Career Adventurer Podcast

Know what it looks like to “discover” your career? Jobs and career types evolve over time. Raj Kapur, CEO of &Marketing, discovered his current career as a marketing matchmaker after two decades of testing different paths.Raj got his BS in Biology and MBA in Marketing from Indiana University. He started his post MBA career at General Electric. Yet, he found another path.He decided to give consulting a try. This opened his eyes to a whole new world of business problem solving. Plus, it showed him he likes sales.Now, Raj helps connect companies with fractional CMOs. He didn’t just magically manifest this career idea one day. He gradually found this as a career while leading his marketing agency through the pandemic.Listen to the full episode. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three for your own career adventures.Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.About PaulPaul likes to help people and organizations forge unique paths. As the founder of Career Adventurer and a certified career coach, Paul interviews people exploring the world world of work to find what interests them most. Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

R.J. Talyor is a tech leader. He has founded and exited a number of companies. R.J. got his bachelors and masters degrees in English and Creative Writing from DePauw and Purdue Universities. At one point in time he dreamed of being an English professor and owner of a sandwich shop. Yet, like many of us, he is doing something different.Today, R.J is is CEO and Co-Founder of Backstroke a generative email platform for marketers. He founded the company with his wife and a few others. At Backstroke, they are focused on using artificial intelligence to make 1-1 connections with email at scale.Prior to founding Backstroke, R.J. worked for and founded a number of technology companies including ExactTarget (sold to Salesforce), Pattern 89 (sold to Shutterstock), and High Alpha, a Venture Studio in Indianapolis, IN. Each of these experiences, being a dad, and coaching sports has helped mold R.J. as a leader and career explorer.6 Core ThemesHere are six themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.Prepare for Next While Delivering NowAlways be a step ahead. Yes, we all must be present in what’s happening today. Nonetheless, we benefit by planning for the future. This doesn’t have to be all encompassing and a distraction.Slow Burn Then LeapWe’ve all seen the movie before. The hero is at work, frustrated. Their boss sucks. Then, they finally snap and quit. They jump into the new career pool, struggle a ton, and emerge successfully on the other side. Remember, this is the movie, not real life.Last Day on EarthWould you be pissed off at yourself if you knew you spent your last day in that way? This question can help you create a catalyst to do something different. Oftentimes it takes a birthday, death, or some disorienting moment to catalyze change. What if you asked yourself this question from time to time?Tradeoffs Help PrioritizeLife is filled with tradeoffs. We all must choose what is most important. When I was at P&G, an executive named Jim Lafferty did a presentation about only being able to prioritize five roles in life. You only have enough to fit on your hand. Being a father, spouse, and prioritizing family / friends takes up three spots. Work likely takes up one more. You likely only have time for one thing if you are a spouse or parent.Build Tough SkinGiving up is easy. Iterating and trying again and again is the hard road. Sure, we should rethink objectives if we are spending time on something we don’t enjoy or isn’t a core responsibility. However, shouldn’t we keep going if we are traveling a career path we enjoy and simply are faced with an obstacle?No Job DescriptionWe should ASPIRE to not have a job description. HR and Legal experts might say, “Absolutely not! We need order! How will we set expectations and track performance?!” That’s why I said ASPIRE. Of course we need a general framework for our career roles.Listen to the Full StoryR.J. is focused on combing his love of language with technology and business at Backstroke. This has come from exploring new paths and being open to undefined roles and ideas. He knows there are tradeoffs and is focused on what matters most both personally and professionally.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

Jason Hauer is a serial entrepreneur and Inc 500 honoree. He has had a variety of roles and titles over his 20+ year career. He’s worked in information technology, market research, and sales. He’s founded and exited companies. Now he’s focused on disrupting with artificial intelligence.Today, Jason is CEO of HauerX, a private equity and growth partnership company. He invests in and works with companies and founders primarily in the AI space. He puts his strengths as an activator, disruptor, and macro visionary to find opportunities for companies to grow and thrive.Prior to founding HauerX, Jason co-founded and grew The Garage Group, a consulting company focused on brand growth and new product innovation with F1000 companies. As Co-CEO, Jason learned all about the excitement and challenge of growing a company rapidly. He ultimately exited the company.Throughout his career, Jason has sought to avoid defining himself by a specific job or function. Rather, he has used principles to guide him on his non-linear journey.5 Core ThemesHere are five themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.Know Your SuperpowerAs Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” Honestly, knowing yourself is REALLY tough. It can take decades. It takes a lot of trial and error and self reflection. Someone I know once told me they didn’t truly feel comfortable in their own skin until they were 50. Give yourself some grace and freedom to explore. This will help you get closer to personal wisdom.When asked about what he is focused on with HauerX, Jason talked about combining AI with innovation, insights, and sales. At a higher level, he discussed his strengths with associative thinking.Your Energy SourceWhere do you get energy? There is much more to energy than whether we are introverts or extraverts. Do you love understanding people? Do you enjoy working with your hands? Do you love analytics? Find your fountain of fulfilling energy to fuel your career.For Jason, energy comes from connecting with leaders and focusing on growth.Principles Guide YouWhat principles do you use to guide your career? Jason developed his ethos by combining reading and experiences. Jason learned the importance of contribution by reading The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker early in his career. Plus, his experiences working in IT, insights, and consulting helped him learn the importance of customer empathy.Don’t Be A Feather In The WindDon’t confuse pivoting with being flakey. Careers require picking a path, walking it, and reassessing. Along the way we must always ask ourselves if the path still makes sense. Sometimes we find tangential routes that make more sense than the one we are currently traveling. This could be an off shoot that leads to the same end point. Or, it could be a full course correct.Buy Then BuildPart of what Jason is doing with HauerX is evaluating businesses to buy. Call it entrepreneurship through acquisition (i.e. - ETA). This is a complicated and potentially risky path. Yet, it’s a path others like Jason have traveled. Beyond his own experience starting and selling The Garage Group, Jason read Walker Deibel’s book Buy Than Build. It’s focused on helping entrepreneurs skip the startup phase.Listen to the Full StoryJason is focused on pairing his sales and marketing skills and principle focused mind with founders and enterprises focus on disruptive growth. He found his way down this path by taking action and doing. Jason believes that knowing your super power and what energizes you is critical. Then, it’s all about getting out into the world and trying things thousands of times. We must stay focused on what we’re trying to accomplish, but should leave room for revising our path.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

Zenda Walker is an author. She’s always been a writer, but it took a pandemic for her to uncover a topic she was passionate about bringing to the world. She is owner of Know Your Hairitage and author of Zara’s Washday and Zion’s Crown, two children’s books that celebrate hairstyles of African descent through story.Before embracing life as an author, Zenda was in Sales & Marketing with Ulta, Coty, and Procter & Gamble. She honed her skills as a storyteller in the corporate world before taking it to life as a professional writer.During the pandemic, Zenda found a topic worthy of bringing to the world while bonding with her daughter. She gradually saw herself as an author and took bold moves to build an award winning book series and get a book deal with a major publisher.5 Core ThemesFind Your RefugeWhere is your personal refuge, where you feel at peace, where your dreams flourish? When asked how she got into writing, Zenda shared that she’d always been a writer. During the pandemic she rediscovered this refuge. Inspired by caring for her daughter’s hair, she found a topic to share with the world. Zara’s Wash Day and the Know Your Hairitage platform emerged.“I found myself always going back to a childhood dream. At every area of my life, I always was a writer, right? I always wrote in my journals. I always found it as a beautiful refuge to write and kind of go to that quiet place where I could be loud on paper.”Life Isn’t LinearWe’ve been trained to believe that life is linear. We enter school and advance linearly from year to year. It’s no wonder that when we enter the work world we expect things to be linear too. We’re asked, “Where do you expect to be in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years?” In reality, life isn’t as linear as we should expect. Work is likely becoming even less linear.When asked about the path she took to write Zara’s Wash Day, Zenda said it was about seizing moments to process what was happening with prose. It was a family activity that gradually gave her the courage to bring something great to the world.“I would start to think about these moments I was having with my daughter and it was all coming together, not necessarily in chronological order, but then it just became something that was undeniable, that the story had to be told.”See YourselfIt can take time to see who you might want to be and then become it. For Zenda, it took almost the entire pandemic to realize she is an author and the subject of heritage is important to others. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, Zenda transformed into a butterfly. She had important stories to tell.“the thing that held me back for many years of actually publishing was I never actually saw myself as an author, right?…You think of all the famous authors that we think about and you're thinking, okay, they had a career path, they have these bodies of work that somebody deemed ready for the world or acceptable or award winning. I realized that over the process of writing the book, which it took me, I'd say it took me the whole pandemic. I realized that I'm actually an author. I'm just not published yet.”Intentionally BoldSometimes we can chalk things up to “luck.” This might not give you enough credit. Luck happens. But, it takes hard work and intentional effort to pave your own way. Zenda put in the effort to push outside of her comfort zone and manifest opportunities. Getting a book deal and winning a book award didn’t just happen. She earned it!“Ultimately it's your energy, your talent. The hard work you put in prior that just shines through and then it just happens that people actually see it in that moment. 5 or 10 years ago, I'm not sure that I would have been the girl to walk up to the CEO and president of top five publishing company.”Transferring Your SkillsOne of the biggest career challenges is seeing where your skills are transferable. We’re able to do it in hindsight or with the help of someone else. Seeing it individually is a hurdle. Zenda shared how writing a book on hair just made sense in the end. She was an experienced hair stylist. She was a natural story teller. Going into her writing career, this was not as easy to see.“Also as a hairstylist, just love doing hair. I was able to marry the two things and sometimes I use the term fall into this career as an author, but I realized it was the natural next thing for me to be able to do. I really enjoyed telling sales stories building product mission and being creative and speaking to customers. So I was already writing, right? I was already kind of creating and stories corporate, and it just transferred into also my consultation skills with customers, right?”Listen to the Full StoryZenda started in sales and marketing. She eventually applied her skills as a story teller to writing as a pro. Her thoughts will help people see that you can write a new professional story that is rooted in your heritage and interests.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

Dave is an entrepreneur. He is cofounder of Prop Fuel, a platform that helps associations take action on member feedback. He is also the host of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Podcast, EO360. Dave hasn’t always been an entrepreneur.He started his career with venerable companies like PWC, Kraft, and Nielsen. But, he was doing just fine. He lacked urgency. He got fired.Enter entrepreneurship. Dave built a successful company and exited. He jumped into new pursuits like hosting podcasts. He interviewed television adventurer, Bear Grylls. He learned to manage intimidation, embrace radical candor, and set aside time to think.5 Core ThemesDave highlighted a few major themes. Here are five you should take note of in your own career adventures.Be IntimidatedRemember to do things that are intimidating. It’s easy to get comfortable. We grow when we step out of our comfort zone and into a new space.Dave interviewed Bear Grylls once at an Entrepreneurs’ Organization event. Bear Grylls is a survival expert and adventurist best known for his work in the television show Man vs. Wild. Before interviewing Bear, Dave was intimidated. He was about to be on stage in front of thousands of attendees. Yet, he leaned into his strengths and previous experiences to manage his fear. He excelled. It was a great experience.Just Jump into OpportunitiesDave runs the Entrepreneurs’ Organization podcast, EO 360. About a decade ago he started it. He didn’t know anything about podcasts at the time. All he knew was that virtual learning webinars were going the way of the Dodo and being eliminated. As a member, he knew the virtual learning series was valuable. So, he saw an opportunity to keep virtual learning alive just with a different medium: the podcast.Jumping into the opportunity helped grow his career. He’s learned from thousands of people. He’s likely helped tens of thousands more.Radical CandorHow would you respond if you were told you haven’t grown in 10 years? It would likely feel like a gut punch. Would you get defensive and deny? Would you be sad and cry? These would be logical responses. This happened to Dave.A board member and friend told Dave he hadn’t grown in a decade. The board member didn’t say Dave was a bad leader. He just offered up a bit of radical candor from his personal vantage point. Dave could have rejected the observation. Instead, he used it as a leadership wake up call. Dave decided to ad critical “thinking time” to his daily routine to work on himself.Carve Time to “Think”Dave took specific action upon receiving feedback from his board member. He carved out time to “think” in his schedule. This might sound simple. It isn’t. There are always more immediate and known problems to address. The to-do list is never ending treadmill you think you can control. You can’t. It will control you if you let it.Carving out time to think is requires discipline and personal empathy. It requires constant management like pruning a banzai plant. It requires focus driven by your ability to hear what is needed in your life.Doing Just FineHow are you doing? Are you “fine?” Dave was doing just fine in his corporate career. His managers told him he lacked a sense of urgency. One even told him “you walk too slow and smile too much.” Nevermind that this kind of managerial advice is terrible. Dave got fired because he was doing just fine. Then he did more than “fine.” He excelled.Listen to the full storyDave has lived both big corporate and entrepreneurship. His thoughts will help encourage people who are feeling a lack of urgency in their current gigs to identify how to be engaged. Plus, his story about interviewing adventurist Bear Grills is a fun listen.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

We all need catalysts. Catalysts keep us growing, energized. Grant Hunter, Co-Founder of Product Growth Leaders reflects on some of the growth catalysts that led him to and through a career in product management.Grant started his career like many people do, in a large, steady, corporate ship. He launched his career with GE. At GE he picked up the skills good product managers need. This included strong market research, problem solving, and strategic planning capabilities.I’ve highlighted six core themes from our discussion. Grant opened up and got philosophical. Most of the themes apply to anyone’s career adventures. Things like embracing problem solving and managing sunk cost fallacy. Listen to the full episode. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three.Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.6 Core Themes via quotesGrant highlighted six major themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.Iterate & Problem Solve“it looks like you changed jobs pretty frequently. What's wrong with you?…I like to solve problems. I like to figure things out. Once I figured stuff out and they wanted me to run them, I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to, figure new things out. So I was always looking for a new challenge to grow.”Build Your Foundation“he said, let me tell you why you don't want to take a product management job and why you want to come do market research with me. Good product management is based on good market research and analysis. If you go into a product management role, you might get some of it, but building a foundation, doing market research analysis at GE is gonna give you capabilities and skills to succeed in product management and beyond.”Don't Overvalue the Past“the opportunity in front of you is what guides your decision. Not, “Do I want to stay at GE?” Just like I had some hindsight regret as should I have stayed at GE the first time I had some hindsight regret when I left, it ends up a mentor of mine, who I did not expect to become the CEO and take the company public, became the CEO and took the company public. There's plenty of rumination I've done in my mind of, “Oh my gosh, if I had stayed with Charles, what would have happened?” You make a decision in the moment."“Be Ready” to Go Back“The opportunity to go back, the thing that stuck with me the most is, especially at companies like P&G and GE, I know that when you do your exit interview, the HR person also does an exit interview with your manager. The final question is, would we hire this person back?I left on good enough terms with enough respect for the people that they saw the value of me and because I would not have gotten that chance to go back to G. E. if they did not answer yes to that question. And so it was sort of a come full circle.”Product Management: An Ambiguous Field“You have to be comfortable with ambiguity. And there's some people who aren't, right? Product management is a unique role, just like brand management. We interface with the whole organization upstream to downstream. The lens switching that you have to do mentally, you go from one conversation with finance, where you're talking pro-formas to a conversation with engineering, where you're talking APIs and user interfaces. You should be able to balance them all in. The context of the problem and persona and market segment.”Beyond Yourself“To have built a team like that, that succeeded, that thrived without me. It's about helping other people get better at it. And maybe that's why I ended up in the more of the educational advisory coaching type stuff.“But it goes back to integrity. It goes back to putting the other people first. It was these people who are not selfish, right? They're selfless. They help other people. They try to make other people better on their good resources.”Listen to Grant’s Full StoryGrant has a wealth of experience both in big corporations and entrepreneurial pursuits. You’ve read a snippet of the major themes. But, there is more. We discussed career lessons from the 2005 movie Nanny McPhee starring Emma Thompson. Plus, we discussed the key ethos of product management and how products have natural S-curves that many companies too often ignore.Download the full episode to hear all his thoughts. It's a perfect way to reflect while on a commute.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

We all need water. Aaron Burkhardt helps to make sure we get it and it’s good. He is Senior Engineer with the Greater Cincinnati Water Works. Aaron has had 7 or so jobs in a little under twenty years. He knows a bit about the twists and turns of a non-linear career path.All of his roles have been in engineering. Yet, he’s had a vast array of experiences. He’s worked for private developers and governments. He’s pushed water uphill, a seemingly sisyphean task. He’s helped water flow downhill.Aaron is a true Career Adventurer who embraces new experiences. Sometimes, it’s required leaping to a new company. Others, have simply required exploring a new space internally.5 Core Themes!Aaron highlighted a few major themes. Here are five you should take note of in your own career adventures.Building HistoryWe could all only be so lucky. Aaron encounters history in his job everyday. He regularly has history at his finger tips. Not many people need to look decades or even a century into the past to do their job. Aaron does. Plus, decisions they make on how water needs to flow around the city will impact a future Aaron looking back to understand how to improve waterflow.“All the old paper records that we have from 150 years of providing water to the citizens of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, I keep an eye on that stuff.We've got a geographic information system that's all mapped. We have data moving all around, and I oversee that. Some of the more exciting things I get to do is leading our effort on a new master plan. We look at our entire system and say, ‘What are the big things we want to do in the next 10, 15, 20 years?’.Getting Past DiscomfortAaron embraces a growth mindset. It takes effort, though. He sought a project that required flexing muscles he didn’t typically use as an engineer. He had to get out into the organization to do stakeholder research. For an engineer who’s predisposed to enjoying the confines of his desk, it was energizing. Now, he had a better grasp of how water data moved and saw improvement opportunities. Way to go Aaron!“I'm an engineer and I just want to be in my office and kind of be left alone. I got to go like, talk to people now. The initial doing that makes me so uncomfortable that it just takes me a few hours to ramp myself up to do it.But then I had conversations with other departments and we were mapping out swim lanes of how data moves around and what people do. We have opportunities to make improvements. I got to do like this for like four days. Now at the end, I was like, this is f$@king awesome, man. Get to see where all this stuff goes.”More Responsibilities / More ChallengesManaging a big team isn’t for everyone. Aaron learned this during a temporary increase in his responsibilities. Very simply, he didn’t find joy in it. Managing a large team is really difficult. In many fields, our system of work rewards or forces people to manage larger teams to advance, to earn more. This isn’t always best for the employee or employer. Some engineers should keep engineering and not administering. Kudos to Aaron for using a great evaluation filter: Does this provide joy?“I got the opportunity to temporarily move up a position and went from managing 5 people to managing 20. In my younger days, I was like, yeah, I'm going to manage a big team and do all these things. I determined that at this point in my career and the number of years I've had with Waterworks that did not bring me joy the way that I thought it would.”Bloom Where You’re PlantedSometimes our work finds us. We like to believe we guide the ship, perpetually in control. Not always. We are presented with choices. Aaron found that no one wanted to focus on water. So, he took on the challenge. This was the start of a path that has remained in the same space, but bounced from challenge to challenge.“Got out of school and, and started in Chicago-land area, did land development work. They needed somebody to do water stuff, sizing pipes. Nobody else wanted to do it. I was like, well, I'm here. I started doing that. Like, this is kind of fun. This is kind of cool.And just doing that, growing on that and doing storm water, water that falls from the sky. Then, spent years with the sewer district doing poop water. Then, decided I'd move to the clean water side and try that out.”Job ResilienceOver many decades, society has trained us that staying in one job means job security. People say, “The grass isn’t always greener.” Or, “It’s best to stay put.” Is this true today? Aaron has developed job resilience by embracing new opportunities. He has been laid-off. He’s sought joy in new things. Most importantly, he has learned how to search for jobs. Here’s a tip: Be good at networking!I've been fortunate in my career. I’ve tried to know a good number of people throughout whatever I was doing and have been able to move jobs and do different things that bring me joy when I wanted. I haven't had to be unemployed for too long. I've been lucky in that space.I tell people I've done this and I've done that. They're like, how many jobs have you had? I don't know, six or seven. How have you done this many freaking jobs?! Like, well, I just did this and then didn't want to do that anymore, and needed to move, or got laid off, or whatever. I hate to say that's maybe my best skill: Finding the job and maintaining a network of people. Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

We all fail. Most of us don’t fail enough. We don’t take enough risk and let life pass us by. Not Kendra Ramirez!! She is successful because she has failed.Kendra is CEO of KR Digital Agency, Co-Founder of Cincy AI for Humans, and writer of , an Artificial Intelligence focused publication that helps people navigate our new digital age.Kendra shared her journey on the Career Adventurer Podcast. She talks about how she starter her career in corporate sales. She shares the story of having to close her digital agency during the Great Recession. She discusses how she is naturally timid but has learned to be an amazing public speaker.Kendra likes to try new things earlier in their life cycle. She got into digital marketing before many even new the term. Now, she is leading the marketing with AI conversation in Cincinnati, OH.Listen to the full episode. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three.Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top five themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.Don’t miss a single episode! I’m finding people with unique stories who can help you see the possibility in your career.5 Core ThemesKendra highlighted a few major themes. Here are five you should take note of in your own career adventures.Embrace The NewDon’t be late to the party. You’ll miss the best canapes. You don’t have to go all-in. Just dabble. Kendra is an early mover. She dove head first into digital in the early 2000’s. Today, she is leading the AI charge in Cincinnati with her Co-Founder of Cincy AI for Humans with Helen Todd. You obviously don’t have to be the earliest of early adopters. But, you don’t want to be so late to the party that all the good appetizers are gone and you’re left eating cauliflower without any ranch.“Every day there's a new technology coming out or a new way of getting things done, and so that's what keeps me hooked. I know I'm weird. I thrive in change environments, I'm the one that used to always, when I was in corporate America, would drive leadership crazy, because I was always pushing us…”Listen CarefullyBe careful limiting yourself based on what others tell you. You’ll collect a group of experts and mentors to help. They have great experience, but it needs to be channeled correctly. They will not always know best, thus you’ll need to identify the parts of what they say as most and least applicable for your career move. Why? You know yourself and your ideas best. Many entrepreneurial support organizations counsel members to share experience, not advice. So, listen carefully.“Three business coaches that said, don't! A business in digital was really their own lack of understanding. They themselves didn't really embrace technology. Understanding when you're hearing no from someone, sometimes it's just their own perception, right? It doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just, that's all their knowledge. You know your capability.”Painful AdversityAs you know, we grow with adversity. Is it fun? No!!! It can be downright awful. But, when we’re stuck in the muck we must take account of how we’re growing. Kendra has faced her fair share of adversity. She launched a digital marketing company that failed during the Great Recession. She didn’t let that stop her. She did it again. But, she relaunched the company with a different business model.“I felt like such a failure. I was just like, who am I to start a business? Cause clearly I didn't know what I was doing. 2008 / 2009 pulled the rug out from underneath me. I'm thankful it happened because I completely restructured my business. It was a painful, expensive lesson, but it was a good one.”Fear Doesn’t FadeWe’ve all heard people say, “Conquer your fears.” I don’t love that quote. A better one is from Nelson Mandela."The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."--Nelson MandelaI question how possible conquering your fears is. We all feel fear. Fear doesn’t go away. Rather, we recognize the fear and manage it. That is conquering fear.“It's practice and repetition. I've been presenting for over 20 years now. You start small. Practice and evolve and get feedback. Still today on every single session, I'm always asking anyone that brings me in, what can I do better? I'm always asking and learning and growing and having people, provide that feedback and people that are safe for me.”Follow the JoyI’ve been told to do something that is useful. I’ve also been told to follow my passion. The answer is likely in the middle. They key is to recognize what you like or want to do and then be very useful doing it. It’s easy to default to money. But, if you identify what makes you joyful and then throw yourself in and work hard it will lead you in the “right” direction.“If you follow the thing that you love doing, the money follows. Finding your purpose and finding, your career adventure, like, I love that you're doing this and sharing. There's so many ways to get there, right? It's okay to change industries. It's okay to change jobs. It's okay to start a business and close it and restart it. It's okay to, you know, to decide that entrepreneurship is not for you.”Listen to the full storyKendra’s an amazing leader. She takes joy in the new and helping others discover. She’s helping clients, companies, and people explore AI responsibly. She runs a successful company, but it took testing, failing, learning, and retrying to find her way.Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!Paul G. Fisher Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

Sometimes you just need to spread your wings, try something new. That was the case for Shira Averbuch. She had a good gig with Major League Soccer. Yet, she wanted to venture into a new space. She explored a new career adventure.Now, Shira is VP of Innovation & Partnerships with Venture Fuel, a growing professional services company. At Venture Fuel, Shira plays matchmaker. She helps big companies identify partnership opportunities with startups.Shira shares the ins and outs of her journey and some of her career advice on the Career Adventurer Podcast. She talks about how she found her way to fueling Bigco tech after starting her career in publishing. Plus, she shares a few tips that have been useful in her journey.5 Core ThemesShira highlighted a few major themes. Here are five you should take not of in your own career adventures.Ask QuestionsCareer Adventurers ask questions. They ask lots of questions. They continuously seek learning, thus asking questions is critical. They as themselves questions. They ask others questions. Remember, there are no dumb questions. Asking questions is scary. But, if you pretend like you know everything, you will not challenge yourself.“often I'm faced with how do I get smart quickly on an area of technology or even an area of industry and business that I have no background in. I've always kind of had the soft skills of I can listen and ask good questions, but I don't have many of those, those hard skills. I've never been a programmer.”Spreading Your WingsSometimes you just have to spread your wings and soar. You need to fly away from the pond you are currently inhabiting. You know this. Shira knew this. When you share ideas, opinions, and insight and it isn’t taken seriously, it’s a sign you might want to put your talents to use elsewhere.“I just felt as a young professional that I was looking for an opportunity to spread my wings a bit more. I had ideas, had opinions, but then when I'd share them, they didn't really go high up enough the food chain. Nothing would really change. I felt like, ‘Hey, didn't we talk about changing this or doing something a bit more innovative or different?”Project PowerDabbling in a new area with project work is a great way to explore a new space. It’s using the idea of a minimum viable product for your career. Shira talked about doing a project for a prospective company to try it out. Now she is VP of Innovation at that company. You might think you’ll do a terrible job. That’s ok! That’s natural. Find out! How might you dabble in a new space with project work?“I thought, I have no idea if I can do this. So as part of the interview process, we jive from a personality perspective, a way we work, but he gave me a project because again, I didn't know if I could do this whole connecting an enterprise with a startup. And I did the project. I remember thinking this could either be great or just really horrible”Happiness is Day-to-DayWe confuse what happiness means. We think it’s pure joy. The reality is that happiness is day-to-day. It’s about how we approach the opportunities we face. It’s about how we show up and learn. Not every day will be magical. Some will suck. But, when we jump into something we care about and try to make a mark, we look back with admiration.“I'm really proud of my openness to new opportunities and jumping into things that I have no right to be involved in on paper. I feel imposter syndrome like every other day, but I'm proud of the fact that I show up and I want to learn and I want to get better, even when I feel as if I'm in a space that I have no idea what to do.”Courage to AskCurious about leaping into something new? Just ask. Ask someone who is playing in a space that interests you. It takes courage. They will most likely say yes. People are flattered when you want to learn from them. Buy them a coffee or tea. Have the courage to connect.“Good questions from an informational interview is just having the courage to ask someone for their time. I think that is the biggest hurdle to any informational interview is, you look at this person, their title, their resume, they must be so busy. Why would they want to give any time to me?” Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe

Think you can’t leap from you steady gig? Wrong! Stuck in a rut of sameness? No need to be! Learn from Christine Fisher, CoFounder and COO of Possip, an Ed-Tech Startup. Before leaping to Possip, she lead Financial Strategy as a Procter & Gamble Finance Director.We recently chatted on the Career Adventurer Podcast. She started her career at P&G. After 13 years, a new adventure awaited. She leapt. Christine ran for Ohio State Representative. That didn’t pan out. So, she put her financial expertise to use with Possip.Listen to the full episode. We talk about how career experiences are like financial investments. We discuss the power of micro moments. We implore you to get outta your bubble. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three.5 Adventurous Themes(1) Outta the BubbleSticking with your tribe is easy. It’s comfortable. I get it. When I attend a work function or conference, I instinctively desire connecting with those I know best. Staying within your bubble is career atrophy.Christine talked about being caught in a career bubble. She connected with the same people at the same company. She felt her perspective being limited. So, she popped the bubble. She explored.“I was living my life in my twenties and early thirties in my Procter and Gamble bubble - in my bubble of getting engaged and married and starting to have kids.  It finally sort of awakened me at some point to say, ‘Hey, this is probably now the time that I need to go back to that community service side, to that political engagement side.’  So I started to go to conferences around Cincinnati or networking events that were in that space.”(2) Responsibility ExposureOur field of vision expands when we pop our bubbles. We no longer see only the trees. We see the entire forest. This is critical for a career filled with meaning and intrigue.Christine talked about how difficult it is to see job options when we’re young. We know what accountants are. We don’t know all the paths where accounting can lead other than taxes! This isn’t only a challenge in our youth. We find it difficult to see beyond the details in front of us. The solution: hearing from others. Other people’s stories show us additional paths.“I started to see the people ahead of me in roles more senior to me.  It was even more of the same. They were still having those same conversations every year and doing those same tasks.”(3) Set a QuotaTreat networking like your career depends upon it. You know why? It does. If networking is not a habitual part of your schedule, you’re in trouble. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But at some point you will need to tap into your network.Christine sets a quarterly networking goal. For her, it’s 10 people. That’s less than one coffee per week. You have time for one coffee per week with a mentor, friend, new colleague, old colleague, random barista…someone. Set a quota today!“in the first 10 years at P&G, I gave out and collected a handful of business cards, maybe five. We recently moved from Cincinnati to Boston. As we were clearing out my desk, I found the stack of business cards that I've gotten since 2016 when I started on this journey. It’s almost a thousand! That's just one visible metric. I love going to an event and connecting with people.”(4) Micro MomentsMicro moments lead to big things. You hear mentor or you hear influencers and you think of Yoda or Obiwan Kenobi, or you know someone who's sage and been in your life forever.We tend to think big career moves require big moments. This isn’t always the case. Some of the most impactful career adventures stem from seemingly innocuous connections. For example, Christine’s career has been heavily influenced from two brief connections. Two people she barely knew encouraged her to apply to P&G and to consider a startup.“We often think of mentors or people influential in our career as these deep, long-term relationships or meaningful moments. And the two biggest influencers in my career, I would say are barely past acquaintances who I had passing conversations with.”(5) Careers as Investment ExperienceWe tend to isolate the idea of investments to our 401k’s. Money is invested and earns interest or dividends. We collect capital gains. This applies to our careers, too.Each new experience is an investment. Each new skill gained is a bet. The more experiences and skills we collect, the greater value we offer to the market. Continuously expand your skill set. It diversifies our work portfolio. You can still pick a few focus areas, but then identify as many ways to improve as possible.“at 21, I was running a $10 million corporation that had 500 student employees. And so I got a good taste of both the business and the political side in this amazing year.” Get full access to Career Adventurer at www.careeradventurer.com/subscribe