Hello, everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I want to take a minute to share the extreme joy I feel to be back in the podcasting medium. Like I knew I would be excited for it, but it is so cool to be able to meet in person, to be able to reach out to really cool people building meaningful things and hear from their experiences, hear what they've learned, what they're looking forward to, and to really focus on that human connection and that self betterment has been really such a treat to be able to dive into over the past few months. And it has been a lot of work. This is done, you know, in the hours before and after my full time job. On the weekends. I had to edit the audio on the train down to see my grandma at one point, and it's just it's a lot of work. It takes a village. I want to get into that in a second, but I did want to take a moment on this solo episode to share a little bit about like actually the work that goes into making an episode. So I'm very lucky that I get to work with a few people, but what I'm responsible for is figuring out who I want to have on the podcast, and then figuring out a way to reach out to them, follow up. Some people I know, some people it's a cold outreach, and then I do all of the planning for what the episode is going to entail, what questions I'm going to ask, what I want the narrative flow to roughly feel like, and then we come in, we record in the studio. I then receive the assets from the studio, and I watch through the video, and I identify the segments that I would like my video editor to focus on for our sizzle reel that we post on social media. So I do all that. I then create the full YouTube video, and I do all the audio editing and putting in the intro, outro, all of that stuff, and then come up with the titles and descriptions and social captions. Use AI for that because that's it can do a better job summarizing everything than I can, and it's really cool to be able to lean into that creativity. But they're definitely the village of people who who make it possible. So first and foremost, shout out to Jesse and Chris at Fringe because the studio is amazing. They turn around the files, and it just it makes it so easy for me to then do my job. Also, want to give a big shout out to Emmie Leary, who's my video editor, and again, she is able to hear the messy way I articulate what I want, and she's done a great job. And it's so fun to see see also the guests get excited by by the video assets that we have, and then the last people I want to shout out are Amanda and Jason at Octagon for doing all the backend producing and making sure that it gets on the RSS feeds and that everything's all set from that capacity. So that's kind of what goes into it. I'm very lucky to be working with a lot of people. I don't think I would be able to do it without them, and it's made this journey more manageable and a ton of fun. So, what I want to do today, now that I've given you a glimpse of what it's like to podcast, I wanted to share some of the themes that I have picked out from the various guests that we've had. We've had five guests who are in very different times in their lives. They are pursuing very different things, but they're all building something meaningful, or many meaningful things, and so I want to highlight the five themes that have pretty much come up in every discussion I've had as a kind of a mid-season or this point of the season recap, and then share some of my own commentary on it. But as a as a recap for who we've had, our first guest was Yasmin Shahida, who is a corporate communications leader. Then we spoke with Mick Batyske, who is a DJ and culture strategist. We had Lindsay Shookus, who's an Emmy-winning TV producer and keynote speaker. We had Selena Coppock, who's a comedian, writer, and book editor. And we just most recently spoke with Valerie Chapman, who's the founder and CEO of Ruth AI. So as I mentioned, they're all in different industries. They're different ages, but there were five big threads that seemed to sew through each of their experiences, and I'm going to share those with you now. The first big theme that became very clear was that building isn't linear, and reinvention is part of the process. I think this is an interesting throughline because what I've noticed is that different guests come from a different, you know, starting point. Some of us know exactly what we want to do from the get go, from the time we're young, and we we work hard to get that. Other people don't know what they want to do, kind of identify their talents or identify things that really excite them, and then they build from there. So it's kind of an all-inclusive, universal experience that, regardless of where you're starting from and what your vision is or isn't, you're gonna have to be okay with things not being linear, and you're gonna have to reinvent yourself. And a couple of the big examples that I wanted to share with you around that was when we spoke with Yasmin. She had been pursuing a career in broadcast journalism. She was working at CBS, and then she decided to make this pivot to something she was passionate about with food and hospitality, and then got into startups and is now working at Oatly. But she talked about the importance for her and for her mental well-being and personal well-being to pursue curiosity instead of the. More traditional path that was expected, and she also talked about telling people about what you want because some of the opportunities that you will find in life are from people who are connecting dots for us that we might not have the ability to do ourselves. Lindsay also is you know most well known for being a producer on Saturday Night Live, but after 20 years she stepped away from it. She knew it was the right time. It was not an easy transition. She talked about the identity crisis she had afterwards, but she also talked about the realization through some help from Alex Rodriguez that you're not supposed to recreate what you had before. It sets too high of a standard, and it kind of robs you of the joy of creating something new. And she also talked about the importance of betting on yourself, and you know, we if other people would support us, we should definitely be supporting ourselves as well. And the last thing that she described, which I thought was really great and super relatable, was that she talked about that transition from one big career to whatever was next as wobbly, but ultimately really freeing. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. The last person I want to highlight with this idea that building is not linear is with our most recent guest, Valerie. So Valerie had two layoffs; she was laid off twice before she was 25, and we talk a little bit about that happening to her at that point in her life versus later in life and her perspective on that. But basically, she had kind of was out of the out of the gate of college, and the traditional path that had been sold to her was not working. So she pivoted and started creating content, and then she built a one-person business, and then she's now building Ruth AI and trying to help other women have more options as they continue their career paths. So, being prepared to know that that's what it's going to be like seemed to be something that all of our guests had in common, and that was really cool to hear about. The second theme that I adore, and I think I followed personally throughout my life as well, is that nobody waited for permission. Everyone who was pursuing something, you know, and going for it full time, they had conviction that it was time to do it. And sometimes that conviction came from recognizing a skill or a talent and knowing it could be a career. Sometimes it was having a gut feeling that what you were doing wasn't wasn't working and you needed to try something else. But whatever it was, not waiting for permission or the invitation and creating the opportunity themselves is something that was a throughline for all of our guests. And Mick, who is a DJ, he found DJing opportunities while he was in college to be able to continue that art form. He immediately pitched himself for local gigs in Cleveland before moving to New York and then also continuing to grow. And what I really liked is that he really focused on creating kind of like a flywheel of career avenues that he could continue to build and pursue that would evolve with him as he grew, and he's now managing himself and making his own rules, which is really really cool. And the the last example I want to share for not waiting for permission is with Selena. So Selena, you know, she was an actor, a stand-up comedian, a writer, and she really loved acting. But she didn't wait for it to happen for her and for her to get her big break. And she just so she decided to create her own comedy show. She didn't wait for book publishers and you know writing a book to be a big success that catapulted her. She created her own social media channel with NYT vows to kind of create a space to bring humor and people together. And she basically was so so driven from a pretty early age to create her own opportunities and not wait for gatekeepers to let her in, which I think is a lot of really great self-awareness to have early on. The big lesson that I took away from our guests when it comes to waiting for permission is that instead of trying to make sure everything's lined up perfectly or to wait for people to invite you, we always have to remember that action creates clarity. And I want to say that again because I think a lot of us can get caught up on not knowing how we're going to figure it out or not knowing how we're going to do something, you will find the answer when you start acting. Action creates clarity because then you know what's happening and like you know what what steps aren't working. You identify new things and it builds on itself. The third theme that came across really strongly throughout these conversations with everyone is that relationships are the real career accelerators. I cannot emphasize enough how important I think human connection is, and maybe that's because I learned about how I wasn't really connecting super well with random people I was meeting while I was on Survivor because that was kind of a throughline of my my time was that I was considered so boring and didn't really didn't really resonate with people the way that I was expecting to, and so it was kind of the kick in the butt I needed to be more intentional. But relationships are so important. Not only is it fulfilling to connect with someone and potentially have a friendship or a romantic. Relationship, whatever it is, but the relationships in our lives are so much more likely to grow our worlds than we are able to do on our own. Right? We don't know how the network we make, the people we connect with, can help us, and how we can help them, and how they'll connect dots that seemingly aren't aren't related, but can you know spur on really really beautiful creations. And this is something that Mick talked about a lot. That his entire career philosophy is how do you build relationships and become friends with the people you're working with. It's not meant to be transactional, so he focuses on that, and he doesn't, you know, he doesn't establish these relationships with the idea of short-term gain. It's really about that human connection, and then the other examples for the importance of of these human relationships are with Selena. You know, she talked about how almost every opportunity that she got came from community, either the in person community or the communities that she was building with her nine to five, or with her comedy, or with her podcast, or or the content that she was creating, and it wasn't again. It wasn't trying to be transactional. She really focused on showing up for her people consistently, and then that builds opportunity, and people get to know you. And then that's when there might be some potential professional payoff. And she also emphasized the importance of being enjoyable to work with, which I think is really, really important. I think a lot of people do have a separation with work and personal life, but at the end of the day, we're all humans that are going through a similar human experience. So, being enjoyable to work with, I think, goes a long way. And the last example here is with Valerie, and so kind of focusing a little more on the digital age and how so many of us are, you know, really glued to our phones and and all of that, but she has really focused on the art of crafting that perfect cold email to do all that outreach, to really intentionally going after people that she may or may not come across in real life, and to kind of understand what her value proposition is, to be able to clearly articulate what she can offer, to be able to establish connections that way. So she had some really good advice about how to approach cold emails, and I think there are so many ways to develop really cold relationships. The fourth theme that I thought was a little more nuanced, but was really interesting, is that a lot of my guests seemed to focus on building themselves as a person before they were building the specific thing or career or company that they're going after. Everyone seemed to have a lot of self discovery and intentional personal development, and in that they were able to recognize their strengths. They were able to kind of fine tune their weaknesses, and I really liked how Lindsay talked about this because she talked about really focusing on the importance of being able to receive feedback. She had spent her entire career at SNL giving other people feedback and learning how to give feedback in an approachable way, but then she learned that she had to receive it as well, and so she knew that she, her like so many of us, natural tendency was to get defensive, and so how do you not get defensive? She also talked about learning how to do breathing exercises that help calm her down, and to work with a therapist who gave us a lot of gems in that episode. I will say, and she found that she could become a better leader by being a healthier person, physically, mentally, and all of that. Yasmeen was another one who really focused on the importance of grounding yourself and finding calm. And she recognized that who she became as a person and the values that she lived by was just as important, if not more so, than what she did professionally. And she made the great kind of observation that she is at her best for herself, for her friends, for her family for everyone when she's not in internal conflict with herself and so being self-aware to recognize when you're not something's not right and trusting your intuition and then making change so that you can be the best person for yourself and then for everybody else around you and that leads me to the fifth big theme that's come out throughout this season, which is one that I I think is proven over and over again as we as we grow up. But that's that building is always uncomfortable, and I think a lot about racing when it comes to discomfort. Because as a disclaimer, I love being comfortable. I am constantly adjusting the temperature in our apartment, like I, it, I don't like being uncomfortable in a lot of ways, but I can look back and when it comes to racing and you know speaking and career development and joining corporate, it's so clear that so many of the growing moments and the moments that you're most proud of are when you've overcome something that's really uncomfortable, and I think with racing specifically. So, for anyone who doesn't know, on a typical race weekend, you'll have practice sessions. You'll have qualifying, which is where you go as fast as you can for a couple laps to set the starting order for the race, and then you have the race. And when my coaches, as I was go karting, were describing qualifying, they would always. Say that for qualifying for those one or two laps, you should feel absolutely terrified for the entire time you're on the racetrack, right? You are trying to go so fast on the absolute ragged edge to get absolutely the most out of the tires, the equipment out of your own driving that there's no way that that can be comfortable. You should always feel like you're on the verge of crashing out. Whereas in a race you want to you know sustain your performance a little bit longer, and so it's it's not that sprint and all out walls to the wall for the whole race, but for qualifying that feeling, that sensation of being so on the edge, that's when people are their best, and that is when people qualify on pole when they've done that, and is kind of an analogy to keep in mind because you know it's always easiest to win the race from the front, and so in order to get there, though, you have to go through that extreme discomfort, and that seems to take a lot of forms in a lot of people's lives. And so I do want to highlight what each of our guests had said about embracing discomfort because it looked different for each of them. So with Lindsay on Saturday Night Live, she talked about how once she was asked to host Mick Jagger, and she had a lot of imposter syndrome. She didn't quite know why she was the one selected, and she learned in that moment that you have to walk into the room before you can talk yourself out of it. And I love that that phrasing of it because again it goes back to action creates clarity. She walked into the room, she didn't back away, and it was incredible. Valerie, again with Ruth AI, she started Ruth after going through two layoffs. She was building publicly, and she was really quick to acknowledge that the mission of what she's working towards, which is to close the gender wage gap, keeps her going even when the entrepreneurship feels extremely overwhelming. And she said she loves being an entrepreneur. She loves building a startup, and she said that it is overwhelming and scary every single day. But again, that mission keeps her going. Mick talked about how early on in his career he would take every kind of job that he could get, and he would solve problems in really rough conditions, getting paid not that much. But that having those experiences in those most dire situations, when he didn't know how it was going to work, but it had to work, then prepared him to better capitalize on bigger opportunities later. Selena very openly talked about failed auditions and disappointing projects and career pivots that consistently became things that redirected her to really successful things that she's done, like with her NYT Vows account. And Yasmin was very vulnerable in talking about repeatedly choosing reinvention over comfort, and how she knows that comfort is detrimental to anyone's personal development, and that embracing uncertainty is a great part for career development. And when I think about kind of my own two cents on this, and how I like to summarize it in a short mantra, I think about it as fear is finite, right? And whether that's fear or discomfort or heartbreak. If you're going through a breakup, if you're career pivoting, if you're whatever it is, those moments of discomfort, as agonizing as they may be in the time, are finite. They will go away. You will see other things that are bringing you joy. You know, time does heal, and I really think that a little bit of, even if it's pungent, but a little bit of discomfort in the short term is usually worth the long term return that you can get by having stuck with it and built that resilience for yourself. So to recap, kind of these five themes before I close out this this episode, we need to remember that building isn't linear. We don't want to wait for permission. We want to take initiative. Relationships compound over time, and they're important to nurture. Self improvement never stops, and we need to embrace discomfort and be comfortable being uncomfortable for us to gain personally and professionally. And the last kind of observation that I had was when talking with all of these guests, while they're all pursuing things and working on self improvement and building very concrete things, it seemed like a lot of them thought about what they were building in different ways. Some were focused on the community human relationship aspect. Some people were talking about how you're building your own opportunities, you're building the ecosystem around you, but despite having all these different focus areas, again, there were all those similar throughlines, which I thought were really cool. And since I like to ask my guests to end our discussions by completing the sentence, if I'm honest, I would like to hold myself to the same accountability and do the same thing. So, if I'm honest, I am so energized right now. I'm also very tired and overwhelmed, and feel like I'm at the edge of my bandwidth more so than I have any other time in my life. But the energizing nature of everything from being in New York to pursuing. Doing all these fun projects to you know developing from a professional standpoint, it's all really energizing. And listening to people who are very different ages-some younger than me, some older than me, some have had multiple reinventions, some have not-it's just so cool because life keeps going. And you know, when we see the opportunity and we want to keep growing, we can. And so I think it's it's really important to summarize this with something that the influencer Tink says, which is that you're never too old and it's never too late. I think that's a really great thing to remember, especially when you know society has put so many timelines on us. You know, we create our own rules. I think that's a really important way to look at life, and even if you can't do it in every element of your life, remembering that we do have agency to make small decisions and big decisions that can impact our day to day and help us lead the lives that we want to. I think that's when we're going to be most proud of ourselves. And the last little note is that while I'm also energized, it's also super humbling. I think that's it's been really fun to have felt small relative to a lot of the guests that I brought in who are doing such such cool things. And as a lot of my guests have been talking in our conversations, I then will also kind of look back on my own life and think about how you know I made some of the mistakes that they also were talking about learning from. And it's it's cool to be humbled from time to time, and so as a closing thought, I think even though we all have such different lived experiences, it's pretty special to know that in a world full of billions of people, so many of us have kind of similar threads that are tying our lives together, and that's important to remember as we try to build our relationships, so my ask for anyone who might be listening right now, as we close out this episode, if you have enjoyed the podcast, if you've enjoyed the reels that you've seen on social media or the TikTok videos or on LinkedIn, if you wouldn't mind doing me the favor and subscribing to the podcast if you haven't already, or giving it a rating, giving it a review that'll help with visibility and awareness for other people to hopefully pick up something from these discussions as well. And otherwise, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited for the future guests that we're going to bring on that'll come out later this summer, and I hope you have a great week.