The host greets viewers, apologizes for a previous recording issue, and begins recounting a recent family road trip on vacation, mentioning initial struggle returning to work.
The host greets viewers, apologizes for a previous recording issue, and begins recounting a recent family road trip on vacation, mentioning initial struggle returning to work.
She describes the road trip through Wisconsin and up to Duluth and International Falls, sharing how the trip felt restorative despite travel fatigue, including family activities like s'mores, swimming, and enjoying the hotel's amenities.
Transitions from vacation stories to the broader theme of safety, community, and feeling welcomed in certain spaces like Duluth where she retreats to rest and reflect.
She frames the discussion around career transitions, noting examples of people switching fields and setting up her own experience moving through different roles and industries.
She suggests a practical method for testing career shifts by recording daily pros and cons about energy and safety for 30 days, then reviewing the list to inform decisions about staying, leaving, or reinventing roles.
Hey, Cadre. Happy Monday morning to everybody. It's good to see you all and be here. I am coming off a week of vacation and the day after vacation is always a really hard day because it's just hard to get in the swing of things and it's hard to, you know, not Just want to be on vacation still. Excuse me. I have a little tickle in my throat. Pardon me. But other than that, the day is off to a great start. Hi, Rose. 612. Thanks for joining. I first want to tell you that I need to apologize if you tried rewatching my post from last week because I realized that it didn't catch the whole recording so you'll get kind of like a double whammy today where I'm going to try to combine two things in one.
Try to recap a little bit of that that didn't record and then talk to you a little bit more about safety. Hi Chris Fortman, thanks for joining. So let me tell you about my vacation. So my husband, daughter and I, we decided to do a road trip the week after Labor Day. So we started the week last week in Wisconsin with my husband's family, my husband, which is where I was last week on the farm. They have chickens running around and our end destination was going up to International Falls, which is like on the border of Canada in Minnesota.
And I lost steam. I'm so sorry for my voice. One moment. I lost steam halfway through the trip and I just thought I don't think I can do like another two full days of driving my husband was driving transparently I was sitting in the passenger seat um enjoying the podcast we were listening to but it still was a lot of energy for me I haven't done a trip like and Duluth is um Harbor Town right on Lake Superior and it's a gorgeous City I love Um, spending time there. I love hiking there. I love just the community feel.
It feels really safe to me. It feels really calm to me. Um, I'm not safe in like, safest city in America, safe in like, I feel like I could exist there as I am and be welcomed. And that is, uh, an important feeling. for everybody. It's a really important feeling to ask questions. It's just so important. So I'm wondering if there's a space like that for you. Like I think of Duluth as a place for me where I retreat to. It's a place where I've gone to celebrate things. It's a place where I've gone to mourn things.
It's a place where, just like this last week, my husband, daughter and I went to rest. And I feel really grateful that, you know, I've had opportunities to be in spaces like that and make time and space for those opportunities of rest. But I'm wondering if you have a place like that or if it's with a community of people where you feel that way. I guess I'm just saying it's not underrated to and it's not a waste of time to create and like make meaningful space for being in those communities. The hotel we were staying at was very family friendly and so they had s'mores available every day.
So we had s'mores by the fire every night and we went swimming every day in the pool. We went in the hot tub every day. Like it wasn't a vacation that was a lot of doing, but it was so restful. And I'm really grateful for that. And if you have a vacation coming up or if you're planning a trip or if you're thinking about, you know, the next, the best every single time, they're just so good and comforting. And in this fall season in Minnesota that we're stepping into with kind of crisp nights and bundled up under some blankets next to the fire.
Having a s'more was a core memory, as they say, core memory. So like I said, I'm kind of combining a few things because we're talking a little bit about safety and community this week and talking about I want to tell you a little bit about what wasn't captured last week on my live, which was safety and being yourself. And so I'm thinking about this from a job perspective. Because something I've been thinking a lot about and talking to a lot of people on and coaching a lot of people on is this phase of reinvention.
So people who are on a career switch, they want to go from, I just was coaching someone who was in youth ministry and they wanted to go into development. I was coaching someone who was a teacher and they wanted to go into leadership development training and so those are shifts in a career. because they're changes in the path that you've been on. I've worked in so many different industries and my career has been a snake because I started my career in events and then I went to work for a hospitality, like larger hospitality group from there and I really loved the marketing part of the hospitality space that I was in.
I was doing events and I was building an event program, I was running the events and I was hiring the team and I was doing the sales and I loved the marketing part of that. So I went to a marketing agency, had to learn marketing. I didn't know anything. I mean, I knew like I had a lot of intuition and gut feeling and now some like practice in marketing, but like formal marketing experience I did not have, so I had to learn a lot. I still use pieces of those learning phases every day, but I worked in a client facing role.
I was leading accounts, I was working with web developers, I was working with designers. And from there I really loved the coaching part. And so I thought, do I want to stay in marketing and do coaching adjacent to it? Or do I want to do more coaching and like leadership development? And so I got approached to join this leadership development firm. And so I joined there and we did a lot of leadership development coaching training. And I really loved the work from that, but I really struggled with the schedule and the pace of it and so decided to make a change and it was also you know I was just really struggling with maybe the ethos of the company like they were going in this direction and I felt like my car with Rosie and Joe and put up the date that's a pro you'll have a long list of those things Or a short list.
Maybe you only have a few things in the 30 days where you're excited. You don't have to put something in pros and cons every day, but you have to document whenever you're feeling engaged, energized, excited. And then you have to document on the flip side, anytime your energy is feeling drained, anytime you're feeling unsafe, anytime you're feeling like your voice isn't being heard, anytime you're feeling in friction with yourself, and something just like the gears aren't turning in the right way.
Again, Be specific, be direct, make it short, and then at the end of the 30 days, take a look at your list. Whenever I have done this in a job, it has affirmed for me if I should stay or go, if I should reinvent, Meaning if I'm looking at my my cons list and the cons are I really don't like this leadership development training. I'm not interested in leadership development. I'm getting a lot of drain from leadership to development. I'm not really interested. If that's my cons list and it's all of the core work that I've been doing that may be cause for reinvention.
If the cons list is consistently working with X person, that might be cause for how can I shift away from this person? How can my work be less adjacent to this type of working role, working relationship with this person. If the pros list is I get so much energy from writing communications. And then the cons list includes I barely get to write any communications. That might be an opportunity for a different role. Maybe not reinvention, but just a different type of role. So I would just encourage you, if you're in a point of transition or reinvention or thinking about maybe even just like having that whisper of like, is it time for me to do something else?
Test it out. Try it for 30 days, pros lists, cons lists, and see where you land. It's a good data point. It's a good self reform.
