestly, a very similar ish situation. And it's just like the, those, those conversations often are just a lot of fun. And I think you'd be surprised at how much better they go than even what you would have anticipated um in your best case scenario and and certainly far far away from worst cases um like katy said most people are nice you'd be you'd be surprised um the other piece of advice i would give is don't be like if this truly is your goal and you have a company that you feel like you know they have an opening or, um, something that maybe isn't exactly the type of role that you want, but the company does the sort of stuff that you want, especially if it's not a, you know, a 5,000 person company, like if it's smaller and I would define smaller as let's say 500 or less thousand or less employees. Um, and ideally, you know, smaller, the more flexibility you have on

[55:36] roles and stuff. Um, don't be afraid to take a job just to get your foot in the door. Uh, it is a lot easier to get a, uh, internal promotion than, uh, or like an internal shift, um, than it is to, to get hired off the street. Yeah. It might not be exactly what you're aligned with, but this is not a thing where it's like, well, I need to get this job this year. Cause I'm 22 years old and I'm running out of time. Like you, you have plenty of time, get your foot in the door, work there probably for you know a year or two they almost always will have some kind of like well we don't want to you you have to work at your job for a while before you're eligible for some sort of internal transfer or something like that so get in the door learn a lot of things ask a ton of questions like i mentioned before find opportunities to you know if you have a little bit of free time think of ways that you can start to learn and build relationships across the organization that'll make you more effective in your current role because these companies aren't able to do things just in silos like it requires collaboration and if you can kind of bridge the gap between whatever it is that you're hired to do and whatever that other department is you can be more and more and more valuable so find ways to do those sort of things and then you know when the opportunity arises you're

[56:53] going to be that much more prepared and in a much better position to get to do what actually it is that what you want. I feel like this was a very career focused podcast, kind of different from what we've been doing. Yeah. It's your, your life and what you want to achieve. And, um, you know, we, that, that can be stuff that is more, um, about you as a person, but it also, uh, what we spend our time doing professionally is a huge part of that. And So, um, I, I think it still is very much aligned with, you know, helping people figure out their stuff. And I think too, I know a lot of these questions were younger folks, but you aren't limited to that. Like age, I mean, it can impact things, but if you're, you know, at any point in your life, feel like you want to change, like, don't feel like you can't make a change. Yeah. That's really important to life is a long time. And I mean, even if like, let's get morbid for a second, even if you're going to die in five years, um, do you want those five years to be on your terms doing the things that you want or just doing the thing that you're unhappy about? And, um, but the brass tacks of it is

[58:09] most of us have a whole heck of a lot longer than that. And so, um, you know, the, just because you may be, uh, you know, 20 years into a career doesn't mean that that's a life sentence, even though it feels like, oh man, I would have to, if I were to change something, I would be throwing away all this knowledge. Like, well, no, like you've definitely built stuff that's beyond just the specifics of that role. Like you've grown a lot as a person, you've grown a lot probably as a leader or a person who understands what it's like to do hard work or how to persevere or how to be a good teammate. Like all those things translate. It's not wasted time. Right. Yeah. I remember when I was going through my community college days, there were, um, older folks in my college classes and being very, it was very different because we were just fresh out of high school. And I don't know, I just really admired them for taking that step. And as a 18, 19 year old, I don't know, it was, it was really cool to see that for them deciding they wanted to go get their degrees at whatever age they were and try to do something different with their life. It was just really cool to see that. I just specifically remember that from my community college days.

[59:25] Yeah. Well, that's a good note, a good happy note to wrap on. If you didn't already, definitely hit subscribe. And what other housekeeping things we have? Yeah, if you have any questions for us, any topics to cover or just want to say hi, email us at buildhorizons.com. We would love to talk to you. Follow us on socials. We'll have a good time on Sydney sharing some stuff. Yes, yes. It's going to be fun. We're going to have a really cool video. See if we survive the marathon. I'm sure we will. But at what cost? With that though, Katy, I'm going to turn it over to you to send us out. Yep. Thank you for building with us and we are cheering you on.