#63: Find Your Dream Job with Kristin Sherry
[00:00:00] Hala Taha: You're listening to Young And Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Hala Taha. And on Young And Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you could use in your everyday life.

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[00:01:09] As you may notice, my voice is a bit stuffy right now and that's because I'm myself battling a mild case of COVID-19. I went home to New Jersey about 10 days ago because my mom, dad, and brother all caught the virus and needed my help. It's been a really hard week. And I can't stress enough that this virus is not a joke.

[00:01:30] Please stay inside and wear a mask. If you absolutely must go outside for central items. I'll be covering more on COVID-19 and inviting experts and special guests on the topic. As soon as things calm down for me. Today on the show we're yapping with Kristin Sherry, a career coach, international speaker, bestselling author, and founder of YouMap.

[00:01:53] Kristin has the mission in life to help people identify their perfect career with so many people who have lost [00:02:00] their jobs. Now is the ideal time for us to learn from Kristin, YouMap career profile helps people see the unique contribution they can bring to work through their strengths, values, preferred skills and personality.

[00:02:13] Kristen is a LinkedIn power user and has been featured in publications like Inc.com and Entrepreneur Magazine. Tune in to get Kristen's advice on what to do. If you're unhappy with your job, learn how to prepare for entrepreneurship and hear for practical tips for landing your next job interview.

[00:02:32] Hey everybody. Welcome to Young And Profiting Podcast. I'm here with Kristin Sherry. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:38] Kristin Sherry: Thank you, Hala

[00:02:40] Hala Taha: So we do a ton of research here on Young And Profiting Podcast. And I thought the best way to open up the show would to be talking about your career story. So from my understanding, you started off as wanting to be a police officer.

[00:02:53] You wanted to follow in your father's footsteps, but then you ended up switching gears and you want it to be a doctor. You ended up [00:03:00] going on that track and you actually studied to be neurologist but then you ended up actually switching gears and becoming a career coach. So help us fill in those gaps. What is your career story?

[00:03:09] Could you just share that with us?

[00:03:11] Kristin Sherry: Sure. So I was very fortunate that my father recognized that I wouldn't be a fit to be a Police Officer. I think a lot of parents like when their children follow in their steps, but my father talked me out of wanting to be a police officer. So I went into medicine instead and I really enjoyed my program.

[00:03:29] I love neuroscience. I still use all of the things I learned about the brain in career coaching. But, when I met with a Neurologist and actually spoke about what would the day in and day out look like of this work? It didn't appeal to me. I just had this gut response of, I don't think this sounds good. So I was lost.

[00:03:55] I had this degree in neuroscience now, what do I do with that? So I went to work. At a [00:04:00] university in their executive MBA program. And I worked really closely with a lot of executives. And so that was a really great exposure. The CEO of a major hospital system and a CEO of a major ice cream company. These people became my mentors.

[00:04:15] So I did end up going into IT and I worked in IT for 11 years and business analytics. Then I led an operations team of 31 people and ultimately ended up in learning and development, running the company. Learning strategy. I was responsible for new hire onboarding, associate development strategy and helping people find their gifting, helping teams in conflict, doing workshops to help teams work more effectively together.

[00:04:43] That's where I fell in love and I knew I needed to work in the career space. So I went on my own and started my own career consulting business.

[00:04:52] Hala Taha: Very cool. You have such a wide range of experiences. I just want to go back to the fact that, [00:05:00] you originally wanted to be a police officer and he wanted to follow in your father's footsteps.

[00:05:05] A lot of people like when they're first starting out, they think that they can just emulate what their parents did. But honestly, that's not a great strategy because everybody is an individual person with individual strengths, skills, interests, all the stuff that we're going to talk about. With your YouMap framework.

[00:05:20] So leading into that, I think that's a good segue. Tell us what YouMap is.

[00:05:27] Kristin Sherry: So YouMap is a self-discovery framework that helps people identify their four pillars of career fit. So through my research, I discovered there are really four things that matter most. In determining a person's career fulfillment that is that they use their strengths in their work, their natural talents, their values are honored in their work, by their manager, in the culture.

[00:05:52] They work in, they use the skills that they prefer and that motivate them instead of burn them out. Regardless if they're good at. [00:06:00] And their personality, who they are really informs their interests and motivations. And so that is also honored in their work. Those four things really all need to be in place for us to feel fulfilled in our work.

[00:06:12] Hala Taha: And I think what better, a time to discuss how to find your dream job? When so many people right now, due to coronavirus or out of work. They're transitioning jobs, or they're just, having more time and they might want to start something like a side hustle. So I thought we could talk about all those things and dig deeper into it.

[00:06:29] The framework of YouMap first to set the context. I want to talk about self-awareness because I was reading her book and I was thinking, a lot of this is just really all about understanding who you are as a person. And so I just want everybody to understand how important self-awareness is.

[00:06:45] It was called like the meta scale of the 21st century, and it's one of the leading indicators of success. So can you talk to us about self-awareness and why it's so important and also what a blessing it is to be able to have the time. Learn [00:07:00] more about yourself.

[00:07:02] Kristin Sherry: So we've, I've always been with ourselves.

[00:07:04] And so I always say you can't read the label when you're inside the jar. We are not objective about ourselves. We don't understand our talents because we take them for granted. What comes easy to us. Can't be valuable because it's easy. And can't everyone else do that as well. So we don't even recognize the unique value that we can bring to the table through our gifting.

[00:07:29] That's the first issue you can't work effectively with other people. If you don't have awareness on how you show up in the world, your gifting, your personality, all of those things wrapped together. Are really your brand. It's the brand you're putting out into the world and you don't even have an awareness of what that is.

[00:07:49] You don't know how people react to you, how people misconstrue you. Business is about relationships. So if you don't know [00:08:00] yourself, you have no idea how to self monitor regulate, adapt to other people, but you also don't have awareness into other people. So it makes it difficult for you to understand people and exercise, compassion.

[00:08:14] Hala Taha: Switching gears just slightly.

[00:08:16] Let's also. Get an understanding of why people are so unsatisfied with their work. I think all of this will give really good context to the next things that we're going to talk about. So what are the main reasons that people feel very unsatisfied with their work?

[00:08:32] Kristin Sherry: There's always a breakdown in one of those four pillars, but most commonly, what I see is people have values violations.

[00:08:41] So for example, they value making a difference in the world, but they don't see how their work is making an impact on people directly, or they value growth and they feel stagnant in their role that they don't have challenge and growth opportunity, or they value something like [00:09:00] respect. And they're in a position where they feel they're always looked over for promotions.

[00:09:05] Their opinion has never asked for values violations are what caused the type of career satisfaction that people start losing sleep over it, getting migraines, feeling sick to their stomach, having to take time off.
It really starts to affect. Their emotional wellbeing. And two thirds of all Americans have said that their work has caused significant mental and physical problems because of that lack of fulfillment.

[00:09:36] And interestingly, the stress in America survey has said that work stress is now the number one source of stress.

[00:09:43] Hala Taha: Wow.

[00:09:44] Kristin Sherry: The number one, not money anymore. It's work stress.

[00:09:47] Hala Taha: Yeah.

[00:09:48] Kristin Sherry: And if you look at data around general practitioner, office visits, 60 to 90% of visits are for stress-related illnesses.

[00:09:57] Hala Taha: That's incredible.

[00:09:58] It's so important to love [00:10:00] what you do because you spent a third of your life at work. And the other third is sleeping. So it's so much of your life. That's just wasted if you don't love what you do. And so it's really important to evaluate what you're doing because you're spending so much time at work.

[00:10:15] And I would definitely encourage everybody out there. You have more time with quarantine. Take a look at some of Kristin free resources on her website and do some of these worksheets as she has. I did it myself and I found a lot. Cool things about myself that I wasn't necessarily completely aware of.

[00:10:33] And it helps you make the right decisions in a feature for your career for your job. I know that a lot of the reasons that people don't like their work is because of their managers. One of my first jobs, I worked at a water company and I'll say that. Actually, I won't say the name of the company I'll be classy, but it was a water company.

[00:10:50] And I hated that job. I was an entrepreneur previous to that. I had a blog site. I used to do freelance work on the side, but I basically could make my own hours before that [00:11:00] I was still in my mid twenties. Pretty young. It was one of my first like nine to five office jobs. And it was right after I had shut down my website due to reasons we won't get into right now.

[00:11:09] So I worked for this lady. She was the CEO and she was like the meanest lady in the world. And everybody who worked there was miserable. She worked us to the bone. I made like 30 grand a year working in New York city. And so I was like working my tail off for barely any money. And she was like, never gave any recognition and was like the nastiest lady in the world.

[00:11:28] So tell us about managers and what people find the hardest when dealing with a poor manager and what the strategies are when you have a really bad manager. Like what are your options?

[00:11:40] Kristin Sherry: So those are really great questions and was the basis of my research for my most recent book. So the number one reason that people leave a job, 54% of people leave a job because of a quote unquote bad manager.

[00:11:55] So that only leaves 46% for all of the other reasons. Which makes it the number one [00:12:00] reason. The number one thing that people say is trust, lack of trust. That's why their manager is a bad manager. They don't know how to build trust. And the most heinous thing that people say is managers are threatened by the talent of their team members.

[00:12:22] So those are the number one and number two things. I don't trust my manager and they're threatened by my talent. I think a lot of people realize that strong individual contributors are promoted into management. During my research, I found the number one reason people became a manager is they were just put into the role.

[00:12:42] Someone just promoted them into the role based on their performance as an individual contributor. It's a completely different skill. There's a lot of research that shows why that the traits are that make managers effective. They are good at creating motivation. You have to [00:13:00] come to the table motivated of course, as an employee, but they sustain the motivation of their team members.

[00:13:06] Through a variety of different means they are able to assert themselves, but be respectful of other people. So Chris Mackey Rola, who's a friend of mine who I interviewed for my recent book. She calls it direct with respect to you're able to be direct with respect. So there's a lot of different qualities that make someone a good manager.

[00:13:28] But the problem is that people aren't given any training, two thirds of people are thrown into a manager role. Without being prepared or equipped. And I don't mean sitting in a one day manager class. They don't have a mentor assigned to them who does job shadowing and feedback. They don't have this ongoing mentorship relationship.

[00:13:48] They're not put in high potential leader programs that walk them through with a coach or something along those lines. There they go on an E-learning. If they're lucky. And take a two hour [00:14:00] course, then you're done go manage all the messiness of people and oh, by the way. Our culture is going to drive you for individual results to make you ignore your team and not recognize that really putting people in roles where they can live out their potential and mentoring those people to be successful is the number one thing that you're responsible for.

[00:14:23] Hala Taha: If I remember correctly, you actually were thrown into a managerial role and you weren't ready for it. Can you tell us about that?

[00:14:30] Kristin Sherry: Yeah, that was a humbling experience. I don't know that I was a humble person before that, so that was a pivotal moment in my life. So I was. To step into this role. I had only informally managed two people.

[00:14:45] I was a senior reporting analyst and I had two junior analysts, but they didn't report to me from an HR reporting structure. I just managed their performance on a daily basis. So all of a sudden I had 31 people. I was [00:15:00] managing people that were. 30 years older than I was, they were older than my mother.

[00:15:07] And then I had people fresh out of college. So people who is their very first job to people who had been working professionally for 40 years, it was. Really challenging because I went in there as this optimistic person. I'm going to make friends with everyone. And there were people who said, I'm just here to do my work and I don't need to have a relationship with you.

[00:15:30] There were people who rose the flag up to say she can't manage us. She's never had experienced doing what we do. So she's not qualified to manage it. So there was a resistance rising up about me being their manager. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. I started to learn. That's where I really learned hands on that you have to stop behaving like an individual contributor when you start managing teams.

[00:15:55] So you get so focused on your own to-do list that you forget to do things [00:16:00] like communicate the impact of an organizational announcement. What's the impact now to our team. Have you even thought that through, how are we going to manage that? How are we going to pivot? What's our strategy? Oh, that's my responsibility because no one is telling you what you have to do, but your team expects that of you.

[00:16:17] So it was a very humbling experience and I realized the things that made me successful. Eventually I won everyone over on that team. Even the ones who, one who had said she shouldn't be, my manager sent me a boss's day card one year after that. So I knew I had to right at the acceptance when I got the boss's day card, although I don't like that term.

[00:16:40] So what I learned from that experience is you have to admit when you don't know things. If you go in there and you try to pretend, everything and people know that you don't, you lose all credibility. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm going to find out for you. And then you do that. You are consistent.

[00:16:56] You are reliable, you're open, you're [00:17:00] fair. You treat people with respect and you show that you care. And if you do those simple things, you will build the trust. Trust is not something you can go after directly. It's an outcome.

[00:17:11] Hala Taha: Totally. I think it's so important for people to realize that their leaders or managers, they might not necessarily have the interest of actually being a leader.

[00:17:20] Like you said, they might've just been thrown in the role me on the other hand. I'm like such a natural leader since I was a child. I'm always like president of this CEO of that, like started so many businesses and that's just like something that I love is managing people. I start teams without even trying to. I had the mission of starting YAP completely by myself.

[00:17:40] I was like, this time, I'm just going to do it alone. I'm not going to get too big, too fast. Cause that always happens. Everybody wants to be on the team and I get too big, too fast happens every time. And now I have 10 people working on the show. I don't get away from it, everybody has their natural ability. Right?

[00:17:55] Kristin Sherry: Did you do your strengths finder when you went through the process. Do you have [00:18:00] individualization in your top five?

[00:18:02] Hala Taha: No, I have achievers significance, maximizer, futuristic, and focus. Those are my top.

[00:18:08] Kristin Sherry: Oh my goodness. That says the story right there. First of all, because you have achiever in focus, you're always going to succeed at everything you put your mind to because people with focus know how to prioritize naturally and people will achieve. Or have a tremendous.

[00:18:23] Energy and drive to work very hard. And the fact that you have. You do everything with excellence because people with maximizer like to be the best and work with the best. They tend to be a little bit of a perfectionist. That's my driving strength, futuristic. You have a vision, you're a visionary.

[00:18:39] So you see exactly where you're trying to go. And you know what all the steps are to get there. And then what was the one I was missing significance. You want to do work that matters. You want to leave a legacy? So you're always going to do big things because you're a visionary that wants to do work that matters, and you have the focus and the drive and the [00:19:00] grit to get there.

[00:19:00] So you can't turn that off. So point Hala anywhere, and that's what you're gonna get.

[00:19:05] Hala Taha: Yeah. And you know what? It's so funny. Looking at all those strengths. And I was like, this is awesome. I'm really proud of all these strengths. And it really resonates with me and I find them to be true. But somebody who came on my show, actually my first guest ever, her name is Dorie Clark.

[00:19:19] You might know her. She told me your strengths can be your best. Weaknesses. So something like maximizer. I love excellence. I love to exceed the status quo and quality standards, but then to my team, I might seem really picky or that I'm never satisfied or that. I give endless amounts of edits and I'm just never happy when really I'm happy with their work.

[00:19:39] I'm just trying to get it better and better. So how do we deal with the different perceptions? Another one achiever. So that also has a negative aspect to it. I love my work. I love focusing on work, but sometimes my friends tell me I'm not a good friend. They're like, oh, you're not a good friend.

[00:19:54] And I have to try really hard to be a good friend because I always put work over my friendship.

[00:19:59] Kristin Sherry: I understand.

[00:19:59] Hala Taha: How do [00:20:00] we balance the good and the bad of our strengths?

[00:20:02] Kristin Sherry: So I call that the barrier. To your strengths. So you have the positives that people can see about your strengths and the barriers. And so the number one thing that I have people do. I don't actually coach anymore.

[00:20:13] Now I certify people to use the YouMap framework. I do a little bit of coaching in a nonprofit actually Mark Metry and I are on the same board. I listened to your episode with Mark recently. With the barriers and the positives. It really is important to get feedback from people. So you ask people, here are my strengths and you explain the strengths.

[00:20:33] This could be your friends. It could be your direct reports. It could be your peers. It could be your manager. The more people you ask the better. So can you give me examples? Of what you admire when I use these strengths, what are the positives? And then what are some of the barriers? So you're right.

[00:20:48] People with achiever are accused of putting tasks over people. And I have the same accusation because I'm a workaholic myself. So what you do is [00:21:00] you figure out what are the barriers that are causing problems. If it's not causing a problem for people. Then I say, it's not a barrier. It has to be causing problems.

[00:21:11] And then you can ask those people, what would it take? Or what could I do that would alleviate this barrier for you? We can sit all day long and think about all the things we should be doing with our weaknesses. But the way it impacts others is what matters and their voice is where we're going to get the strategies for what we need to do different.

[00:21:32] Hala Taha: Yeah, I want to help my listeners understand the difference between skills and strengths. So we just went over strengths. Are they the same or are they different?

[00:21:42] Kristin Sherry: They are different. So the way I explain the four pillars, your strengths are the how that's, how you prefer to work. So you prefer to work hard.

[00:21:53] You prefer. To work with a visionary lens of legacy. And what am I trying to create and [00:22:00] leave behind you prefer to work with focus. The way you want to work is that prioritization. So that's how you work. Strengths are what you do. That's where the rubber meets the road. It's the actual work that you're doing, not how you're doing it.

[00:22:17] So strengths are natural gifting. Everyone is born with their strengths and they're pretty stable over your lifetime skills are learned and there is a correlation. So Lila Smith, she's a close friend of mine. She has communication in her top five strengths. She's very good at writing because of that strength, because there's a correlation and influences her ability.

[00:22:41] But writing is a skill and it can be learned. People who are not naturally gifted at writing can become strong writers with skill training. So that's the difference, a natural talent versus a learned skill. And it's interesting because a lot of times people don't recognize the difference between a [00:23:00] good day and a bad day.

[00:23:02] Is what they were doing that day. So why do you have days where you're so energized? That was a great day. And the next day you're like, ah, is it five o'clock? Is it wine? O'clock you have to look at what were you doing those days? You were doing burnout skills. That's the reason why you're so exhausted. How you spent your time, but it surprises me.

[00:23:22] I've coached CEOs and. I go through that with them and they say, oh, I know exactly who I need to hire now to stop doing this. Not everyone has that luxury to be able to do that, but you can influence how you spend your day. For sure.

[00:23:37] Hala Taha: You just talked about burnout skills. I know that there are several categories of skills.

[00:23:43] That people have. I thought it would be really interesting for my listeners to understand what these skills are and how we should deal with them.

[00:23:51] Kristin Sherry: Yeah. So our preferred or motivated skills are things that we're good at. And we enjoy doing them are developmental [00:24:00] skills are things that we would like to do more of.

[00:24:02] We think we would be good at them. We think we would enjoy them. We just haven't had a lot of opportunities. And then we have something called low priority skills. I don't like it. And who cares? I'm not good at it. It just keep me away from those things. The trap people sent tend to fall into are those burnout skills, because you're good at them.

[00:24:24] But you don't enjoy doing them. And a lot of times people, especially people who can be a little control, freaky in their work, who aren't willing to delegate or allow other people to take on those tasks. They'll say I have to do this because I know how to do it the best. But it's something that burns them out and they don't enjoy it.

[00:24:44] And that's the trap people fall into.

[00:24:47] Hala Taha: Yeah, I think I have a couple of burnout skills, probably like working on dashboards and things like that. I'm good at it. I know how to do it because I've learned it in so many other jobs, but after I do it on drains, I want to go home. I [00:25:00] like want to do something fun.

[00:25:01] It's just not enjoyable. What are the feelings that burnout skills give you? Like how do you know if you have a burnout skill?

[00:25:08] Kristin Sherry: Yeah. So that's a great question with all of those four pillars, the effects are different. So generally it's terms that describe exhaustion. When people start to say, I'm so tired at the end of the day, I feel like I have no energy.

[00:25:26] It's always energy related terms that people use. So if you are saying those types of things, like I just feel so exhausted at the end of every day. Barring. If you're getting reasonable amounts of sleep, if you're eating a fairly healthy diet, there could be other things causing that, of course. But from a skill perspective, you're going to hear.

[00:25:44] Hala Taha: Energy complaints. Yeah. I think that's a good clue to understand like what you should do more of what you should do less of let's move on to another one of your pillars, which is values. Values is a word that I think is thrown out a lot and has multiple definitions. [00:26:00] Everybody thinks values means something else. So tell us, what is your definition of value?

[00:26:06] Kristin Sherry: Your values are, what is most important to you? A lot of times people confuse values with morality. There are moral values like honesty, but not all values are moral. Like wanting to grow as a person or adventure or having fun. Those have nothing to do with morality. It's what's most important to you. So when you think about times in your life, where you were most fulfilled, most satisfied and proud of yourself. What were those things that you were doing?

[00:26:39] And then you get down to the why? So it's what Simon Sinek says with start with why that's really. Talking about, he's talking about your values are your why. But that's confusing to people to say find your why, because that's a little obscure. I love Simon Sinek. Don't get me wrong, but that's not actionable.

[00:26:57] People don't know how. So when you [00:27:00] think about all the time. At work that you were fulfilled and satisfied, write down what those things were. The time I helped someone do this or the time I had this idea for that. And then why was that important to you and keep digging with the, why did that matter? Why did that matter?

[00:27:17] Why did that matter? And eventually you'll get down to the kernel, which is the value. So if. Says I loved the time I went into that new job. I had no idea what I was doing. I had all this stuff thrown at me, but it was so fun. And why was that fun? Because I was learning things every day. That learning is a value.

[00:27:39] Hala Taha: Yeah, we're getting some great questions from the audience. I want to pause for a second and give some shout outs and ask some of these questions. So shout out to Anna Carolina Smith, shout out to Ron T, shout out to Shar Auckland, Ron Kregg. There were so many others that I miss. Thank you all for tuning [00:28:00] in.

[00:28:00] So let's ask a question. It's back to the burnout skills. I think a lot of people are interested in this for those who cannot influence how they spend their day. How can they mitigate the use of burnout skills? So you're in a job and you can't necessarily say, I don't want to do this. What do you do?

[00:28:18] Kristin Sherry: Great question. Sure. So one of the things that I recommend people do is at least try to have a conversation with your manager because a lot of times people say, oh, I can't do anything about this, but they haven't tried. So you show your skills profile. Here are the things I love doing here are the things that burned me out.

[00:28:35] Here's the thing that I really am not good at. Yeah. Enjoy doing and you can start to say things like what are some stretch projects that I can do to get more of this. Because you should spend about 80% of your day doing skills that you enjoy. So if you break down your job and look at all the skills that you do, and then circle all the ones that you enjoy and get to use.

[00:28:58] And then also mark the [00:29:00] ones that you enjoy, but don't get to use if you're not using 80% of the skills you enjoy, you're underutilized. So you use that term. How can we utilize me more in my role? What are the projects? So if you have a performance review and you plan out your stretch goals for the next year. Make sure you're using your motivated skills to do those.

[00:29:21] So you do have some influence what our projects are, their project teams. I can join. And then when you look at the skills that burn you out, are there junior team members who can grow by doing more of these things? Are there things that you can take off your manager's plate or appears plate? I was very creative as a manager in doing this.

[00:29:42] When I found out skills that team members had and didn't enjoy, I would have them trade. You do this of my work and I'll do this. If your work, as long as it's getting done, it doesn't matter.
[00:29:53] Hala Taha: I would add to that. I was always very involved with like employee resource groups at my work so that I could use my [00:30:00] leadership skills.

[00:30:00] So when I first got into the corporate world, I wasn't a leader. I wasn't a manager. I was an individual contributor because I didn't have the experience. But I got to join these clubs where I could be president and I could lead people and I could fulfill that. And at Disney, I work at Disney now. In order for me to do things that I love now, they're having me like speak for Disney at like conferences and things like that.

[00:30:19] And so I get to practice that and all my bosses are encouraging me to apply for all these speaking opportunities so that I can get better at that. So I think that there's other avenues, then you're just nine to five. And if you look for it, especially if you work at a corporate job, that's like a bigger company.

[00:30:37] You can find a lot of opportunities that aren't necessarily your role. Just like aligned with the company.

[00:30:43] Kristin Sherry: Absolutely. And everyone should get a mentor. I'm such a huge fan of mentors, a good mentor too. Of course. And your mentors, shouldn't be one level up from you. So if you're an individual contributor, you don't want a frontline manager. That's your mentor, especially in your own organization because they really can't open doors for [00:31:00] you.

[00:31:00] One of the biggest roles of a mentor is expanding your network. And so your mentor can find opportunities and be a champion for you because we don't climb the ladder and not everyone is interested in ladder climbing. Of course. But we don't climb the ladder. We are championed up the ladder that is. Absolutely the case.

[00:31:20] And to prove that research has shown that 10% of advancement is relative to hard work. 35% is your personal brand. What do people think of? What are you known for? 65% is visibility and mentorship. Key to visibility. I used to work with this guy and he started wearing a suit and tie to work. He was an individual contributor and every, I was on this large team and everyone started to laugh at the guy and he would stand in the doorway of the senior manager and make himself known.

[00:31:52] And he was a senior director within five years. And you can bet your bottom dollar visibility had more to do with it than anything.

[00:31:59] Hala Taha: [00:32:00] That's really eye opening. Let's go back to values for a bit. So you gave us some insight on how we can start to understand what our values are. How do you prioritize your values and why is that important?

[00:32:13] Kristin Sherry: So a very simple exercise that I created is to imagine an all or nothing situation. So let's just say you had contribution. As a value and freedom. And then you ask yourself if I could have all the contribution I wanted, but no freedom. Or I could have all the freedom I want, but really not make much of a contribution, which would I choose?

[00:32:39] All the contribution and no freedom. You could be cranking out license plates in prison, technically very productive, contributing those license plates. I teased. But the reality is if you ask people what's more important contribution or freedom, they'll say, oh, they're equally important and it's not true.

[00:32:58] You have to picture yourself with this [00:33:00] all or nothing proposition. And that gives you a gut reaction. No freedom at all. I would rather have freedom me personally, even though I'm a very achievement oriented person. I would rather have freedom than contribution.

[00:33:14] Hala Taha: Yeah. And so Kristin has this great value assessment test on her website and I took it and I found the exercise so useful to prioritize my values because now I know exactly what's important to me.

[00:33:26] I think like achievement is the first, obviously than leadership. Then creativity. And anytime I have a decision to make. I can just see if it aligns with those values or not. And it's like a compass for your life. I think that's so powerful. I'll put it in the show notes for everybody to download. I would highly recommend it.

[00:33:42] Let's move onto your fourth pillar of career satisfaction. And then I want to get into entrepreneurship and side hustles and things like that. So what is the fourth pillar interests all about?

[00:33:54] Kristin Sherry: So the fourth pillar, I call how you're wired, but really it's relative to your personality. Our [00:34:00] personality influences our career choice and there are six core types.

[00:34:07] If you will, that I look at and we're motivated or it's really our preferences. It's our preferences, cause I think motivations are more aligned to your values. So our work preference comes from this personality trait. So there are six of them. So I am a creator. I'm the creator and the thinker. So the simple question I ask myself is will I be able to use my brain to create things. To make a difference in people's lives by the way?

[00:34:34] Cause that's my number two value, right? I know I have this filter, will I be able to create using my brain to make a difference? That's the question. I always ask myself on collaborations on anything that I'm trying to accomplish. Which is why I choose to spend so much time writing books, because I use my brain to create, to make a difference on a global scale.

[00:34:55] So you have people who are. Really driven to create, to [00:35:00] think, to help, to persuade people, to organize and create structure and to do hands-on people. So you have to know, am I a doer and a creator? Maybe I'd like to be an interior decorator. Or am I thinker and a helper, maybe medicine is a good fit for me because I'll help people using my intellect.

[00:35:24] And so foundationally our career interests are shaped by our top two career type interests.

[00:35:34] Hala Taha: Yeah. And how do we discover those interests? Is there like special assessments or what do we do?

[00:35:39] Kristin Sherry: Yeah. So there's a, I can give you a URL for the show notes of a free, quick test. That takes five to seven minutes.

[00:35:46] It's also listed in my book. YouMap as well. It shows you pictures, imagining yourself at work and which of these things seem the most interesting or the least. And my bottom two [00:36:00] are very. Informative as well. So it's interesting because my bottom two are the organizer. I'm a, I'm like the visionary person, like you, I have futuristic is a really high strength.

[00:36:11] I like to have a vision and leave a legacy. But the bottom ones are organization. So my right hand. I can't do my work without her because she's got the organizer as her primary. She's a perfect partner for me. So yeah, the bottom to tell you a lot as well. And it's interesting because the helper is very low for me.

[00:36:30] And people are surprised when I tell them that because I've devoted my life to helping people, but it doesn't come from my personality. It comes from my value. Making a difference in people's lives is my value. So it's not my personality that drives that. It's my values. After living my life, after a number of years of life. I've determined that's important to me, regardless of how I'm wired.

[00:36:51] Hala Taha: Yeah, I thought that was so interesting. I'm actually getting coached now by Lila Smith. You mentioned her earlier and she's watching, so shout out to Lila. [00:37:00] She had me take a test and I found out that I am enterprising and artistic and that's, what's called a promoter. I'm a natural marketer, ambitious, slightly arrogant, visionary.

[00:37:12] So it's all these things that I already knew. And it made me realize that. Having a podcast really satisfies all these interests and desires that I have. And it made me like, just feel happy though okay, I'm on the right track. This is what I was meant to do. So very interesting, very cool stuff. I'll definitely put links in the show notes.

[00:37:30] I want to transition to your career and the point in your career. When you quit your corporate job and you decided to embark on a coaching business or a consultation. You didn't consider yourself to be an entrepreneur, but many people do consider that to be becoming an entrepreneur. So tell us about that transition.

[00:37:50] How did you prepare to become an entrepreneur? What are the steps that you took in order to prepare?

[00:37:57] Kristin Sherry: So the reason I became an [00:38:00] entrepreneur was because autonomy is my number three value. I like to make my own decisions. I like to work on what I want to work on. I don't like to be told what to do and. I realized there was a lid on my potential.

[00:38:16] I knew I had a lot more potential and I know lots of people can live out their potential in the corporate world. I'm not saying you can't me personally looking at my YouMap and how I'm wired. My potential was kept in the corporate world because I wanted to do really big things really fast. And the corporate world moved too slow for me.

[00:38:35] So I. Approached my manager and offered a contract to do management consulting with them. And I would create their coaching pipeline for their high potential leaders. And I started out by coaching those high-potential leaders for a year. Each a groups of 10. I did that for three years and that funded my ability to launch my [00:39:00] business, doing that management consulting contract with for three years.

[00:39:03] So I worked. That was really great. I feel like that was meant to be. And once I started coaching, I realized. I'm capping my potential. Again, I can do more things and bigger things. I can write books about this process and help people who can't afford a coach. I can help people in countries where people don't know how to stand out career changes.

[00:39:25] Excepted there in certain Asian countries, you're looked at like a flake. If you go out of that engineering track that you've always been on. So how can you overcome that? And still be able to successfully transition. I wanted to reach those people, not just the people in my city. And so I had an eye on a global impact and that's why I wrote the books.

[00:39:47] And then I thought I can. Other people to use this framework that I've created. Because I only created it for my own business because there was really nothing out there that showed me those four pillars of fit in one tool. So then people started [00:40:00] to approach me, how can I use this? So I thought I'll create a certification program that L and D background of how to create training really came in handy.

[00:40:08] So I just keep trying to level up my game and I didn't feel like I could do that in the corporate world to have that freedom and that autonomy. To take a vision and just bring it to reality without people telling me no. Yeah.

[00:40:21] Hala Taha: So I just want to stick on one point, you just talked about how your L and D skills transferred to your new job.

[00:40:29] And I think this is something that people often miss. They don't realize that their skills can transfer from one job to another job. And it's really important to you have skill stacking and to start stacking your skills with all these different experiences. Can you talk about skill stacking and how skills are transferred from one job to another.

[00:40:45] Kristin Sherry: Yeah. So Korn Ferry International has done research on this and they did a global study. They actually broke down jobs. What are all of the skill units that you do in a job? A job B job C across industries across countries, [00:41:00] and they found that there's 85% similarity. Now, of course, if you are a specialty.

[00:41:05] Person, like you're a dental hygienist and you clean teeth and that's what you do. There's still more to that though. You're building rapport with people you're helping alleviate people's fear. There is more to being a dental hygienist and cleaning teeth, for sure. But we're talking about general business in general business roles, not really niche roles.

[00:41:26] So 85%. So I once wrote a blog post to prove this point. I wrote down all the skills I did it in a role. Without saying what the job was that I did. And I said I was responsible for managing projects, delegating work to other people who reported to me. I was responsible for doing some onboarding of new people in that role and doing some training to help them get up to speed.

[00:41:50] I was responsible for viewing people's work and giving the thumbs up or thumbs down for quality check. I was responsible for meeting with clients and customers and setting their [00:42:00] expectations and what their needs were. And I asked people, what do you think I did? And they said a project manager and I was actually a lead software developer.

[00:42:08] It's just not possible for people to tell the reason that people sabotage their career transitions as they tie their industry and their role to the details in their resume. So they say things like helped patients and I'm like, it doesn't matter that it was a patient, unless you're going for another job.

[00:42:26] Works with patients by all means, use that term, but clientele, customers, clients don't use that word. And it doesn't matter if you were selling Roth IRAs or stocks or these things you were selling product. To customers. And so it doesn't matter if it's a coffee bean or a Roth IRA. And that's what people do to trip themselves up as they tie their skills with when they're really portable competencies that you can pick up and drop into another one.

[00:42:57] Hala Taha: Yeah, I love that. That's some great [00:43:00] advice guys, pay attention. She's saying brought in the way that you talk about your skills. And that's really important when you're trying to get a job in a different industry or sector. Whatever you're trying to do, you want to make sure that. Your presenting yourself as somebody who can adapt no matter what the situation is and that you've got skills that can cross different industries.

[00:43:18] Let's talk about transitioning jobs. Let's say we're in a job. We're not exactly happy. What are our options? You don't have to just be an entrepreneur, right? Gears in your career, but then can't, you also just adapt your current situation. What are the options that we have? Cause I don't think everybody is really meant to be an entrepreneur.

[00:43:37] Kristin Sherry: Absolutely agree with that. So first of all, you have to diagnose what's wrong with where you are and is it fixable because making tweaks to where you are to increase your satisfaction is a lot less work than taking on a job search. And you don't know your manager's not coachable until you try. You don't know that your situation is immutable until you try.

[00:43:57] So I've had people who've gone back to their manager [00:44:00] to say, could I be more involved in strategy because I'm a strategic thinker. And I feel like I'm really far downstream. And the managers started inviting them to the strategic planning meetings and her career satisfaction went way up with that one change.

[00:44:16] So that's the. Step is break down. Where are you having issues? Is it that you're not using your talent? Is it that your values are being violated by your manager by the organizational culture? Can you get under a new manager? Is that possible? Or do you have to leave the organization? So you really need to know what's going on.

[00:44:35] Cause if you don't do a diagnosis and break that down. You're going to go from the pan to the fire because you don't have the understanding and you can't articulate it. So you can't ask the intelligent questions in the next interview to make sure you're avoiding those types of situations again. That's number one.

[00:44:49] Number two. Is you want to start with you? What are all of your success stories? So looking at your talents, looking at your skills. What are the [00:45:00] things that you have done that you're very proud of in your career? Were you able to recover a relationship of a top client that was about to leave the organization, and your skills at diagnosing problems and building relationships were so strong that you recovered.

[00:45:16] $1 million a year project for your organization. What are all your stories? And then you want to ask yourself who needs this. So we tend to look what's out there. What are jobs out there and where can I shoe horn myself in, but you really want to start. What do I do best? And now who needs that most?

[00:45:34] And so I'll give you an example. I had a woman I was working with, she was in business development and she did sales and I think they sold tools, the tool company, and she really didn't care about tools. And she really did. Didn't like business development. And when she went through these four pillars or career fit, what we found out is really the three things that she did best was she was really good at strategy.

[00:45:57] She was really good at innovating [00:46:00] and she was very good at analysis. And breaking down root causes of problems. So I said, we'll just plug those three words into indeed.com and see what comes up. So she put strategy, innovation and analysis, and she got back a strategic innovation analyst role at a bank.

[00:46:16] And she's in that role now. And she said, yes, So fulfilled because she was able to go and tell stories because you're going to use the things that you do best, whether or not it's in your job description. You can't be a strategic person and walk into an unstrategic job and not be strategic or give strategic ideas that are implemented or bring strategy to the way you do your own job.

[00:46:39] You can't turn it off. So tell those stories and then the people realize you can do exactly what we need. Yeah. With really compelling stories. So that's my advice.

[00:46:51] Hala Taha: I think it's great advice. And I think it all goes back to this self-awareness and like evaluating your career, your life, because if you don't know what the problems are, you're just going to [00:47:00] replicate it.

[00:47:00] You're going to become an entrepreneur doing your day job. And it's the job that might be the problem. Not necessarily the environment. So you need to make sure you actually know what the problem is. So I love that.

[00:47:09] Kristin Sherry: Oh, entrepreneurs do that all the time. I see entrepreneurs. All the time they hate their jobs.

[00:47:15] So they go work for themselves and then recreate it into a job. So they're doing their own billing. They're doing their own inventory and I'm like, why are you doing that? I do five things, four things. I write books. I am like the innovation person at YouMap I speak and I try. Coaches, and I'm not going to be doing the training for too long because I'm creating master trainers that I certified to do the training for me.

[00:47:41] So eventually I'll be doing innovation of the product and writing books and speaking, I'm getting down to three things. I am not creating invoices for people that is an opportunity cost, and people will say. I can't justify that because I can't afford how many own invoices are you doing a week? Literally you could get a VA from the Philippines [00:48:00] for eight, $10 an hour and they're spending 30 minutes.

[00:48:03] Yeah. They're spending 30 minutes to a year invoices. It's not worth $4, $5 to you not be spending your time and then you're burning yourself out and having to be productive for the rest of your day. I don't do anything that burns me out. I have a YouMap. I live by my YouMap. If somebody asks me to do something, not on my YouMap, I'm not your girl.

[00:48:24] Yeah, we're

[00:48:25] Hala Taha: running up against the clock. And before we go, I want to talk about two things. I want to talk about side hustles, and I want to talk about job interviews because I think it's really important for everybody. Who's lost a job who might've been recently laid off to get that information from you.

[00:48:40] So first. Let's start with side hustles. I know that you initially started out building a side hustle before you jumped from your corporate career. I have my own side hustle. It's Young And Profiting Podcast. I have a full-time job, so I have some tips as well. What is your top tips for starting a side hustle?

[00:48:58] Kristin Sherry: The number one mistake that I see people [00:49:00] make because I work with coaches. Coaches are really coaches and consultants are really my customer. Because I'm training them to use YourMap. And the number one mistake I see them make is spending all of this money, bootstrapping things they don't need at the beginning.

[00:49:14] So I'm going to build this full website with all the bells and whistles and all these great business cards. And I'm going to have all this technology. You need to be able to send a proposal to someone, take their money. And you need to have a process, a repeatable process of whatever it is you're doing to help people.

[00:49:34] And that's where you need to spend your time. The website can come later, use your LinkedIn profile, make sure your testimonials are up there. Use that in the short term. If you break your bank. I saved six months of expenses so that I could quit my job. And I didn't build all the bells and whistles. Luckily because my husband is in technology and he told me you don't build the technology until your [00:50:00] customers are paying for it.

[00:50:01] And so we actually did YouMaps manually before. A client portal and a coach portal and all of those technologies and our customers revenue that was coming in, actually paid for all of those things. That's the number one mistake that people make is they spend all their money trying to have all the bells and whistles, and then they have to go get a job.

[00:50:22] Hala Taha: I think that's really important. Similarly to the website. Sometimes people are spending time on their logo and I think that's really stupid and patents and things like that. I think just get started, do what you love to do. And then also make sure you love your side hustle. The whole point of having a side hustle is to do something that you love.

[00:50:40] So don't just replicate your day job and your side hustle. That doesn't make any sense unless you love your day job and hate the environment. I think that's key.

[00:50:47] Kristin Sherry: Second mistake that they make is they take on business. They don't want to do, because they're afraid to turn away money. When I stopped doing things, I didn't like I actually doubled my revenue.

[00:50:58] By turning away [00:51:00] work because I started to charge much higher rates. I was better at doing the things I loved. So I had more, the referrals. You're going to get more people referring you like if you're a career coach, for example, or you're a marketing person and you're writing copy and you hate doing that, you're going to get more referrals for writing more copy.

[00:51:20] And you're going to start procrastinating. You're going to start. Sending your deliverables late to your customers because you have to work yourself up to want to do it. And then you damage your reputation in your business.

[00:51:30] Hala Taha: Totally. So the last question I want to ask you before our final questions is about job interview.

[00:51:38] So I heard that you have a 98.5 job offer rate for all your clients. Which is incredible and people are in need. Right now you wrote a book recently about how to land a job. So tell us what are some top tips that we can take with us at our next job interview.

[00:51:54] Kristin Sherry: So you see a lot of people trying to prepare for the 500 interview questions that you might be [00:52:00] ask.

[00:52:00] Then I always tell people, you really only need to prepare for five things. You have to know what it is that you bring to the table. And that's by doing a role mapping exercise. Where you highlight all of the job description, things they need, and you look at your inventory of experiences, strengths, and skills, and all of the things that you have. And you make those connections with a story.

[00:52:21] And so that role mapping exercise is huge. So what do you bring to the table? Why should we hire you? Five other people we're interviewing. So you have to know what your differentiators are. Can we afford you? Do we want to work with you? What kind of a person are you? So what are your values and what are some things they might ask you to find out if you're a total jerk and they don't want to work with you?

[00:52:44] So those are the types of things that it's not, and you will get asked stupid questions. What if you were in this weird situation and those test questions, but if you can connect yourself to that job, why you over everyone? You have that research done around the salary and you [00:53:00] can talk about why people would enjoy working with you.

[00:53:03] If you can answer those questions. You are going to be well-prepared, but you want to connect your talents and your strengths to their job description. And so you can say. When they say, tell me about yourself. You can say I'm a disciplined person, who's this and this. And that's what they're asking for in the job description.

[00:53:20] And then you say, for example, and you tell a success story, don't go through your resume. I worked here. I created my own YouTube channel. And then I did this and that it's on your resume. It's a missed opportunity to just recount stuff they already know.

[00:53:35] Hala Taha: I think that's great advice. And I think it's really important to, first of all, be self aware and understand that your values, your interests, your strengths, your skills, and then bring some of that personality into your job interview.

[00:53:45] I think so many people don't do that and you'll have an advantage. Take the time to learn a little bit about yourself and be conscious of that when you're in the interview. So I think that's excellent advice. The last question that we ask all of our guests on Young And Profiting [00:54:00] Podcast is what is your secret to profiting in life?

[00:54:03] Kristin Sherry: My secret is really knowing myself. I've had self-awareness from a pretty young age. So I have always been successful at everything I've done because I don't take on things. That don't fit who I am, that don't fit my values, that don't fit my strengths. So my secret sauce is knowing exactly what I rock at and honing in and being focused on doing things that use those gifts.

[00:54:30] Hala Taha: Awesome. Thanks for everybody who tuned in. Shout out to Rob, Gary , Hassan, Eric, Brian,, Brod ,YouMuna and Towson. Thank you all for tuning in. If we didn't get to answer your questions. We're going to go back in the comments and answer some of them after the show. Sorry, we didn't get to them. Thank you so much, Kristin, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do?

[00:54:52] Kristin Sherry: So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm in the Charlotte Metro area. If there's multiple Kristin Sherry or you can go to my [00:55:00] youmap.com.

[00:55:01] Very cool. Thanks again. I love this conversation and I can't wait to put it out.

[00:55:06] This was fun. Thank you.

[00:55:07] Hala Taha: Thank you. Thanks for listening to Young And Profiting Podcast.

[00:55:12] If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to write us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Reviews are the number one way to thank us. Especially if you write a review on Apple Podcast and be sure to share this podcast. With your friends and family and on social media, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn, where I spend most of my digital time.

[00:55:31] Just search for my name, Hala Taha, big thanks to the YAP team as always Shiv, Parth. Tim, Hisham, Peter Matthew, Danny, Boyo, and Omar. You guys are awesome. Thanks for making the show so amazing. This is Hala signing off.